"No, this is better," he said.
"I thought there was some place in the world where I could be--comfortable," Nancy said, when she finally lifted her head from the shoulder of the shabby, immaculate black suit, "but I wasn"t quite sure."
"Are you sure now, you little wonder woman?" He held her at the length of his arm for a moment and gazed curiously into her face. Then he drew her slowly toward him again. She met his kiss bravely, so bravely that he understood the quality of her courage.
"I didn"t realize that this would be the first time," he said.
"There couldn"t have been any other time," Nancy breathed, "you know that."
"I didn"t know," Collier Pratt said thoughtfully. "Oh! you little American girls, with your strange, straight-laced little bodies and your fearless souls!"
"Betty told you something," Nancy cried, scarcely hearing him, "but it wasn"t true. There never has been anybody else." She put her head down on his shoulder again. "It is comfortable here," she said, "where I belong."
She felt the sudden pa.s.sion sweep through him,--the high avid wave of tenderness and desire,--and she exulted as all purely innocent women exult when that madness surges first through the veins of the man they love. He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her into the armchair by the fire, and there she took his head on her breast and understood for all time what it means for a woman to be called the mother of men.
"You wonder woman," he murmured again.
She brushed the dark hair back from his forehead and kissed his eyes.
"You dear," she said, "you boy, you little boy."
Suddenly through the darkness came the sound of a shrill cry, and the thud of a fall in some room down the corridor.
"It"s Sheila," Nancy said, "she has those little nightmares and falls out of bed."
"I know she does," Collier Pratt said, "but she picks herself up again."
"Not always," Nancy said; "don"t you want to come in and help me put her back?"
"I do not," Collier Pratt said with unnecessary emphasis.
Nancy was of two minds about picking the child up in her little white night-gown and bringing her out to her father, flushed and lovely with sleep as she was. It was Collier Pratt"s baby she had in her arms; her charge, the child she loved, and the child of the man she loved, a part of the miracle that was slowly revealing itself to her; but a sudden sharp instinct warned her that her impulse was ill-timed.
"I had forgotten the child was here," Collier Pratt said when she returned to him.
"I hadn"t," Nancy said happily.
"I suppose she has to be somewhere, poor little wretch," he said.
"She"s an extraordinarily picturesque baby, isn"t she?"
Nancy crept nearer to him. He stood leaning against the mantel and frowning slightly, but he made no move toward her again.
"She doesn"t have nightmares often now," Nancy said with stiffening lips. "She used to have them almost every night, but by watching her diet carefully we have practically eliminated them."
"The Hitty person doesn"t like me," Collier Pratt said. "_Pas du tout_. She treats me as if I were a book agent."
"She loves Sheila, she--she"d do anything for her."
"The women who do not find me attractive are likely to find me quite conspicuously otherwise, I am afraid." He had been carefully avoiding Nancy"s eyes, but her little cry at this drew his gaze. She was standing before him, slowly blanching as if he had struck her, absolutely still except for the trembling of her lips.
"What am I," he said, "to hold out against all the forces of the Universe? Do you love me, Nancy, do you love me?"
"You know," she whispered, once more in the shelter of the shabby shoulder.
"This is madness," he swore as he kissed her; "we"re both out of our senses, Nancy; don"t you know it?"
"The picture is done, anyhow," she said. "I don"t know how I can ever bear to look it in the face, but I shall have to."
"It"s the best work I"ve ever done," he said.
"I don"t look like it now, do I?"
He held her off to see.
"No, by jove, you don"t. It"s gone, now--just that thing I painted."
"How do I look now?"
"Much more commonplace from the point of view from which I painted you. Much more beautiful though,--much more beautiful."
"I"m glad."
"I might paint you again,--like this. No, I swear I won"t. I got the thing itself down on canvas. I"ll never try to paint you again."
"Is--that flattering?"
"Supremely."
"When am I going to have my picture?" she asked after another interlude. "Do you want me to send for it?"
"I can"t give you the picture," he said. "I intended to if I had done merely a portrait, but I can"t part with this. It has got to make my fame and fortune."
"I thought I was to have it," Nancy said. "I--I--" then she felt she was being ungenerous, unworthy, "but I couldn"t take it, of course, it"s too valuable."
"Please G.o.d."
"It would be wonderful, wouldn"t it, if my picture did make you famous!"
"I think it will."
"I"m nothing but a grubby little working girl, and you"re a great artist,--and you love me."
"You"re not a grubby little working girl to me," he said, "you"re a glorious creature--a wonder woman. I ought to go down on my knees to you for what you"ve given me in that picture."
"In the picture?" Nancy said. "I love you. I love you. That wasn"t in the picture--I kept it out."
"I won"t marry him until he is ready for me," she said to herself at one time during the night. She lay perfectly quiet till morning, her hands folded upon her breast, and her little girl pig-tails pulled down on either side of the coverlet, wide-eyed and tranquil. She could not bear to sleep and forget for a moment the beautiful thing that had happened to her between dawn and dawn. "I"ll take care of him and Sheila, and nourish him, and help him to sell my picture. It isn"t every woman who would understand his kind of loving, but I understand it."