"Simply perfect," Billy a.s.sisted her.

"Isn't she going to eat with us?" d.i.c.k asked.

"She can't. She's busy getting it going just at present. She may appear later."

"Somebody's got to direct this pageant, old top," Billy reminded him.

"The soup is perfect," Caroline said seriously. "It is simple--with that deceptive simplicity of a Paris morning frock."

"French home cooking is all like that," d.i.c.k said. "I like puree of forget-me-nots!"

"Molly or Dolly, I can't tell the difference between you," Billy said, "extend our compliments to Miss Martin, and tell her that this course is a triumph."

"Wait till you see the roast, sir."

"It's the very _best_ sirloin," d.i.c.k announced at the first mouthful, "and these a.s.sorted vegetables all cut down to the same size are as pretty as they are good, as one says of virtuous innocence."

"This variety of asparagus is expensive," Caroline said; "she can't do things like this at seventy-five cents a head. She'll ruin herself."

"I don't see how she can," d.i.c.k said thoughtfully, "with the price of foodstuffs soaring sky-high."

"I never for a moment expected it to pay," Betty said, "but think of the run she will have for her money, and the experience we'll get out of it."

"You're in it for the romance there is in it, Betty. I must confess it isn't altogether my idea of a good time," Caroline said.

"I know, you would go in for military training for women, and that sort of thing. There's a woman over there asking for more olives, and she's eaten a plate full of them already."

"They're as big as hen's eggs anyhow," Caroline groaned, "and almost as extravagant. I don't see how Nancy'll go through the first month at this rate. There she comes now. Doesn't she look nice in that color of green?"

"How do you like my party?" Nancy asked, slipping into the empty chair between d.i.c.k and Billy; "isn't the food good and nourishing, and aren't there a lot of nice-looking people here?"

"Very much, and it is, and there are," d.i.c.k answered with affectionate eyes on her.

"The salad is alligator pear served in half sections, with French dressing," she said dreamily. "I'm too happy to eat, but I'll have some with you. Look at them all, don't they look relaxed and soothed and refreshed? Every individual has a perfectly balanced ration of the most superlatively good quality, slowly beginning to a.s.similate within him."

"I don't see many respectable working girls," Billy said.

"There are though,--from the different shops and offices on the avenue. There is a contingent from the Columbia summer school coming to-morrow evening. This group coming in now is newspaper people."

"Who's the fellow sitting over in the corner with that Vie de Boheme hat? He looks familiar, but I can't seem to place him."

"The man in black with the mustache?" d.i.c.k asked. "He's an artist, pretty well known. That impressionistic chap--I can't think of his name--that had that exhibition at the Palsifer galleries."

"Does he sell?" Caroline asked.

"No, they say he's awfully poor, refuses to paint down to the public taste. What the deuce is his name--oh! I know, Collier Pratt--do you know him, Nancy? Lived in Paris always till the war. He'll appreciate Ritz cooking at Riggs' prices if anybody will."

Nancy looked fixedly at the small side-table where the stranger had just placed himself as if he were etched upon the whiteness of the wall behind him. He sat erect and brooding,--his dark, rather melancholy eyes staring straight ahead, and a slight frown wrinkling his really fine forehead. He wore an Inverness cape slung over one shoulder.

"Looks like one of Rembrandt's portraits of himself," Caroline suggested.

"He looks like a brigand," Betty said. "Nancy's struck dumb with the privilege of adding fuel to a flame of genius like that. Wake up and eat your peach Melba, Nancy."

Nancy started, and took perfunctorily the spoon that Molly was holding out to her, which she forgot to lift to her lips even after it was freighted with its first delicious mouthful.

"I dreamed about that man," she said.

CHAPTER IV

CINDERELLA

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 surfaces that reflected nothing, not even the lights of the street, or the shadow of a pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 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 d.i.c.k can go on up-town with Betty, without making her feel that she ought to leave him alone with me for a last tete-a-tete. It will hurt d.i.c.k's feelings, but he understands really. He has a most blessed understandingness, d.i.c.k 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 would keep her in town all summer. Billy and d.i.c.k, 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 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 a.s.semblage; 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 handiwork is out of the range of his vision, and the inspiration of it for the moment, gone.

"I feel like Cinderella and her G.o.dmother 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 sh.e.l.l 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 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 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.