"I promise it won't," Nancy said; "can't you trust me?" "I never have trusted any woman--but you," he said. "You can trust me," Nancy said. "The truth is, she couldn't put me out even if she wanted to. I--she is under a kind of obligation to me." "Thank God for that. I only hope you are in a position to threaten her with blackmail." "I could if anybody could," Nancy said. She put out of her mind as disloyal, the faintly unpleasant suggestion of his words. He owed her mythical patron a substantial sum of money by this time. He was not even able to pay Michael the cash for the nightly teapot full of Chianti that Nancy herself now sent out for him regularly. For the first time since her association with him she was tempted to compare him to Dick, and that not very favorably; but at the next instant she was reproaching herself with her littleness of vision. He was too great a man to gauge by the ordinary standards of life. Money meant nothing to him except that it was the insignificant means to the end of that Art, which was to him consecrated. They were placed a little to the left of the glowing fire--Nancy had restored the fireplace in the big central dining-room--and the light took the brass of the andirons, and all the polished surface of copper and pewter and silver candelabra that gave the room its quality of picturesqueness. "Some of those branching candlesticks are very beautiful," he said; "the impression here is a little like that of a Catholic altar just before the mass. I've always thought I'd like to have my meals served in church, _Saint-Germain-des-Prés_ for instance." "It is rather dim religious light." Nancy had no wish to utter this banality, but it was forced from her by her desire to seem sympathetic. "Can we go to your place for a little while to-night?" These were the words she had spent her days and nights hungering for; yet now she hesitated for a perceptible instant. "Yes, we can, of course. There is a friend of mine--Billy Boynton, up there this evening. He is not feeling very fit, and phoned to ask if he could go up and sprawl before my fire, so, of course, I said he could." "Oh! yes, Sheila's friend. Can't he be disposed of?" "I think so. We could try." But at Nancy's apartment they found not only Billy, but Caroline, and the atmosphere was like that of the glacial regions, both literally and figuratively. "Hitty had the windows open, and the fire went out, and I forgot to turn on the heat," Billy explained from his position on the hearth where he was trying to build an unscientific fire with the morning paper, and the remains of a soap box. There was a long smudge across his forehead. Caroline drew Nancy into the seclusion of her bedroom and clutched her violently by the arm. "I can't stand the strain any longer," she cried, "you've got to tell me. Are you or are you not going to marry Dick Thorndyke for his money, and is Billy Boynton putting you up to it--out of cowardice?"