"No, by jove, you don't. It's gone, now--just that thing I painted." "How do I look now?" "Much more commonplace from the point of view from which I painted you. Much more beautiful though,--much more beautiful." "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 lady waiting to see you, sir," Dick's man servant informed him on his arrival at his apartment one evening when he had been dining at his club, and was putting in a leisurely appearance at his own place after his coffee and cigar. "A lady?" "Yes, sir, she has been here since nine. She says it's not important, but she insisted on waiting."