tiful."

"I'm glad."

"I might paint you again,--like this. No, I swear I won't. I got the
thing itself down on canvas. I'll never try to paint you again."

"Is--that flattering?"

"Supremely."

"When am I going to have my picture?" she asked after another
interlude. "Do you want me to send for it?"

"I can't give you the picture," he said. "I intended to if I had done
merely a portrait, but I can't part with this. It has got to make my
fame and fortune."

"I thought I was to have it," Nancy said. "I--I--" then she felt she
was being ungenerous, unworthy, "but I couldn't take it, of course,
it's too valuable."

"Please God."

"It would be wonderful, wouldn't it, if my picture did make you
famous!"

"I think it will."

"I'm nothing but a grubby little working girl, and you're a great
artist,--and you love me."

"You're not a grubby little working girl to me," he said, "you're a
glorious creature--a wonder woman. I ought to go down on my knees to
you for what you've given me in that picture."

"In the picture?" Nancy said. "I love you. I love you. That wasn't in
the picture--I kept it out."

* * * * *

"I won't marry him until he is ready for me," she said to herself at
one time during the night. She lay perfectly quiet till morning, her
hands folded upon her breast, and her little girl pig-tails pulled
down on either side of the coverlet, wide-eyed and tranquil. She could
not bear to sleep and forget for a moment the beautiful thing that had
happened to her between dawn and dawn. "I'll take care of him and
Sheila, and nourish him, and help him to sell my picture. It isn't
every woman who would understand his kind of loving, but I understand
it."

At eight o'clock Hitty came in to her, and roused her from the light
drowse into which she had fallen at last.

"You was crying in your sleep again," she said, "your cheeks is all
wet. I heard you the minute I put my key into the latch. You're as bad
as Sheila, only I expect she suffers from something laying hard on her
stummick. It's always something on your mind that starts you in."

"There's nothing on my mind, Hitty," Nancy said, sitting up in bed,
"nothing but happiness, I mean. In some ways, Hitty dear, this is the
happiest day that I've ever waked up to."

"Well, then, there's other ways that it isn't," Hitty said, opening
the door to stalk out majestically.

CHAPTER XIV

BETTY

"There's a