es'um."

Nancy put up cool fragrant lips to meet a brother's kiss, and for the
moment was threatened with a second salute that was very much less
fraternal, but the danger passed. Dick unlocked the door and let her
pass him without protest.

"If you had been any other girl," he mused, as they went down the
stairs together companionably, "you wouldn't have got away with
that."

"With what?" Nancy asked innocently.

"If you don't know," Dick said, "I won't tell you. If you'd been any
other girl I should have thrown that key out of the window when you
began to sass me."

"And then?" Nancy inquired politely.

"And then," Dick replied finally and firmly.

"Are there any other girls?" Nancy asked, faintly curious, as they
stood on the deep steps of the porch waiting for Sheila and Williams
who were emerging from the middle entrance.

Dick met her glance a little solemnly, and hesitated for a perceptible
instant.

"Are there, Dick?" she insisted.

"Yes, dear," he said.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HAPPIEST DAY

It was thoroughly characteristic of Nancy to turn her back on the most
significant facts of her experience, and occupy herself exclusively
with its by-products. She refused to consider herself as an heiress
entitled to spend money lavishly for her own uses, but she squandered
it on her pet enterprise. She dismissed the idea that Dick, whom she
neglected to discourage as decisively as her growing interest in
another man would seem to warrant, had bought a country estate for the
sole purpose of ensconcing her there as mistress. She dreamed of
Collier Pratt and his ideal of her, and presented herself punctually
at his studio as a model for that ideal, while ignoring absolutely the
fact that he was nearly a hundred dollars in debt to her for meals
served at Outside Inn. She had sufficient logic and common sense to
apply to these matters, and sufficient imagination to handle them
sympathetically, had she chosen to consider them at all, but she did
not choose. She was deep in the adventure of her existence as
differentiated from its practical working out.

The day Collier Pratt finished his portrait of her she was not alone
in the studio with him. Sheila, in a fluffy white dress with a floppy
black satin hat framing her poignant little face, was omnipresent at
the interview which succeeded the actual two hours of absorption when
he put in the last telling strokes.

"It's done," he said, as he set aside pig