“Betty told you something,” Nancy cried, scarcely hearing him, “but it wasn’t true. There never has been anybody else.” She put her head down on his shoulder again. “It is comfortable here,” she said, “where I belong.”
She felt the sudden passion sweep through him,—the high avid wave of tenderness and desire,—and she exulted as all purely innocent women exult when that madness surges first through the veins of the man they love. He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her into the armchair by the fire, and there she took his head on her breast and understood for all time what it means for a woman to be called the mother of men.
“You wonder woman,” he murmured again.
She brushed the dark hair back from his forehead and kissed his eyes. “You dear,” she said, “you boy, you little boy.”
Suddenly through the darkness came the sound of a shrill cry, and the thud of a fall in some room down the corridor.
“It’s Sheila,” Nancy said, “she has those little nightmares and falls out of bed.”
“I know she does,” Collier Pratt said, “but she picks herself up again.”
“Not always,” Nancy said; “don’t you want to come in and help me put her back?”
“I do not,” Collier Pratt said with unnecessary emphasis.