Nancy shut the door of her apartment behind her, and slipped out into the dimly lit corridor. From her sitting-room came a burst of concerted laughter, the sound of Betty’s sweet, high pitched voice raised in sudden protest, and then the echo of some sort of a physical struggle; and Caroline took the piano and began to improvise.

“They won’t miss me,” Nancy said to herself, “I must have air.” She drew a long breath with a hand against her breast, apparently to relieve the pressure there. “I can’t stay shut up in a room,” she kept repeating as if she were stating the most reasonable of premises, and turning, fled down the two flights of stairs that led to the outside door of the building.

The breath of the night was refreshingly cool upon her hot cheeks, and she smiled into the darkness gratefully. Across the way a row of brownstone houses, implacably boarded up for the summer, presented dull and dimly defined 50 surfaces that reflected nothing, not even the lights of the street, or the shadow of a passing straggler. Nancy turned her face toward the avenue. The nostalgia that was her inheritance from her father, and through him from a long line of ancestors that followed the sea whither it might lead them, was upon her this night, although she did not understand it as such. She only thought vaguely of a strip of white beach with a whiter moon hung high above it, and the long silver line of the tide,—drawing out.

“I wish I had a hat on,” she said. There was a night light in the chemist’s shop at the corner, and the panel of mirror obligingly placed for the convenience of the passing crowd, at the left of the big window, showed her reflection quite plainly. She was suddenly inspired to take the soft taffeta girdle from the waist of her dark blue muslin gown, and bind it turban-wise about her head. The effect was pleasingly modish and conventional, and she quickened her steps—satisfied. There was a tingle in the air that set her blood pleasantly in motion, and she established a rhythm of pace that made her feel almost as if she were walking to music. Insensibly her mind took up its responsibilities 51 again as the blood, stimulated from its temporary inactivity, began to course naturally through her veins.

“There is plenty of beer and ginger ale in the ice-box,” she thought, “and I’ve done this before, so they won’t be unnaturally disturbed about me. Billy wanted to take Caroline home early, and Dick can go on up-town with Betty, without making her feel that she ought to leave him alone with me for a last tÊte-À-tÊte. It will hurt Dick’s feelings, but he understands really. He has a most blessed understandingness, Dick has.”

She had the avenue almost entirely to herself, a silent gleaming thoroughfare with the gracious emptiness that a much lived in street sometimes acquires, of a Sunday at the end of an adventurous season. It was early July, the beginning of the actual summer season in New York. Nancy had never before been in town so late in the year, nor for that matter had Caroline or Betty, but Betty’s interest in the affairs of the Inn was keeping her at Nancy’s side, while Caroline had just accepted a secretarial position in one of the big Industrial Leagues recently organized by women for women, that 52 would keep her in town all summer. Billy and Dick, by virtue of their respective occupations, were never away from New York for longer than the customary two weeks’ vacation.

“My soul smoothed itself out, a long cramped scroll,”—her conscience placated on the score of her deserted guests, Nancy was quoting Browning to herself, as she widened the distance between herself and them. “I wonder why I have this irresistible tendency to shake the people I love best in the world at intervals. I am such a really well-balanced and rational individual, I don’t understand it in myself. I thought the Inn was going to take all the nonsense out of me, but it hasn’t, it appears,” she sighed; “but then, I think it is going to take the nonsense out of a lot of people that are only erratic because they have never been properly fed. I guess I’ll go and have a look at the old place in its Sunday evening calm. Already it seems queer not to be there at nine o’clock in the evening, but I don’t really think there are people enough in New York now on Sundays to make it an object.”

Nancy’s feet turned mechanically toward the arena of her most serious activities. Like most 53 of us who run away, she was following by instinct the logical periphery of her responsibilities.

The big green latticed gate was closed against all intruders. Nancy had the key to its padlock in her hand-bag, but she had no intention of using it. The white and crimson sign flapped in the soft breeze companionably responsive to the modest announcement, “Marble Workshop, Reproductions and Antiques, Garden Furniture,” which so inadequately invited those whom it might concern to a view of the petrified vaudeville within. Through the interstices of the gate the courtyard looked littered and unalluring;—the wicker tables without their fine white covers; the chairs pushed back in a heterogeneous assemblage; the segregated columns of a garden peristyle gaunt against the dark, gleamed a more ghostly white than the weather-stained busts and figures less recently added to the collection. It seemed to Nancy incredible that the place would ever bloom again with lights and bouquets and eager patrons, with her group of pretty flower-like waitresses moving deftly among them. She stared at the spot with the cold eye of the creator whose 54 handiwork is out of the range of his vision, and the inspiration of it for the moment, gone.

“I feel like Cinderella and her godmother rolled into one,” she thought disconsolately. “I waved my wand, and made so many things happen, and now that the clock has struck, again here I am outside in the cold and dark,”—the wind was taking on a keener edge, and she shivered slightly in her muslins—“with nothing but a pumpkin shell to show for it. Hitty says that getting what you want is apt to be unlikely business, and I’m inclined to think she’s right.”

It seemed to her suddenly that the thing she had wanted,—a picturesque, cleverly executed restaurant where people could be fed according to the academic ideals of an untried young woman like herself was an unthinkable thing. The power of illusion failed for the moment. Just what was it that she had hoped to accomplish with this fling at executive altruism? What was she doing with a French cook in white uniform, a competent staff of professional dishwashers and waitresses and kitchen helpers? How had it come about that she owned so many mounds and heaps and pyramids 55 of silver and metal and linen? What was this Inn that she had conceived as a project so unimaginably fine? Who were these shadow people that came and went there? Who was she? Why with all her vitality and all her hungry yearning for life and adventure couldn’t she even believe in her own substantiality and focus? Wasn’t life even real enough for a creature such as she to grasp it,—if it wasn’t—

She saw a figure that was familiar to her turn in from the avenue, a tall man in an Inverness with a wide black hat pulled down over his eyes. For the moment she could not remember who he was, but by the time he had stopped in front of the big gate, giving utterance to a well delivered expletive, she knew him perfectly, and stood waiting, motionless, for him to turn and speak to her. She was sure that he would have no recollection of her. He turned, but it was some seconds before he addressed her.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire,” he said at last, with a shrug that admitted her to the companionship of his discomfiture. “Doubt thou the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but 56 never doubt that your favorite New York restaurant will be closed on a Sunday night.”

“Oh! is it your favorite New York restaurant?” Nancy cried, her heart in her throat. “It’s mine, you know, my—my favorite.”

“So I judged, or you wouldn’t be beating against the gate so disconsolately.” It was too dark to see his face clearly, but Nancy realized that he was looking down at her quizzically through the darkness.

“Do you really like this restaurant?” she persisted.

“In some ways I like it very much. The food is quite possible as you know, very American in character, but very good American, and it has the advantage of being served out-of-doors. I am a Frenchman by adoption, and I like the outdoor cafÉ. In fact, I am never happy eating inside.”

“The surroundings are picturesque?” Nancy hazarded.

The stranger laughed. “According to the American ideal,” he said, “they are—but I do admit that they show a rather extraordinary imagination. I’ve often thought that I should like to make the acquaintance of the woman,—of 57 course, it’s a woman—who conceived the notion of this mortuary tea-room.”

“Why, of course, is it a woman?”

“A man wouldn’t set up housekeeping in—in PÈre Lachaise.”

“Why not, if he found a really domestic-looking corner?”

“He wouldn’t in the first place, it wouldn’t occur to him, that’s all, and if he did he couldn’t get away with it. The only real drawback to this hostelry is, as you know, that they don’t serve spirits of any kind. I’m accustomed to a glass or two of wine with my dinner, and my food sticks in my throat when I can’t have it, but I’ve found a way around that, now.”

“Oh! have you?” said Nancy.

“Don’t give me away, but there’s a man about the place here whose name is Michael, and he possesses that blend of Gallic facility with Celtic canniness that makes the Irish so wonderful as a race. I told my trouble to Michael,—with the result that I get a teapot full of Chianti with my dinner every night, and no questions asked.”

“Oh! you do?” gasped Nancy.

“You see Michael is serving the best interests 58 of his employer, who wants to keep her patrons, because if I couldn’t have it I wouldn’t be there. He couldn’t trouble the lady about it, naturally, because it is technically an offense against the law. Come, let’s go and find a quiet corner where we can continue our conversation comfortably. There’s a painfully respectable little hotel around the corner here that looks like the CafÉ L’avenue when you first go in, but is a place where the most bourgeoise of one’s aunts might put up.”

“I—I don’t know that I can go,” said Nancy.

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, you know. My name is Collier Pratt. I’m an artist. The more bourgeoise of my aunts would introduce me if she were here. She’s a New Englander like so many of your own charming relatives.”

“How did you know that?” Nancy asked, as she followed him with a docility quite new to her, past the big green gate, and the row of nondescript shops between it and the corner of Broadway.

“I was born in Boston,” Collier Pratt said a trifle absently. “I know a Massachusetts product when I see one. Ah! here we are.”

He led her triumphantly to a table in the far corner of the practically empty restaurant, waved away the civilities of a swarthy and somewhat badly coordinated waiter, and pulled out her chair for her himself.

“Now, let me have a look at you,” he said; “why, you’ve nothing on but muslin, and you’re wearing your belt for a turban.”

“A sop to the conventions,” Nancy said, blushing burningly. She was not quite able yet to get her bearings with this extraordinary man, who had assumed charge of her so cavalierly, but she was eager to find her poise in the situation. “I ran away, and I thought it would look better to have something like a hat on.”

“Looks,” said Collier Pratt, “looks! That’s New England, always the looks of a thing, never the feel of it. Mind you I don’t mean the look of a thing, that’s something different again.”

“Yes, I know, the conventional slant as opposed to the artistic perspective.”

“Good! It isn’t necessary to have my remarks followed intelligently, but it always adds piquancy to the situation when they are. Speaking of artistic perspective, you have a 60 very nice coloring. I like a ruddy chestnut hair with a skin as delicately white and pink as yours.” He spoke impersonally with the narrowing eye of the artist. “I can see you either in white,—not quite a cream white, but almost,—against a pearly kind of Quakerish background, or flaming out in the most crude, barbaric assemblage of colors. That’s the advantage of your type and the environment you connote—you can be the whole show, or the veriest little mouse that ever sought the protective coloring of the shadows.”

“You aren’t exactly taking the quickest way of putting me at my ease,” Nancy said. “I’m very much embarrassed, you know. I’d stand being looked over for a few minutes longer if I could,—but I can’t. I’m not having one of my most equable evenings.”

“I beg your pardon,” Collier Pratt said.

For the first time since she had seen his face with the light upon it, he smiled, and the smile relieved the rather empiric quality of his habitual expression. Nancy noticed the straight line of the heavy brows scarcely interrupted by the indication of the beginning of the nose, and wondering to herself if it were not possible 61 for a person with that eyebrow formation to escape the venality of disposition that is popularly supposed to be its adjunct,—decided affirmatively.

“I’m not used to talking to American girls very much. I forget how daintily they’re accustomed to being handled. I’m extremely anxious to put you at your ease,” he added quietly. “I appreciate the privilege of your company on what promised to be the dullest of dull evenings. I should appreciate still more,” he bowed, as he handed her a bill of fare of the journalistic proportions of the usual hotel menu, “if you would make a choice of refreshment, that we may dispense with the somewhat pathological presence of our young friend here,” he indicated the waiter afflicted with the jerking and titubation of a badly strung puppet. “I advise Rhine wine and seltzer. I offer you anything from green chartreuse to Scotch and soda. Personally I’m going to drink Perrier water.”

“I’d rather have an ice-cream,” Nancy said, “than anything else in the world,—coffee ice-cream, and a glass of water.”

“I wonder if you would, or if you only think it’s—safer. At any rate I’m going to put my 62 coat over your shoulders while you eat it. I never leave my rooms at this hour of the night without this cape. If I can find a place to sit out in I always do, and I’m naturally rather cold-blooded.”

“I’m not,” said Nancy, but she meekly allowed him to drape her in the folds of the light cape, and found it grateful to her.

“Bring the lady a big cup of coffee, and mind you have it hot,” Collier Pratt ordered peremptorily, as her ice-cream was served by the shaking waiter. “Coffee may be the worst thing in the world for you, nervously. I don’t know,—it isn’t for me, I rather thrive on it, but at any rate I’m going to save you from the combination of organdie and ice-cream on a night like this. What is your name?” he inquired abruptly.

“Ann Martin.”

“Not at my service?”

“I don’t know, yet.”

“Well, I don’t know,—but I hope and trust so. I like you. You’ve got something they don’t have—these American girls,—softness and strength, too. I imagine you’ve never been out of America.”

“I—I have.”

“With two other girls and a chaperon, doing Europe, and staying at all the hotels doped up for tourist consumption.”

Nancy was constrained to answer with a smile.

“You don’t like America very much,” she said presently.

“I like it for itself, but I loathe it—for myself. My way of living here is all wrong. I can’t get to bed in this confounded city. I can’t get enough to eat.”

“Oh! can’t you?” Nancy cried.

“In Paris, or any town where there is a cafÉ life one naturally gets fed. The technique of living is taken care of much better over there. Your concierge serves you a nourishing breakfast as a matter of course. When you’ve done your morning’s work you go to your favorite cafÉ—not with the one object in life—to cram a ChÂteaubriand down your dry and resisting throat because he who labors must live,—but to see your friends, to read your daily journals, to write your letters, and do it incidentally in the open air while some diplomat of a waiter serves you with food that assuages the palate, 64 without insulting your mood. That’s what I like about the little restaurant in the court there. It’s out-of-doors, and you may stay there without feeling your table is in requisition for the next man. It’s a very polite little place.”

“You didn’t expect to get in there to-night.”

“I had hopes of it. I’ve not dined, you see.”

“Not dined?” Nancy’s eyes widened in dismay.

“There’s no use for me to dine unless I can eat my food tranquilly, in some accustomed corner. Getting nourished with me is a spiritual, as well as a physical matter. It is with all sensitive people. Don’t you think so?”

“I suppose so. I—I hadn’t thought of it that way. Couldn’t you eat something now—an oyster stew, or something like that?”

“Nothing in any way remotely connected with that. An oyster stew is to me the most barbarous of concoctions. I loathe hot milk,—an oyster is an adjunct to a fish sauce, or a preface to a good dinner.”

“You ought to have something,” Nancy urged, “even ice-cream is more nourishing than mineral water, or coffee with cream in it.”

“I like coffee after dinner, not before.”

“If you only eat when it’s convenient, or the mood takes you,” Nancy cried out in real distress, “how can you ever be sure that you have calories enough? The requirement of an average man at active labor is estimated at over three thousand calories. You must have something like a balanced ration in order to do your work.”

“Must I?” Collier Pratt smiled his rare smile. “Well, at any rate, it is good to hear you say so.”

She finished her ice-cream, and Collier Pratt drank his mineral water slowly, and smoked innumerable cigarettes of Virginia tobacco. The conversation which had proceeded so expeditiously to this point seemed for no apparent reason, suddenly to become gratuitous. Nancy had never before begun on the subject of the balanced ration without being respectfully allowed to go through to the end. She had not been allowed to feel snubbed, but she was a little bewildered that any conversation in which she was participating, could be so gracefully stopped before it was ended by her expressed desire.

Collier Pratt took his watch out of his pocket, and looked at it hastily.

“By jove,” he said, “I had entirely forgotten. I have a child in my charge. I must be about looking after her.”

“A child?” Nancy cried, astonished.

“Yes, a little girl. She’s probably sitting up for me, poor baby. Can you get home alone, if I put you on a bus or a street-car?”

“If you’ll call a taxi for me—” Nancy said.

She noticed that the check was paid with change instead of a bill. In fact, her host seemed not to have a bill of any denomination in his pocket, but to be undisturbed by the fact. He parted from her casually.

“Good-by, child,” he said with his head in the door after he had given the chauffeur her street number; “with the permission of le bon Dieu, we shall see each other again. I feel that He is going to give it to us.”

“Good-by,” Nancy said to his retreating shoulder.

At her own front door was Dick’s big Rolls-Royce, and Dick sitting inside of it, with his feet comfortably up, feigning sleep.

“You didn’t think I’d go home until I saw 67 you safe inside your own door, did you?” he demanded.

“Where’s Betty?” Nancy asked mechanically.

“I sent Williams home with her. Then he came back here, and left the car with me.”

“You needn’t have waited,” Nancy said, “I’m sorry, Dick, I—I had to have air. I had to get out. I couldn’t stay inside a minute longer.”

“You need never explain anything to me.”

“Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?”

Dick looked at her carefully before he made his answer. Then he said firmly.

“No, dear.”

“I might have told you,” she said, “if you had wanted to know.” She felt her knees sagging with fatigue, and drooped against the door-frame.

“Come and sit in the car, and talk to me for a minute,” he suggested. “Do you good, before you climb the stairs.”

He opened the car door for her ingratiatingly, but she shook her head.

“I’ve done unconventional things enough for one evening,” she said. “Unlock the door for me. Hitty’ll be waiting up to take care of me.”

“What’s that queer thing you’re wearing?” 68 he asked her, as he held the door for her to pass through, “I never remember seeing you wear that before.”

Nancy looked down wonderingly at the folds of the Inverness still swinging from her shoulders. She had been subconsciously aware of the grateful warmth in which she was encased ever since she snuggled comfortably into the depths of the taxi-cab into which Collier Pratt had tucked her.

“No, I never have worn it before,” she said, answering Dick’s question.