Nancy was of two minds about picking the child up in her little white night-gown and bringing her out to her father, flushed and lovely with sleep as she was. It was Collier Pratt’s baby she had in her arms; her charge, the child she loved, and the child of the man she loved, a part of the miracle that was slowly revealing itself to her; but a sudden sharp instinct warned her that her impulse was ill-timed.
“I had forgotten the child was here,” Collier Pratt said when she returned to him.
“I hadn’t,” Nancy said happily.
“I suppose she has to be somewhere, poor little wretch,” he said. “She’s an extraordinarily picturesque baby, isn’t she?”
Nancy crept nearer to him. He stood leaning against the mantel and frowning slightly, but he made no move toward her again.
“She doesn’t have nightmares often now,” Nancy said with stiffening lips. “She used to 205 have them almost every night, but by watching her diet carefully we have practically eliminated them.”
“The Hitty person doesn’t like me,” Collier Pratt said. “Pas du tout. She treats me as if I were a book agent.”
“She loves Sheila, she—she’d do anything for her.”
“The women who do not find me attractive are likely to find me quite conspicuously otherwise, I am afraid.” He had been carefully avoiding Nancy’s eyes, but her little cry at this drew his gaze. She was standing before him, slowly blanching as if he had struck her, absolutely still except for the trembling of her lips.
“What am I,” he said, “to hold out against all the forces of the Universe? Do you love me, Nancy, do you love me?”