“I don’t feel exactly tempted to leave her with 257 you,” he said deliberately. “I don’t mind a woman striking me—I’m used to that; it is one of my charming wife’s ways of expressing herself in moments of stress—but I do object to any but the most purely formal relations with her afterward. There is a certain degree of intimacy involved in your having charge of my child. I think I will take the little girl away with me now.”
“Please, please, please don’t,” Nancy said. “I love her. I couldn’t bear it now. You can’t be so cruel.”
“Better get it over,” Collier Pratt said. “Will you call Hitty, or shall I?”
“Sheila is in bed,” Nancy cried. “You wouldn’t take her out of her warm bed to-night. I’ll send her to you to-morrow at whatever hour you ask.”
“I ask for her now.”
There was no fight left in Nancy. She called Hitty and superintended the dressing of the little girl to its last detail. She could not touch her.
“Won’t you kiss me good night, Miss Dear?” Sheila said, drowsily, as she took her father’s hand at the door.
“Not to-night,” Nancy said hoarsely. “I’ve a bad throat, dear, I wouldn’t want you to catch it.”
“I don’t know where I’m going,” the little girl said, “but I suppose my father knows. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”