“No, Dick—there’s no use. I couldn’t.”
[311]
] “Does what I offer balance so little that you can thrust it away without even stopping to consider?”
“If I stop to consider—”
“You’ll do what I ask,” he put in quickly. “Ah, I thought so! Nancy, can’t you see? The woman in you is greater than the actress. You won’t always be young and worshipped by your public but love—”
“Will love last always?” And as his arms went out to answer: “No—no! Don’t try to influence me—don’t, please! I must think it over alone. It’s my whole life—just everything.”
His arms dropped. They did not again reach out to her. He said good-night with the usual handclasp and left her at the door of the apartment house, haunting white, her dark eyes strained toward the first flicker of sun as it came haltingly out of the east.
A month later she sent for him. In all that time he gave her no word, not even the message of a flower. He waited cleverly in silence—a silence that made the battle she fought all the more difficult. And in the end she sent for him, so completely had he absorbed her will. Not once during those weeks of struggle did her mind hark back to the fragment of conversation at the supper party. Because she could care with the intensity of the big woman and because she was in love, she did not realize that in sending for him she bowed before the god she had scorned—Submission.
And so the curtain fell on Act I of Nancy Bradshaw’s life drama.
[312]
]CHAPTER II—ACT II
Out Long Island way on the North Shore where Newport goes to stretch her tired limbs after a busy season, there’s a house set like a long white couch on a green carpet that spreads straight to the Sound.