When Nancy left Collier Pratt’s studio on the day of her first sitting for the portrait he was to do of her, she never expected to enter it again. She was in a panic of hurt pride and anger at his handling of the situation that had developed there, and in a passion of self-disgust that she had been responsible for it.

It was a simple fact of her experience that the men she knew valued her favors, and exerted themselves to win them. She had always had plenty of suitors, or at least admirers who lacked only a few smiles of encouragement to make suitors of them, and she was accustomed to the consideration of the desirable woman, whose privilege it is to guide the conversation into personal channels, or gently deflect it therefrom. An encounter in which she could not find her poise was as new as it was bewildering to her.

From the moment that she had begun to realize Collier Pratt’s admiration for her she 181 had scarcely given a thought to any other man. With the insight of the artist he had seen straight into the heart of Nancy’s secret—the secret that she scarcely knew herself until he translated it for her, the most obvious secret that a prescient universe ever throbbed with,—that a woman is not fulfilled until she is a mate and a mother. The nebulous urge of her spirit had been formulated. In Nancy’s world there was no abstract sentimentality—if this man indulged himself in emotional regret for her frustrated womanhood—she called it that to herself—it must in some way concern him. She had never in her life been troubled by a condition that she was not eager to ameliorate, and she could not conceive of an emotional interest in an individual disassociated from a certain responsibility for that individual’s welfare. She took Collier Pratt’s growing tenderness for her for granted, and dreamed exultant dreams of their romantic association.

The scene in the studio had shocked her only because he put his art first. He had taken a lover’s step toward her, and then glancing at the crudely splotched canvas from which his ideal of her was presently to emerge, he had 182 thought better of it, soothing her with caresses as if she were a child, and like a child dismissing her. She felt that she never wanted to see again the man who could so confuse and humiliate her. But this mood did not last. As the days went on, and she feverishly recapitulated the circumstances of the episode, she began to feel that it was she who had failed to respond to the beautiful opportunity of that hour. She had inspired the soul of an artist with a great concept of womanhood, and had, in effect, demanded an immediate personal tribute from him. He had been wise to deflect the emotion that had sprung up within them both. After the picture was done—. She became eager to show him that she understood and wanted to help him conserve the impression of her from which his inspiration had come, and when he asked her to go to the studio again the following week she rejoiced that she had another chance to prove to him how simply she could behave in the matter.

She looked in the mirror gravely every night after she had done her hair in the prescribed pig-tails to try to determine whether or not the look he had discovered in her face was still 183 there,—the look of implicit maternity that she had been fortunate enough to reflect and symbolize for him,—but she was unable to come to any decision about it. Her face looked to her much as it had always looked—except that her brow and temples seemed to have become more transparent and the blue veins there seemed to be outlined with an even bluer brush than usual.

She was busier than she had ever been in her life. The volume of her business was swelling. With the return of the native to the city of his adoption—there is no native New Yorker in the strict sense of the word—Outside Inn was besieged by clamorous patrons. Gaspard, with the adaptability of his race, had evolved what was practically a perfect system of presenting the balanced ration to an unconscious populace, and the populace was responding warmly to his treatment. It had taken him a little time to gauge the situation exactly, to adapt the supply to the idiosyncrasies of the composite demand, but once he had mastered his problem he dealt with it inspiredly. His southern inheritance made it possible for him to apprehend if he could not actually comprehend the taste of a people who did not want the flavor of nutmeg 184 in their cauliflower, and who preferred cocoanut in their custard pie, and he realized that their education required all the diplomacy and skill at his command.

Nancy found him unexpectedly intelligent about the use of her tables. He grasped the essential fact that the values of food changed in the process of cooking, and that it was necessary to Nancy’s peace of mind to calculate the amount of water absorbed in preparing certain vegetables, and that the amount of butter and cream introduced in their preparation was an important factor in her analysis. He also nodded his head with evident appreciation when she discoursed to him of the optimum amount of protein as opposed to the actual requirements in calories of the average man, but she never quite knew whether the matter interested him, or his native politeness constrained him to listen to her smilingly as long as she might choose to claim his attention. But the fact remained that there was no such cooking in any restaurant in New York of high or low degree, as that which Gaspard provided, and as time went on, and he realized that expense was not a factor in Nancy’s conception of a successfully conducted 185 restaurant, the reputation of Outside Inn increased by leaps and bounds.

To Nancy’s friends—with the exception, of course, of Billy, who was in her confidence—the whole business became more and more puzzling. Caroline, her susceptibility to vicarious distress being augmented by the sensitiveness of her own emotional state, yearned and prayed over her alternately. Betty, avid of excitement, spent her days in the pleasurable anticipation of a dramatic bankruptcy. It was on Dick, however, that the actual strain came. He saw Nancy growing paler and more ethereal each day, on her feet from morning till night manipulating the affairs of an enterprise that seemed to be assuming more preposterous proportions every hour of its existence. He made surreptitious estimates of expenditures and suffered accordingly, approximating the economic unsoundness of the Inn by a very close figure, and still Nancy kept him at arm’s length and flouted all his suggestions for easing, what seemed to him now, her desperate situation.

He managed to pick her up in his car one day with Sheila, and persuaded her to a couple of hours in the open. She was on her way home 186 from the Inn, and had meant to spend that time resting and dressing before she went back to consult with Gaspard concerning the night meal. She had no complaint to make now of the usurpation of her authority or the lack of actual executive service that was required of her. With the increase in the amount of business that the Inn was carrying she found that every particle of her energy was necessary to get through the work of the day.

“I’m worried about you,” Dick said, as they took the long ribbon of road that unfurled in the direction of Yonkers, and Nancy removed her hat to let the breeze cool her distracted brow. His man Williams, was driving.

“Well, don’t tell me so,” she answered a trifle ungraciously.

“Miss Dear is cross to-day,” Sheila explained. “The milk did not come for Gaspard to make the poor people’s custard, crÊme renversÉ, he makes—deliciously good, and we give it to the clerking girls.”

“The buttermilk cultures were bad,” Nancy said. “And I wasn’t able to get any of the preparations of it, that I can trust. There are one 187 or two people that ought to have it every day and their complexions show it if they don’t.”

“I suppose so,” Dick said, with a grimace.

“These people who have worked in New York all summer have run pretty close to their margin of energy. You’ve no idea what a difference a few calories make to them, or how closely I have to watch them, and when I have to substitute an article of diet for the thing they’ve been used to, it’s awfully hard to get them to take it.”

“I should think it might be,” Dick said. “It’s true about people who have worked in New York all summer, though. I have—and you have.”

“Oh! I’m all right,” Nancy said.

“So am I,” Sheila said, “and so is Monsieur Dick, n’est-ce pas?”

“Vraiment, Mademoiselle.”

“Father isn’t very right, though. Even when Miss Dear has all the beautiful things in the most beautiful colors in the world cooked for him and sent to him, he won’t eat them unless she comes and sits beside him and begs him.”

“He’s very fond of sauce verte,” Nancy said 188 hastily, “and apricot mousse and cÈpes et pimentos, things that Gaspard can’t make for the regular menu,—bright colored things that Sheila loves to look at.”

“He likes petit pois avec laitue too and haricot coupÉ, and artichaut mousselaine. Sometimes when he does not want them Miss Dear eats them.”

“I’m glad they are diverted to some good use,” Dick said.

“I’ve been looking into the living conditions of my waitresses.” Nancy changed the subject hastily. “Did you realize, Dick, that the waitresses have about the unfairest deal of any of the day laborers? They’re not organized, you know. Their hours are interminable, the work intolerably hard, and the compensation entirely inadequate. Moreover, they don’t last out for any length of time. I’m trying out a new scheme of very short shifts. Also, I’m having a certain sum of money paid over to them every month from my bank. If they don’t know where it comes from it can’t do them any harm. That is, I am not establishing a precedent for wages that they won’t be able to earn elsewhere. I consider it immoral to do that.”

“You are paying them an additional sum of money out of your own pocket? You told me you paid them the maximum wage, anyhow, and they get lots of tips.”

“Oh! but that’s not nearly enough.”

“Nancy,” Dick said dramatically, “where do you get the money?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Nancy said, “it comes along. The restaurant makes some.”

“Very little.”

“I could make it pay any time that I wanted to.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you are in full possession of your senses.”

“Caroline is affected that way, too. I feel that she is likely to get an alienist in at any time. She is so earnest in anything she undertakes. She and Billy have had a scrap, did you know it?”

“I didn’t.”

“Billy wants to marry her, and he has shocked her delicate feelings by suggesting it to her.”

“I imagine you have a good deal to do with her feelings on the subject,” Dick said gloomily. “I suppose at heart you don’t believe in 190 marriage, or think you don’t and you’ve communicated the poison to Caroline.”

“I’ve done nothing of the kind,” Nancy insisted warmly. “I do believe in marriage with all my heart. I think the greatest service any woman can render her kind in this mix-up age is to marry one man and make that marriage work by taking proper scientific care of him and his children.”

“This is news to me,” Dick said. “I thought that you thought that the greatest service a woman could do was to run Outside Inn, and stuff all the derelicts with calories.”

“That’s a service, too.”

“Sure.”

They were out beyond the stately decay of the up-town drive, with its crumbling mansions and the disheveled lawns surrounding them, beyond the view of the most picturesque river in the world, though, comparatively speaking, the least regarded, covering the prosaic stretch of dusty road between Van Courtland Park and the town of Yonkers.

“I like the Bois better,” Sheila said, “but I like Central Park better than the Champs ElyseÉs. In Paris the children are not so gay as 191 the grown-up people. Here it is the grown-up people who are without smiles on the streets.”

“Why is that, Dick?” Nancy asked.

“That’s always true of the maturer races, the gaiety of the French is appreciative enthusiasm,—if I may invent a phrase. The children haven’t developed it.”

“I would like to have my hand held, Monsieur Dick,” Sheila announced. “I always feel homesick when I think about Paris. I was so contente and so malheureuse there.”

“Why were you unhappy, sweetest?” Nancy asked.

“My father says I am never to speak of those things, and so I don’t—even to Miss Dear, my bien aimÉe.”

Dick lifted Sheila into his lap, he took the hand that still clung to Nancy’s in his warm palm, and held them both there caressingly.

“My bien aimÉe,” he said softly.

Beyond the town a more gracious and magnificent country revealed itself; lovely homes set high on sweeping terraces, private parks and gardens and luxuriant estates, all in a blaze of October radiance with the glorious pigments of the season.

“Isn’t it time to go back?” Nancy asked.

“Not yet,” Dick said. “I want to show you something. There’s an old place here I want you to see. That colonial house set way back in the trees there.”

“Williams is driving in,” Nancy said as they approached it.

“He’s been here before.”

“Are we going to get out?” Sheila asked.

Dick was already opening the door of the tonneau and assisting Nancy out of the car.

“I’m going to leave Sheila with Williams, and take you over the house, Nancy. She’ll be more interested in the grounds than she would in the interior. I want you to see the inside.”

He took a key out of his pocket, and unlocked the stately door. Everything about the place was gigantic, stately,—the huge columns that supported the roof of the porch, the big elms that flanked it, and the great entrance hall, as they stepped into its majestic enclosure.

“It’s a biggish sort of place, isn’t it?” Nancy said.

“But it’s rather lovely, don’t you think so?” Dick asked anxiously. “These old places are getting increasingly hard to find,—real old 193 homes, dignified and beautiful, within a reasonable distance from town.”

“It is lovely,” Nancy said, “it could be made perfectly wonderful to live in. I can see this big hall—furnished in mahogany or even carved oak that was old enough. Thank heaven, we’re no longer slaves to a period in our decorating; we can use anything that’s beautiful and suitable and not intrinsically incongruous with a clear conscience.”

“Come up-stairs.”

Nancy lingered on the landing of the fine old staircase, white banistered with a mahogany hand-rail, that turned only once before it led into the region up-stairs.

“I’d rather see the kitchen,” she said.

“The kitchen isn’t the thing that I’m proudest of. Its plumbing is early English, or Scottish, I’m afraid. I think this arrangement up here is delightful. See these front suites, one on either side of the hall. Bedroom, dressing-room, sitting-room. Which do you like best? I thought perhaps I might take the one that overlooks the orchard.”

Nancy stopped still on her way from window to window.

“Dick Thorndyke, whose house is this?” she demanded.

“Mine.”

“Yours—have you bought it?”

“Yes, I put the deed in my safe deposit vault yesterday. Come in here. Isn’t this a cunning little guest chamber nested in the trees? Be becoming to Betty’s style of beauty, wouldn’t it?” He held the door open for her ingratiatingly, and she passed under his arm perfunctorily.

“What on earth did you buy a house like this for?”

“I thought you might like it.”

“I—what have I to do with it?”

Dick turned the rusty key in the lock deliberately, and put it in his pocket, thus closing them into the little musty room which had no other exit. A branch of flaming maple leaves tapped lightly on the window.

“You’ve a whole lot to do with it, Nancy,” he said. “It’s yours, and I’m yours, and I want to know how much longer you’re going to hedge.”

“I’m not hedging,” Nancy blazed. “Take that key out of your pocket. This is moving-picture stuff.”

“I know it is. I can’t get you to talk to me any other way, so I thought I’d try main force for a change.”

“Well, it is a change,” she agreed. “Shall I begin to scream now, or do you intend to give me some other provocation?”

“Don’t be coarse, darling.” There is a certain disadvantage in having known the woman who is the object of your tenderest emotions all your life, and to be on terms of the most familiar badinage with her. Dick was feeling this disadvantage acutely at the moment. He took a step toward her, and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Nancy, don’t you love me?” he said, “don’t you really?”

“No,” Nancy said deliberately, “I don’t, and you know very well I don’t. Unlock that door, and let’s be sensible.”

“Don’t you know, dear, or care that you’re hurting me?”

“No, I don’t,” Nancy said. “You say so, and I hear you, but I don’t really believe it. If I did—”

“If you did—what?”

“Then I’d be sorrier.”

“You aren’t sorry at all, as it stands.”

“I find it’s awfully hard to be sorry for you, Dick, in any connection. There’s really nothing pathetic about you, no matter how tragic you think you are being. You’re rich and lucky and healthy. You have everything you want—”

“Not everything.”

“And you live the way you want to, and eat the food you want to—”

“The ruling passion.”

“And make the jokes you want to.” Nancy literally stuck up a saucy nose at him. “There is really nothing that I could contribute to your happiness. I mean nothing important. You are not a poor man whom I could help to work his way up to the top, or a genius that needs fostering, or a—”

“Dyspeptic that needs putting on a special diet,—but for all that I do need a mother’s love, Nancy.”

“I don’t believe you do,” Nancy said, a trifle absently. “Unlock the door, Dick. I don’t think Sheila put on that sweater when I told her to, and I’m afraid she’ll get cold.”

“Kiss me, Nancy.”

“Will you unlock the door if I do?”

“Yes’um.”

Nancy put up cool fragrant lips to meet a brother’s kiss, and for the moment was threatened with a second salute that was very much less fraternal, but the danger passed. Dick unlocked the door and let her pass him without protest.

“If you had been any other girl,” he mused, as they went down the stairs together companionably, “you wouldn’t have got away with that.”

“With what?” Nancy asked innocently.

“If you don’t know,” Dick said, “I won’t tell you. If you’d been any other girl I should have thrown that key out of the window when you began to sass me.”

“And then?” Nancy inquired politely.

“And then,” Dick replied finally and firmly.

“Are there any other girls?” Nancy asked, faintly curious, as they stood on the deep steps of the porch waiting for Sheila and Williams who were emerging from the middle entrance.

Dick met her glance a little solemnly, and hesitated for a perceptible instant.

“Are there, Dick?” she insisted.

“Yes, dear,” he said.