"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 was bewildering to her. From the moment that she had begun to realize Collier Pratt's admiration for her she had scarcely given a thought to any other man. With the insight of the artist he had seen straight into the heart of Nancy's secret--the secret that she scarcely knew herself until he translated it for her, the most obvious secret that a prescient universe ever throbbed with,--that a woman is not fulfilled until she is a mate and a mother. The nebulous urge of her spirit had been formulated. In Nancy's world there was no abstract sentimentality--if this man indulged himself in emotional regret for her frustrated womanhood--she called it that to herself--it must in some way concern him. She had never in her life been troubled by a condition that she was not eager to ameliorate, and she could not conceive of an emotional interest in an individual disassociated from a certain responsibility for that individual's welfare. She took Collier Pratt's growing tenderness for her for granted, and dreamed exultant dreams of their romantic association.