She was not known as the proprietor of the place. In fact, the management of the restaurant was kept a careful secret from those who frequented it and with the habitual indifference of New Yorkers to the power behind the throne, so long as its affairs were manipulated in good and regular order, they soon ceased to feel any apparent curiosity about it. Betty, who sometimes rebelled at remaining so scrupulously incognita, defiantly took the limelight at intervals and moved among the assembled guests with an authoritative and possessive air, adjusting and rearranging small details, and acknowledging the presence of _habitués_, but since her attentions were popularly supposed to be those of a superior head waitress, she soon tired of the gesture of offering them. Nancy's intention had been to allow the restaurant to speak for itself, and then at the climactic moment to allow her connection with it to be discovered, and to speak for it with all the force and earnestness of which she was capable. She had meant to stand sponsor for the practical working theory on which her experiment was based, and she had already partially formulated interviews with herself in which she modestly acknowledged the success of that experiment, but the untoward direction in which it was developing made such a revelation inexpedient. There was one regular patron to whom she was peculiarly anxious to remain incognita. Collier Pratt made it his almost invariable habit to come sauntering toward the table in the corner, under the life-sized effigy of the _Vênus de Medici_, at seven o'clock in the evening, and that table was scrupulously reserved for him. To it were sent the choicest of all the viands that Outside Inn could command. Michael was tacitly sped on his way with his teapot full of claret. Gaspard did amazing things with the breasts of ducks and segments of orange, with squab chicken stuffed with new corn, with _filets de sole a la Marguery_. Nancy craftily spurred him on to his most ambitious achievements under pretense of wishing her own appetite stimulated, and the big cook, who adored her, produced triumph after triumph of his art for her delectation, whereupon the biggest part of it was cunningly smuggled out to the artist. From behind her screen of vines Nancy watched the fine features of her quondam friend light with the rapture of the _gourmet_ as be sampled Gaspard's sauce _verte_ or Hollandaise or lifted the glass cover from the mushrooms _sous cloche_ and inhaled their delicate aroma.