which he had chosen as a substitute 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 balusters
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 passion 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