Part 6 (1/2)

”If you only eat when it's convenient, or the mood takes you,” Nancy cried out in real distress, ”how can you ever be sure that you have calories enough? The requirement of an average man at active labor is estimated at over three thousand calories. You must have something like a balanced ration in order to do your work.”

”Must I?” Collier Pratt smiled his rare smile. ”Well, at any rate, it is good to hear you say so.”

She finished her ice-cream, and Collier Pratt drank his mineral water slowly, and smoked innumerable cigarettes of Virginia tobacco. The conversation which had proceeded so expeditiously to this point seemed for no apparent reason, suddenly to become gratuitous. Nancy had never before begun on the subject of the balanced ration without being respectfully allowed to go through to the end. She had not been allowed to feel snubbed, but she was a little bewildered that any conversation in which she was partic.i.p.ating, could be so gracefully stopped before it was ended by her expressed desire.

Collier Pratt took his watch out of his pocket, and looked at it hastily.

”By jove,” he said, ”I had entirely forgotten. I have a child in my charge. I must be about looking after her.”

”A child?” Nancy cried, astonished.

”Yes, a little girl. She's probably sitting up for me, poor baby. Can you get home alone, if I put you on a bus or a street-car?”

”If you'll call a taxi for me--” Nancy said.

She noticed that the check was paid with change instead of a bill. In fact, her host seemed not to have a bill of any denomination in his pocket, but to be undisturbed by the fact. He parted from her casually.

”Good-by, child,” he said with his head in the door after he had given the chauffeur her street number; ”with the permission of _le bon Dieu_, we shall see each other again. I feel that He is going to give it to us.”

”Good-by,” Nancy said to his retreating shoulder.

At her own front door was d.i.c.k's big Rolls-Royce, and d.i.c.k sitting inside of it, with his feet comfortably up, feigning sleep.

”You didn't think I'd go home until I saw you safe inside your own door, did you?” he demanded.

”Where's Betty?” Nancy asked mechanically.

”I sent Williams home with her. Then he came back here, and left the car with me.”

”You needn't have waited,” Nancy said, ”I'm sorry, d.i.c.k, I--I had to have air. I had to get out. I couldn't stay inside a minute longer.”

”You need never explain anything to me.”

”Don't you want to know where I've been?”

d.i.c.k looked at her carefully before he made his answer. Then he said firmly.

”No, dear.”

”I might have told you,” she said, ”if you had wanted to know.” She felt her knees sagging with fatigue, and drooped against the door-frame.

”Come and sit in the car, and talk to me for a minute,” he suggested.

”Do you good, before you climb the stairs.”

He opened the car door for her ingratiatingly, but she shook her head.

”I've done unconventional things enough for one evening,” she said.