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 disassociated 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 association.

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 circumstances 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,--th