Billy made a great lunge toward the figure of his fiancee, and caught her in his arms.

"I've never really kissed you before," he cried, "now I shan't let you go."

She struggled in his arms, but he mastered her. He covered her cool brow with kisses, her hands, the lovely curve of her neck where the smooth hair turned upward, and at last--her lips.

"You're mine, my girl," he exulted, "and nothing, nothing, nothing shall ever take you away from me now."

There was a click in the latch of the door through which they had just entered. Another belated boarder was making his way into the domicile which he had chosen as a subst.i.tute for the sacred privacy of home.

Caroline tore herself out of Billy's arms just in time to exchange greetings with the incoming guest with some pretense of composure. He was a fat man with an umbrella which clattered against the bal.u.s.ters as he ascended the carved staircase.

"Caught with the goods," Billy tried to say through lips stiffened in an effort at control.

Caroline turned on him, her face blazing with anger, the transfiguring white rage of the woman whose spiritual fastnesses have been invaded through the approach of the flesh.

"There is no way of my ever forgiving you," she said. "No way of my ever tolerating you, or anything you stand for again. You are utterly--utterly--utterly detestable in my eyes."

"Is--is that so?" Billy stammered, dizzied by the suddenness of the onslaught.

"I--I've got some decent hold on my pride and self-respect--even if Nancy hasn't, and I'm not going to be subjugated like a cave woman by mere brute force either."

"Aren't you?" said Billy weakly, his mind in a whirl still from the lightning-like overthrow of all his theories of action.

"I'm not going to do what Nancy is going to do, just out of sheer temperamental weakness, and--and tendency to follow the line of least resistance."

Billy had no idea of the significance of her last phrase, and let it go unheeded. Caroline turned and walked away from him, her head high.

"But, good lord, Nancy isn't going to do it," he called after her retreating figure, but all the answer he got was the silken swish of her petticoat as she took the stairs.

CHAPTER XII

MORE CAVE-MAN STUFF

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 pa.s.sion 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 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 disa.s.sociated 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 a.s.sociation.

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 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 circ.u.mstances 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 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 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 b.u.t.ter and cream introduced in their preparation was an important factor in her a.n.a.lysis. 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 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 antic.i.p.ation of a dramatic bankruptcy. It was on d.i.c.k, 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 a.s.suming more preposterous proportions every hour of its existence. He made surrept.i.tious 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 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," d.i.c.k 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, _creme renverse_, he makes--deliciously good, and we give it to the clerking girls."

"The b.u.t.termilk 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 or two people that ought to have it every day and their complexions show it if they don't."

"I suppose so," d.i.c.k 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 subst.i.tute 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," d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, _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 hastily, "and _apricot mousse_ and _cepes et pimentos_, things that Gaspard can't make for the regular menu,--bright colored things that Sheila loves to look at."

"He likes _pet.i.t pois avec laitue_ too and _haricot coupe_, and _artichaut mousselaine_. Sometimes when he does not want them Miss Dear eats them."

"I'm glad they are diverted to some good use," d.i.c.k said.

"I've been looking into the living conditions of my waitresses." Nancy changed the subject hastily. "Did you realize, d.i.c.k, 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," d.i.c.k said dramatically, "where do you get the money?"

"Oh, I don't know," Nancy said, "it comes along. The restaurant makes some."

"Very little."