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 pigments and brushes, and divested himself of his painting apron. "I don't want to look at it now. I've got it, but I can't stand the strain of contemplating it till my brain cools a trifle. Let's go out and celebrate." "Where shall we go?" Nancy said. This was the moment she had dreamed of for weeks, the hour of fruition when the work was done, and they could face each other, man and woman again with no strip of canvas between them. "The place I always go when I've finished a picture is a little café under the shadow of _Notre Dame_, where I get cakes and beer and an excellent perspective on all my favorite gargoyles." "And the little birds flutter in the sun, and eat my crumbs and the great music swells out while you ask the _garçon_ for another _bock_. Do you remember, father dear, the day that _she_ found us there?" "I remember only that you made yourself ill eating _Madelaines_ and had to be taken home _en voiture_," Collier Pratt said quickly. "We will go and have some coffee at the Café des Artistes, and discuss ships and shoes and sealing wax--anything but the art of painting." "And cabbages and kings," Sheila contributed ecstatically. "I used to think when I was a very little girl and couldn't read English very well that it was really Heaven where Alice went, and it made me sad to think she was dead and I didn't understand it, but now Miss Dear has explained to me."