“That’s what we all come to in the end,” Dick said, “no matter how we feel or think we feel about it—being modern with reservations.”
“I saw Collier Pratt to-day,” Nancy said suddenly, as she watched a log split apart in the fireplace and scatter its tiny shower of sparks, “on the avenue.”
Dick carefully stamped out two smoldering places on the rug before he answered.
“Did you?” he said.
“He had a cheap little creature with him, dark haired in messy cerise.”
“It may have been his wife. I hear that she’s living with him again.”
“Is she?”
“Nancy,” Dick said with an effort, after a few minutes of silence, “are you all over that? Is it really fair and right of me to take you? I’ve been puzzling over that lately. I want you on any terms, you know, as far as I am concerned, but I’m a sort of monogamist. If a woman has once cared for a person, no matter who or what that person is, can she ever care again in the same way for any one? Isn’t it pity you feel for me, after all?”
“No it isn’t pity,” Nancy said slowly. “I cared for that man until I found that he was the shadow and not the substance. He isn’t fit to black your shoes, Dick.—Besides—if—if it was pity,” she added irrelevantly, “that’s the way to get me started, you know.”