"They"re wonderful!" she gasped, but "You"re wonderful" were the words she stifled on her lips.
He painted till the light failed him.
"It"s this diffused glow,--this gentle, faded afternoon light that I want," he said. "I want you to emerge from your background as if you had bloomed out of it that very moment. Oh! I"ve got you at your hour, you know! The prescient maternal--that"s what I want. The conscious moment when a woman becomes aware that she is potentially a mother.
Sheila"s done that for you. She"s brought it out in you. It was ready, it was waiting there before, but now it"s come. It"s wonderful!"
"Yes," Nancy said, "it"s--it"s come."
"It hasn"t been done, you know. It"s a modern conception, of course; but they all do the thing realized, or incipient. I want to do it _implicit_--that"s what I want. I might have searched the whole world over and not found it."
"Well, here I am," said Nancy faintly.
"Yes, here you are," Collier Pratt responded out of the fervor of his artist"s absorption.
"It"s rather a personal matter to me," Nancy ventured some seconds later.
Collier Pratt turned from the canvas he was contemplating, and looked at her, still posed as he had placed her, upright, yet relaxed in the scooped chair that held her without constraining her.
"Like a flower in a vase," he said; "to me you"re a wonderful creature."
"I"m glad you like me," Nancy said, quivering a little. "This is a rather uncommon experience to me, you know, being looked at so impersonally. Now please don"t say that I"m being American."
"But, good G.o.d! I don"t look at you impersonally."
"Don"t you?" Nancy meant her voice to be light, and she was appalled to hear the quaver in it.
"You know I don"t." He glanced toward a dun-colored curtain evidently concealing shelves and dishes. "Let"s have some tea."
"I can"t stay for tea." Nancy felt her lips begin to quiver childishly, but she could not control their trembling. "Oh! I had better go," she said.
Collier Pratt took one step toward her. Then he turned toward the canvas. Nancy read his mind like a flash.
"You"re afraid you"ll disturb the--what you want to paint," she said accusingly.
"I am." He smiled his sweet slow smile, then he took her stiff interlaced hands and raised them, still locked together, to his lips where he kissed them gently, one after the other. "Will you forgive me?" he asked, and pushed her gently outside of his studio door.
CHAPTER XI
BILLY AND CAROLINE
It was one night in middle October when Billy and Caroline met by accident on Thirty-fourth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
Caroline stood looking into a drug-store window where an automatic mannikin was shaving himself with a patent safety razor.
"There"s a wax feller going to bed in an automatic folding settee, a little farther down the street," Billy offered gravely at her elbow; "and on Forty-second Street there is a real live duck pond advertising the advantages of electric heaters in the home."
"H"lo," said Caroline, who was colloquial only in moments of real pleasure or excitement. "I"ve just written to you. I asked you to come and see me to-morrow evening," she added more seriously, "to talk about something that"s weighing on my mind."
"I"m going out with a blonde to-morrow, night," Billy said speciously, "but what"s the matter with to-night? I"m free until six-fifty A. M.
and I could spare an hour or two between then and breakfast time."
"I can"t to-night," Caroline said, "I promised Nancy to dine at the Inn."
"That wasn"t your line at all," Billy groaned. "Who"s the blonde?--that was your cue. If it"s only Nancy you"re dining with--that can be fixed."
"I regard an engagement with Nancy as just as sacred as--"
"So do I," Billy cut in. "She is the blonde. Well, let to-morrow night be as it may; let"s you and I call up the Nancy girl now and tell her that we"re going batting together; she won"t care."
"I don"t like doing that," Caroline said; "it"s a nice night for a bat, though."
"I walked down Murray Hill and saw the sun set in a nice pinky gold setting," Billy said artfully. Caroline liked to have him get an artistic perspective on New York. "Let"s walk down the avenue to the Cafe des Artistes and have Emince Bernard, and a long wide high, tall drink of--ginger ale," he finished lamely.
"We"d have to telephone Nancy," Caroline hesitated.
Billy took her by the arm and guided her into the interior of the drug-store to the side aisle where the telephones were, and stepped into the first empty booth that offered. Caroline stopped him firmly as he was about to shut himself inside.
"I"d rather hear what you say," she said.
Billy slipped his nickel in the slot and took up the receiver.
"Madison Square 3403 doesn"t answer," Central informed him crisply after an interval.
"Oh! Nancy, dear," Billy replied softly into her astonished ear.
"Caroline and I are going off by ourselves to-night, you don"t care, do you?"
"Ringing thr-r-ree-four-o-thr-r-ee, Madison Square."
"That"s nice of you," Billy responded heartily. "I thought you"d say that."
"Madison Square thr-r-ree-four-o-t-h-r-r-ree doesn"t answer. Hang up your receiver and I"ll call you if I get the party."
"Of course I will. You"re always so tactful in the way you put things, always so generous and kind and thoughtful. I can"t tell you how much I appreciate it."
"What did Nancy say?" Caroline asked, as they turned away from the booth.
"You heard my end of the conversation," Billy said blandly. "You can deduce hers from it."
"There was something about your end of the conversation that sounded queer to me somehow. It was odd that Central should have returned your nickel to you after you had talked so long."
"Yes, wasn"t it?" Billy asked innocently. "Well, I suppose mistakes will happen in the best regulated telephone companies."
"I like you," Billy said contentedly, as the lights of the avenue strung themselves out before them. "I like walking down this royal thoroughfare with you. You"re a kind of a neutral girl, but I like you."
"You"re a kind of ridiculous boy."