I was stirred.

“Then why do you accept it, if it isn’t you?” I demanded.  “One doesn’t refuse Czesky’s canvases,” she replied.  “And what difference does it make?  It amused him, and he was fairly subtle about it.  Only those who are looking for romance, like you, are able to guess what he meant, and they would think they saw it anyway, even if he had painted me—­extinct.”

“Extinct!” I repeated.

She laughed.

“Hugh, you’re a silly old goose!”

“That’s why I came here, I think, to be told so,” I said.

Tea was brought in.  A sense of at-homeness stole over me,—­I was more at home here in this room with Nancy, than in any other place in the world; here, where everything was at once soothing yet stimulating, expressive of her, even the smaller objects that caught my eye,—­the crystal inkstand tipped with gold, the racks for the table books, her paper-cutter.  Nancy’s was a discriminating luxury.  And her talk!  The lightness with which she touched life, the unexplored depths of her, guessed at but never fathomed!  Did she feel a little the need of me as I felt the need of her?

“Why, I believe you’re incurably romantic, Hugh,” she said laughingly, when the men had left the room.  “Here you are, what they call a paragon of success, a future senator, Ambassador to England.  I hear of those remarkable things you have done—­even in New York the other day a man was asking me if I knew Mr. Paret, and spoke of you as one of the coming men.  I suppose you will be moving there, soon.  A practical success!  It always surprises me when I think of it, I find it difficult to remember what a dreamer you were and here you turn out to be still a dreamer!  Have you discovered, too, the emptiness of it all?” she inquired provokingly.  “I must say you don’t look it”—­she gave me a critical, quizzical glance—­“you look quite prosperous and contented, as though you enjoyed your power.”

I laughed uneasily.

“And then,” she continued, “and then one day when your luncheon has disagreed with you—­you walk into a gallery and see a portrait of—­of an old friend for whom in youth, when you were a dreamer, you professed a sentimental attachment, and you exclaim that the artist is a discerning man who has discovered the secret that she has guarded so closely.  She’s sorry that she ever tried to console herself with baubles it’s what you’ve suspected all along.  But you’ll just run around to see for yourself—­to be sure of it.”  And she handed me my tea.  “Come now, confess.  Where are your wits—­I hear you don’t lack them in court.”

“Well,” I said, “if that amuses you—­”

“It does amuse me,” said Nancy, twining her fingers across her knee and regarding me smilingly, with parted lips, “it amuses me a lot—­it’s so characteristic.”

“But it’s not true, it’s unjust,” I protested vigorously, smiling, too, because the attack was so characteristic of her.