“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, you know. My name is Collier Pratt. I’m an artist. The more bourgeoise of my aunts would introduce me if she were here. She’s a New Englander like so many of your own charming relatives.”
“How did you know that?” Nancy asked, as she followed him with a docility quite new to her, past the big green gate, and the row of nondescript shops between it and the corner of Broadway.
“I was born in Boston,” Collier Pratt said a trifle absently. “I know a Massachusetts product when I see one. Ah! here we are.”
He led her triumphantly to a table in the far corner of the practically empty restaurant, waved away the civilities of a swarthy and somewhat badly coordinated waiter, and pulled out her chair for her himself.
“Now, let me have a look at you,” he said; “why, you’ve nothing on but muslin, and you’re wearing your belt for a turban.”
“A sop to the conventions,” Nancy said, blushing burningly. She was not quite able yet to get her bearings with this extraordinary man, who had assumed charge of her so cavalierly, but she was eager to find her poise in the situation. “I ran away, and I thought it would look better to have something like a hat on.”
“Looks,” said Collier Pratt, “looks! That’s New England, always the looks of a thing, never the feel of it. Mind you I don’t mean the look of a thing, that’s something different again.”
“Yes, I know, the conventional slant as opposed to the artistic perspective.”
“Good! It isn’t necessary to have my remarks followed intelligently, but it always adds piquancy to the situation when they are. Speaking of artistic perspective, you have a 60 very nice coloring. I like a ruddy chestnut hair with a skin as delicately white and pink as yours.” He spoke impersonally with the narrowing eye of the artist. “I can see you either in white,—not quite a cream white, but almost,—against a pearly kind of Quakerish background, or flaming out in the most crude, barbaric assemblage of colors. That’s the advantage of your type and the environment you connote—you can be the whole show, or the veriest little mouse that ever sought the protective coloring of the shadows.”