Nancy found him unexpectedly intelligent about the use of her tables. He grasped the essential fact that the values of food changed in the process of cooking, and that it was necessary to Nancy's peace of mind to calculate the amount of water absorbed in preparing certain vegetables, and that the amount of butter and cream introduced in their preparation was an important factor in her analysis. He also nodded his head with evident appreciation when she discoursed to him of the optimum amount of protein as opposed to the actual requirements in calories of the average man, but she never quite knew whether the matter interested him, or his native politeness constrained him to listen to her smilingly as long as she might choose to claim his attention. But the fact remained that there was no such cooking in any restaurant in New York of high or low degree, as that which Gaspard provided, and as time went on, and he realized that expense was not a factor in Nancy's conception of a successfully conducted restaurant, the reputation of Outside Inn increased by leaps and bounds. To Nancy's friends--with the exception, of course, of Billy, who was in her confidence--the whole business became more and more puzzling. Caroline, her susceptibility to vicarious distress being augmented by the sensitiveness of her own emotional state, yearned and prayed over her alternately. Betty, avid of excitement, spent her days in the pleasurable anticipation of a dramatic bankruptcy. It was on Dick, however, that the actual strain came. He saw Nancy growing paler and more ethereal each day, on her feet from morning till night manipulating the affairs of an enterprise that seemed to be assuming more preposterous proportions every hour of its existence. He made surreptitious estimates of expenditures and suffered accordingly, approximating the economic unsoundness of the Inn by a very close figure, and still Nancy kept him at arm's length and flouted all his suggestions for easing, what seemed to him now, her desperate situation. He managed to pick her up in his car one day with Sheila, and persuaded her to a couple of hours in the open. She was on her way home from the Inn, and had meant to spend that time resting and dressing before she went back to consult with Gaspard concerning the night meal. She had no complaint to make now of the usurpation of her authority or the lack of actual executive service that was required of her. With the increase in the amount of business that the Inn was carrying she found that every particle of her energy was necessary to get through the work of the day. "I'm worried about you," Dick said, as they took the long ribbon of road that unfurled in the direction of Yonkers, and Nancy removed her hat to let the breeze cool her distracted brow. His man Williams, was driving. "Well, don't tell me so," she answered a trifle ungraciously.