ed, 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 God! 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
ab