relation can not be anything but transitory. I am an artist
with a way to make for my art: you are a working woman with a career,
odd as it is," he smiled whimsically, "that you have chosen, and that
you will pursue faithfully until some stalwart young man dissuades you
from it, when you will take your place in your niche as wife and
mother, and leave me one more beautiful memory."

"Surely," Nancy said, "you know it isn't--like that."

"What is it like then?"

Nancy felt every sane premise, every eager hope and delicate ideal
slipping beyond her reach as she faced his mocking, tender eyes.

"It can't be that you believe you have been--fair with me," she
faltered.

"I don't think I have been unfair," he said, "I have made no
protestations, you know."

Nancy shut her eyes. Curious scraps of her early religious education
came back to her.

"You have partaken of my bread and wine," she said.

"It wasn't exactly consecrated."

"I think it was," she said faintly. "Oh! don't you understand that
that isn't a way for a man to think or to feel about a woman like
me?"

"Little American girl," Collier Pratt said, "little American girl,
don't you understand that there is only one way for a woman to think
or feel about a _man_ like _me_? I have had my life, and I haven't
liked it much. I'm to be loved warmly and lightly till the flesh and
blood prince comes along, but I'm never to be mistaken for him."

"I don't believe you're sincere," Nancy cried; "women must have loved
you deeply, tragically, and have suffered all the torture there is, at
losing you."

"That may be. Sincerity is a matter of so many connotations. You
haven't known many artists, my dear."

"No," said Nancy. "No, but I thought they were the same as other men,
only worthier."

"How should they be? He who perceives a merit is not necessarily he
who achieves it. Else the world would be a little more one-sided than
it is."

"I can't believe those things," Nancy said. "I want to believe in you.
You _must_ care for me, and what becomes of me. You have known so long
what I was like, and what I was made for. All this seems like a
terrible nightmare. I want you to tell me what it is you want of me,
and let me give it to you."

"I am proving some faint shadow of worthiness at least, when I say to
you that I want absolutely nothing of you. I love, but I refrain."

"You love," Nancy cried, "you _love_?"

"Not as you understand loving, I am afraid. In m