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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beloved Woman, by Kathleen Norris
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Beloved Woman
+
+Author: Kathleen Norris
+
+Release Date: March 10, 2009 [EBook #28301]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BELOVED WOMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Katherine Ward and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+ [Transcriber's Note:
+  Hyphenation standardized.
+  Archaic and variable spelling was preserved as printed.
+  Missing quotation marks were added to standardize usage. Otherwise,
+    the editor's punctuation style was preserved.
+  Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  BELOVED WOMAN
+
+
+  BY KATHLEEN NORRIS
+
+
+  AUTHOR OF
+  _"Harriet and the Piper," etc._
+
+
+  A. L. BURT COMPANY
+
+  Publishers
+  New York
+
+  Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company
+  Printed in U. S. A.
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
+  KATHLEEN NORRIS
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
+  INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+  COPYRIGHT 1920, 1921, BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY
+
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
+  AT
+  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+  TO
+  MARY O'SULLIVAN SUTRO
+
+    For gifts beyond all counting and esteeming,
+      For kindness than which Heaven's self is not kinder,
+    For the old days of tears, and smiles, and dreaming,
+      This in acknowledgment, and in reminder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+For forty-eight hours the snow-storm had been raging unabated over New
+York. After a wild and windy Thursday night the world had awakened to a
+mysterious whirl of white on Friday morning, and to a dark, strange day
+of steady snowing. Now, on Saturday, dirty snow was banked and heaped
+in great blocks everywhere, and still the clean, new flakes fluttered
+and twirled softly down, powdering and feathering every little ledge
+and sill, blanketing areas in spotless white, capping and hooding every
+unsightly hydrant and rubbish-can with exquisite and lavish beauty.
+Shovels had clinked on icy sidewalks all the first day, and even during
+the night the sound of shouting and scraping had not ceased for a
+moment, and their more and more obvious helplessness in the teeth of
+the storm awakened at last in the snow-shovellers, and in the men and
+women who gasped and stumbled along the choked thoroughfares, a sort of
+heady exhilaration in the emergency, a tendency to be proud of the
+storm, and of its effect upon their humdrum lives. They laughed and
+shouted as they battled with it, and as Nature's great barrier of snow
+threw down the little barriers of convention and shyness. Men held out
+their hands to slipping and stumbling women, caught them by their
+shoulders, panted to them that this was a storm, all right, this was
+the worst yet! Girls, staggering in through the revolving glass doors
+of the big department stores, must stand laughing helplessly for a few
+seconds in the gush of reviving warmth, while they beat their wet
+gloves together, regaining breath and self-possession, and straightened
+outraged millinery.
+
+Traffic was congested, deserted trucks and motor-cars lined the side
+streets, the subways were jammed, the surface cars helpless. Here and
+there long lines of the omnibuses stood blocked in snow, and the press
+frantically heralded impending shortages of milk and coal, reiterating
+pessimistically: "No relief in sight."
+
+But late in Saturday morning there was a sudden lull. The snow stopped,
+the wind fell, and the pure, cold air was motionless and sweet. The city
+emerged exhausted from its temporary blanketing, and from the buried
+benches of Bowling Green to the virgin sweep of pure white beyond Van
+Cortlandt Park, began its usual January fight with the snow.
+
+A handsome, rosy old lady, wrapped regally in furs, and with a maid
+picking her way cautiously beside her, was one of the first to take
+advantage of the sudden change in the weather. Mrs. Melrose had been
+held captive for almost two days, first by Thursday's inclement winds,
+and then by the blizzard. Her motor-car was useless, and although at
+sixty she was an extremely youthful and vigorous woman, her daughters
+and granddaughter had threatened to use force rather than let her risk
+the danger of an expedition on foot, at least while the storm continued.
+
+But now the wind was gone, and by the time Mrs. Melrose had been
+properly shod, and coated, and hatted, there was even a dull glimmer
+toward the southeast that indicated the location of the long-lost sun.
+The old lady looked her approval at Fifth Avenue, with all its crudities
+veiled and softened by the snowfall, and as she climbed into an omnibus
+expressed herself firmly to Regina.
+
+"You mark my words, the sun will be out before we come home!"
+
+Regina, punching the two dimes carefully into the jolting receiver, made
+only a respectful murmur for answer. She was, like many a maid, a snob
+where her mistress was concerned, and she did not like to have Mrs.
+Melrose ride in public omnibuses. For Regina herself it did not matter,
+but Mrs. Melrose was one of the city's prominent and wealthy women, and
+Regina could not remember that she had ever sunk to the use of a public
+conveyance before to-day. The maid was glad when they descended at a
+street in the East Sixties. They would probably be sent home, she
+reflected, in Mrs. Liggett's car. For Regina noticed that private cars
+were beginning to grind and slip over the snow again.
+
+Old Mrs. Melrose was going to see her daughter Alice, who was Mrs.
+Christopher Liggett, because Alice was an invalid. It had been only a
+few years after Alice's most felicitous marriage, a dozen years ago,
+when an accident had laid the lovely and brilliant woman upon the bed of
+helplessness that she might never leave again. There was no real reason
+why the spine should continue useless, the great specialists said, there
+was a hope--even a probability--that as Alice grew rested and strong,
+after the serious accident, she might find herself walking again. But
+Alice had been a prisoner for ten years now, and the mother and sister
+who idolized her feared that she would never again be the old dancing
+Alice and feared that she knew it. What Christopher Liggett feared they
+did not know. He insisted that Alice's illness was but temporary, and
+was tireless in his energetic pursuit of treatment for his wife.
+Everything must be hoped, and everything must be tried, and Alice's
+mother knew that one of the real crosses of her daughter's life was
+sorrowful pity for Chris's optimistic delusions.
+
+The young Liggetts had sold the old house of Christopher's father, an
+immense brownstone mansion a few squares away, and lived in a modern,
+flat-faced gray-stone house that rose five stories from the beautifully
+arranged basement entrance. There were stone benches at the entrance,
+and a great iron grill, and two potted trees, and the small square
+windows were leaded, and showed blossoming plants inside. The three long
+windows above gave upon a little-used formal drawing-room, with a Gothic
+fireplace of white stone at one end, and a dim jumble of rich colours
+and polished surfaces between that and the big piano at the other. The
+room at the back, on this floor, was an equally large and formal
+dining-room, gleaming with carved mahogany and fretted plate, used only
+on the rare occasions of a dinner-party.
+
+But on the floor above the gracious mistress of the house had her
+domain, and here there was enough beauty and colour to make the whole
+house live. The front room, cool all summer because it faced north, and
+warm all winter, because of the great open fireplace that augmented the
+furnace heat, was Alice's sitting-room; comfortable, beautiful, and
+exquisitely ordered. None of the usual clutter of the invalid was there.
+The fireplace was of plain creamy tiling, the rugs dull-toned upon a
+dark, polished floor. There were only two canvases on the dove-gray
+walls, and the six or seven photographs that were arranged together on
+the top of one of the low, plain, built-in bookcases, were framed alike.
+There were no meaningless vases, no jars or trays or plaques or
+ornaments in Alice's room. Her flowers she liked to see in shining glass
+bowls; her flat-topped desk was severely bare.
+
+But the cretonne that dressed her big comfortable chairs and her couch
+was bright with roses and parrots and hollyhocks, and the same cretonne,
+with plain net undercurtaining, hung at her four front windows. The room
+was big enough to accommodate besides, even with an air of space and
+simplicity, the little grand piano that Christopher played for her
+almost every night. A great Persian tortoise-shell cat was at home here,
+and sometimes Alice had her magnificent parrot besides, hanging himself
+upside down on his gaily-painted stand, and veiling the beady, sharp eye
+with which he watched her. The indulgent extravagance of her mother had
+bound all the books that Alice loved in the same tone of stony-blue
+vellum, the countless cushions with which the aching back was so
+skillfully packed were of the same dull tone, and it pleased the persons
+who loved her to amuse the prisoner sometimes with a ring in which her
+favourite note was repeated, or a chain of old lapis-lazuli that made
+Alice's appreciative blue eyes more blue.
+
+Back of Alice's room was a den in which Christopher could conduct much
+of his personal business, and beyond that was the luxurious bathroom, a
+modern miracle of enamel tiling and shining glass. Across the
+sun-flooded back of the house were Alice's little bedroom, nunlike in
+its rigid austerity, her nurse's room adjoining, and a square sun-room,
+giving glimpses of roofs and trim back-gardens, full of flowers, with a
+little fountain and goldfish, a floor of dull pink tiling, and plants in
+great jars of Chinese enamel. Christopher had planned this delightful
+addition to Alice's domain only a few years ago, and, with that
+knowledge of her secret heart that only Christopher could claim, had let
+her share the pleasure of designing and arranging it. It stretched out
+across the west side of the spacious backyard, almost touching the
+branches of the great plane tree, and when, after the painful move to
+her mother's house, and the necessary absence during the building of it,
+Alice had been brought back to this new evidence of their love and
+goodness, she had buried her face against Christopher's shoulder, and
+told him that she didn't think people with all the world to wander in
+had ever had anything lovelier than this!
+
+One of the paintings that Alice might look at idly, in the silence of
+the winter noon, was of a daisied meadow, stretching between walls of
+heavy summer woodland to the roof of a half-buried farmhouse in the
+valley below. The other picture was of the very mother who was coming
+toward Alice now, in the jolting omnibus. But it was a younger mother,
+and a younger Alice, that had been captured by the painter's genius. It
+was a stout, imperious, magnificently gowned woman, of not much more
+than thirty, in whose spreading silk lap a fair little girl was sitting.
+This little earnest-eyed child was Alice at seven. The splendid,
+dark-eyed, proud-looking boy of about fourteen, who stood beside the
+mother, was Teddy, her only son, dead now for many years, and perhaps
+mercifully dead. The fourth and last person pictured was the elder
+daughter, Annie, who had been about nine years old then, Alice
+remembered. Annie and Alice had been unusually alike, even for sisters,
+but even then Annie's fair, aristocratic type of blonde prettiness had
+been definite where Alice's was vague, and Annie's expression had been
+just a trifle haughty and discontented where Alice's was always grave
+and sweet. Annie had almost been a beauty, she was extremely and
+conspicuously good-looking even now, when as Mrs. Hendrick von Behrens,
+wife of a son of an old and wealthy Knickerbocker family, she was
+supreme in the very holy of holies of the city's social life.
+
+Mrs. Melrose came unannounced upon her daughter to-day, and Alice's
+colourless warm cheek flushed with happiness under her mother's fresh,
+cold kiss.
+
+"Mummy--you darling! But how did you get here? Miss Slater says that the
+streets are absolutely impassable!"
+
+"I came in the 'bus, dear," Mrs. Melrose said, very much pleased with
+herself. "How warm and comfy you are in here, darling. But what did I
+interrupt?"
+
+"You didn't interrupt anything," Alice said, quickly. "Chris telephoned,
+and he's bringing Henrici--the Frenchman who wrote that play I loved
+so--to tea. Isn't that fun? I'm so excited--and I think Chris was such a
+duck to get hold of him. I was translating it, you know, and Bowditch,
+who was here for dinner last night, told me he'd place it, if I finished
+it. And now I can talk it over with Henrici himself--thanks to Chris!
+Chris met my man at the club, and told him about me, and he said he
+would be charmed. So I telephoned several persons, and I tried to get
+hold of Annie----"
+
+"Annie has a lunch--and a board meeting at the hospital at four,"
+Annie's mother remembered, "and Leslie is at a girls' luncheon
+somewhere. Annie had breakfast with me, and was rushing off afterward.
+She's quite wonderfully faithful about those things."
+
+"Well, but you'll stay for lunch and tea, too, Mummy?" Alice pleaded.
+She was lying back in her pillows, feasting her eyes upon her mother's
+face with that peculiarly tense devotion that was part of her nature.
+Rarely did a day pass without their meeting, and no detail touching
+Annie's life, Annie's boys or husband, was too small to interest Alice.
+She was especially interested, too, in Leslie, the eighteen-year-old
+daughter that her brother Theodore had left to his mother's care; in
+fact, between the mother and daughters, the one granddaughter and two
+little grandsons, and the two sons-in-law of the Melrose family, a deep
+bond existed, a bond of pride as well as affection. It was one of their
+favourite boasts that to the Melroses the unity and honour of the family
+was the first consideration in the world.
+
+But to-day Mrs. Melrose could not stay. At one o'clock she left Alice to
+be put into her prettiest robe by the devoted Miss Slater, saw with
+satisfaction that preparations for tea were noiselessly under way,
+called Regina, odorous of tea and mutton chops, from the pantry, and
+went out into the quiet cold of the winter noon.
+
+The old Melrose house was a substantial, roomy, brownstone building in
+Madison Avenue, inconspicuous perhaps among several notoriously handsome
+homes, but irreproachably dignified none the less. A few blocks below it
+the commercial current of East Thirty-fourth Street ebbed and flowed; a
+few blocks north the great façade of the Grand Central Station shut off
+the street completely. Third Avenue, behind it, swarmed and rattled
+alarmingly close, and Broadway flared its impudent signs only five
+minutes' walk in the other direction, but here, in a little oasis of
+quiet street, two score of old families serenely held their place
+against the rising tide, and among them the Melroses confidently felt
+themselves valued and significant.
+
+Mrs. Melrose mounted her steps with the householder's secret
+complacency. They were scrupulously brushed of the last trace of snow,
+and the heavy door at the top swung noiselessly open to admit her. She
+suddenly realized that she was very tired, that her fur coat was heavy,
+and her back ached. She swept straight to the dark old curving stairway,
+and mounted slowly.
+
+"Joseph," she said over her shoulder, "send luncheon upstairs, please.
+And when Miss Leslie comes in, tell her I should like to see her, if it
+isn't too late. Anybody coming to-night?"
+
+"Mr. von Behrens telephoned that he and Mr. Liggett might come in for a
+moment, on his way to the banquet at the Waldorf, Madam. But that was
+all."
+
+"I may have dinner upstairs, too, if Leslie is going anywhere," Mrs.
+Melrose said to herself, mounting slowly. And it seemed to her fatigue
+very restful to find her big room warm and orderly, her coal fire
+burning behind the old-fashioned steel rods, all the homely,
+comfortable treasures of her busy years awaiting her. She sank into a
+chair, and Regina flew noiselessly about with slippers and a loose silk
+robe. Presently a maid was serving smoking-hot bouillon, and Mrs.
+Melrose felt herself relaxed and soothed; it was good to be home.
+
+Yet there was trace of uneasiness, of something almost like
+apprehension, in the look that wandered thoughtfully about the
+overcrowded room. Presently she reached a plump, well-groomed hand
+toward the bell. But when Regina came to stand expectantly near her,
+Mrs. Melrose roused herself from a profound abstraction to assure her
+that she had not rung--it must have been a mistake.
+
+"Miss Leslie hasn't come in?"
+
+"Not yet, Madam, Miss Melrose is at Miss Higgins's luncheon."
+
+"Yes; but it was an early luncheon," the grandmother said,
+discontentedly. "She was playing squash, or tennis, or something!
+Regina----"
+
+"Yes, Madam?"
+
+But Mrs. Melrose was musing again.
+
+"Regina, I am expecting a caller at four o'clock, a Mrs. Sheridan.
+Please see that she is shown up at once. I want to see her here. And
+please----"
+
+A pause. Regina waited.
+
+"That's all!" her mistress announced, suddenly.
+
+Alone again, the old lady stirred her tea, ruminated for a few moments
+with narrowed eyes fixed on space, recalled herself to her surroundings,
+and finished her cup.
+
+Her room was large, filled with chairs and tables, lamps and cushions,
+silver trays and lacquer boxes, vases and jars and bowls, gift books
+and current magazines. There was not an unbroken inch of surface
+anywhere, the walls were closely set with pictures of all sorts. Along
+the old-fashioned mantel, a scalloped, narrow shelf of marble, was a
+crowding line of photographs in silver frames, and there were other
+framed photographs all about the room. There were the young mothers of
+the late eighties, seated to best display their bustles and their French
+twists, with heavy-headed infants in their tightly cased arms, and there
+were children's pictures, babes in shells, in swings, or leaning on
+gates. There were three Annies: one in ringlets, plaid silk, and
+tasselled boots, at eight; one magnificent in drawing-room plumes; and a
+recent one, a cloudy study of the severely superb mother, with a
+sleek-headed, wide-collared boy on each side of her. There was a
+photograph of the son Theodore, handsome, sullen, dressed in the fashion
+of the opening century, and there was more than one of Theodore's
+daughter, the last of the Melroses. Leslie had been a wide-eyed, sturdy
+little girl who carried a perpetually surprised, even a babyish
+expression into her teens, but her last pictures showed the débutante,
+the piquant and charming eighteen-year-old, whose knowingly tipped hat
+and high fur collar left only a glimpse of pretty and pouting face
+between.
+
+Leslie came in upon her grandmother at about three o'clock. She was
+genuinely tired, after an athletic morning at the club, a luncheon amid
+a group of chattering intimates, and a walk with the young man whose
+attentions to her were thrilling not only her grandmother and aunts, but
+the cool-blooded little Leslie herself. Acton Liggett was Christopher's
+only brother, only relative indeed, and promised already to be as great
+a favourite as the irresistible Chris himself. Both were rich, both
+fine-looking, straightforward, honourable men, proud of their own
+integrity, their long-established family, and their old firm. Acton was
+pleasantly at home in the Melrose, Liggett, and Von Behrens houses, the
+very maids loved him, and his quiet singling out of Leslie for his
+devotion had satisfied everyone's sense of what was fitting and
+delightful. Pretty Leslie, back from a summer's idling with Aunt Annie
+and the little boys, in California and Hawaii, had found Acton's
+admiration waiting for her, with all the other joys of her débutante
+winter.
+
+And even the critical Aunt Annie had to admit that the little minx was
+managing the whole matter with consummate skill. Leslie was not in the
+least self-conscious with Acton; she turned to him with all the artless
+confidence of a little sister. She asked him about her dancing partners,
+and about her gowns, and she discussed with him all the various bits of
+small gossip that concerned their own friends.
+
+"Should I have said that, Acton?" she would ask, trustfully. "Shall I be
+Marion's bridesmaid? Would you?--after I refused Linda Fox, you know. I
+don't like to dance with Louis Davis, after what you told me; what shall
+I do when he comes up to me?"
+
+Acton was twenty-five, seven years her senior. He advised her earnestly,
+over many a confidential cup of tea. And just lately, the grandmother
+noticed exultantly, hardly a day passed that did not find the young
+couple together.
+
+"How did Acton happen to meet you, lovey?" she asked to-day, _apropos_
+of the walk.
+
+"Why, he telephoned Vesta Higgins's, and asked me how I was going to get
+home. I said, walk. There was no use trying motor-cars, anyway, for they
+were slipping and bumping terribly! He said he was in the neighbourhood,
+and he came up. Granny----"
+
+She paused, and her grandmother was conscious of a quickened heart-beat.
+The thoughtful almost tremulous tone was not like giddy little Leslie.
+
+"Granny," the girl repeated, presently, "how old was my mother when she
+got married?"
+
+"About twenty-two," the old woman said.
+
+"And how old was Aunt Annie when she did?"
+
+"Annie's about thirty-seven," her mother considered. "She was about
+twenty-five. But why, dear?"
+
+"Nothing," said Leslie, and fell silent.
+
+She was still in the silk blouse and short homespun skirt that she had
+worn at the athletic club luncheon, but she had thrown aside her loose
+woolly coat, and the narrow furs that were no softer than her own fair
+skin. Flung back into a deep chair, and relaxed after her vigorous day,
+she looked peculiarly childish and charming, her grandmother thought.
+She was like both her aunts, with Annie's fair, almost ashen hair and
+Alice's full, pretty mouth. But she was more squarely built than either,
+and a hint of a tip, at the end of her nose, gave her an expression at
+once infantile and astonished. When Leslie opened her blue eyes widely,
+and stared at anything, she looked like an amazed baby, and the effect
+of her round eyes and tilted nose was augmented by her very fair skin,
+and by just a sixteenth of an inch shortness in her upper lip. Of course
+she knew all this. Her acquaintance with her own good and bad points had
+begun in school days, and while through her grandmother's care her
+teeth were being straightened, and her eyes and throat subjected to mild
+forms of surgery, her Aunt Annie had seen to it that her masses of fair
+hair had been burnished and groomed, her hands scraped and polished into
+beauty, and finally that her weight was watched with scrupulous care.
+Nature had perhaps intended Leslie to be plump and ruddy, but modern
+fashion had decreed otherwise, and, with half the girls of her own age
+and set, Leslie took saccharine in her tea, rarely touched sweets or
+fried food, and had the supreme satisfaction of knowing that she was
+actually too slim and too willowy for her height, and interestingly
+colourless into the bargain.
+
+Could Acton possibly have said anything definite to start this unusual
+train of thought, the grandmother speculated. With Leslie so
+felicitously married, she would have felt ready for her _nunc dimittis_.
+She watched Leslie expectantly. But the girl was apparently dreaming,
+and was staring absently at the tip of one sturdy oxford above which a
+stretch of thick white woollen stocking was visible almost to her knee.
+
+"How can they fall in love with them, dressed like Welsh peasants!" the
+grandmother said to herself, in mild disapproval. And aloud she said:
+"Ah, don't, lovey!"
+
+For Leslie had taken out a small gold case, and was regarding it
+thoughtfully.
+
+"My first to-day, on my honour!" Leslie said, as she lazily lighted a
+sweet-scented cigarette. It never occurred to her to pay any attention
+to her grandmother's protest, for Grandmother had been regularly
+protesting against everything Leslie had done since her adored and
+despotic childhood. She had fainted when Leslie had dived off the dock
+at Newport, and had wept when Leslie had galloped through the big iron
+gates on her own roan stallion; she had called in Christopher, as
+Leslie's guardian, when Leslie, at fifteen, had calmly climbed into one
+of the big cars, and driven it seven miles, alone and unadvised, and
+totally without instruction or experience. Leslie knew that this
+half-scandalized and wholly-admiring opposition was one of her
+grandmother's secret satisfactions, and she combatted it only
+mechanically.
+
+"Have one, Grandma?"
+
+"Have one--you wild girl you! I'd like to know what a nice young man
+thinks when a refined girl offers him----"
+
+"All the nice young men are smoking themselves, like chimneys!"
+
+"Ah, but that's a very different thing. No, my dear, no man, whether he
+smokes himself or not, likes to have a sweet, womanly girl descend----"
+
+"Darling, didn't you ever do anything that my revered great-grandmother
+Murison disapproved of?" Leslie teased, dropping on her knees before her
+grandmother, and resting her arms on her lap.
+
+"Smoke----! My mother would have fainted," said Mrs. Melrose. "And don't
+blow that nasty-smelling stuff in my face!"
+
+But she could not resist the pleasure that the lovely young face, so
+near her own, gave her, and she patted it with her soft, wrinkled hand.
+Suddenly Leslie jumped up eagerly, listening to the sound of voices in
+the hall.
+
+"There's Aunt Annie--oh, goody! I wanted to ask her----"
+
+But it was Regina who opened the door, showing in two callers. The first
+was a splendid-looking woman of perhaps forty-five, with a rosy,
+cheerful face, and wide, shrewd gray eyes shining under a somewhat
+shabby mourning veil. With her was a pretty girl of eighteen, or perhaps
+a little more.
+
+Leslie glanced astonished at her grandmother. It was extremely unusual
+to have callers shown in in this unceremonious fashion, even if she had
+been rather unprepossessed by these particular callers. The younger
+woman's clothing, indeed, if plain, was smart and simple; her severe
+tailor-made had a collar of beaver fur to relieve its dark blue, and her
+little hat of blue beaver felt was trimmed only by a band of the same
+fur. She had attractive dark-blue eyes and a flashing smile.
+
+But her companion's comfortable dowdiness, her black cotton gloves, her
+squarely built figure, and worn shoes, all awakened a certain contempt
+in the granddaughter of the house, and caused Leslie shrewdly to surmise
+that these humble strangers were pensioners of her grandmother, the
+older one probably an old servant.
+
+"Kate Sheridan!" Old Mrs. Melrose had gotten to her feet, and had put
+her arm about the visitor. "Well, my dear, my dear, I've not seen you
+these----What is it? Don't tell me how many years it is! And which
+daughter is this?"
+
+"This is my niece, Norma," the older woman said, in a delightful rich
+voice that was full of easy confidence and friendliness. "This is Mrs.
+Melrose, Norma, darling, that was such a good friend to me and mine
+years ago!"
+
+"No warmer friend than you were to me, Kate," the old lady said,
+quickly, still keeping an arm about the sturdy figure. "This is my
+granddaughter, Theodore's little girl," Mrs. Melrose added, catching
+Leslie with her free hand.
+
+Leslie was not more of a snob than is natural to a girl of her age and
+upbringing, but she could not but give Mrs. Sheridan a pretty cool
+glance. Grandmother's old friends were all very well----
+
+But Mrs. Sheridan was studying her with affectionate freedom.
+
+"And isn't she Miss Alice's image! But she's like you all--she's like
+Mr. Theodore, too, especially through the eyes!"
+
+And she turned back to her hostess, interested, animated, and as
+oblivious to Leslie's hostile look as if the girl were her own picture
+on the wall.
+
+"And you and my Norma must know each other," she said, presently,
+watching the girls as they shook hands, with a world of love and
+solicitude in her eyes.
+
+"Sit down, both you two," Mrs. Melrose said. Leslie glanced at the
+strapped watch at her wrist.
+
+"Grandmother, I really----" she began.
+
+"No, you don't really!" her grandmother smiled. "Talk to Miss Sheridan
+while I talk"--she turned smiling to her old friend--"to Kate! Tell me,
+how are you all, Kate? And where are you all--you were in Detroit?"
+
+"We've been in New York more than two years now, and why I haven't been
+to see you before, perhaps _you_ can tell me, for _I_ can't!" Kate
+Sheridan said. "But my boy is a great big fellow now; Wolf's
+twenty-four, and Rose is twenty-one, and this one," she nodded toward
+Norma, who was exchanging comments on the great storm with Leslie, "this
+one is nearly nineteen! And you see they're all working: Wolf's doing
+wonderfully with a firm of machine manufacturers, in Newark, and Rose
+has been with one real estate firm since we came. And Norma here works
+in a bookstore, up the Avenue a bit, Biretta's."
+
+"Why, I go in there nearly every week!" the old lady said.
+
+"She told me the other night that she had been selling some books to Mr.
+Christopher Liggett, and that's Miss Alice's husband, I hear," said Mrs.
+Sheridan. "She's in what they call the Old Book Room," she added,
+lowering her voice. "She's wonderful about books, reads them, and knows
+them as if they were children--they think the world of her in there! And
+I keep house for the three of them, and what with this and that--I never
+have any time!"
+
+"But you have someone to help you, Kate?" the old lady asked, with her
+amused and affectionate eyes on the other's wholesome face.
+
+"Why would I?" demanded Mrs. Sheridan, roundly. "The girls are a great
+help----"
+
+"She always assumes a terrific brogue the minute you ask her why we
+don't have someone in to help her," Norma contributed, with a sort of
+shy and loving audacity. "She'll tell you in a minute that faith, she
+and her sister used to run barefoot over the primroses, and they
+blooming beyond anything the Lord ever created, and the spring on
+them----"
+
+Leslie Melrose laughed out suddenly, in delighted appreciation, and the
+tension between the two girls was over. They had not quite known how to
+talk to each other; Norma naturally assuming that Leslie looked down
+upon a seller of books, and anxious to show her that she was unconscious
+of either envy or inferiority, and Leslie at a loss because her usual
+social chatter was as foreign here as a strange tongue would be. But no
+type is quicker to grasp upon amusement, and to appreciate the amuser,
+than Leslie's, unable to amuse itself, and skilled in seeking for
+entertainment. She was too shy to ask Norma to imitate her aunt again,
+but her stiffness relaxed, and she asked Norma if it was not great "fun"
+to sell things--especially at Christmas, for instance. Norma asked in
+turn if Mr. Liggett was not Leslie's uncle, and said that she had sold
+him hundreds of beautiful books for his wife, and had even had a note
+from Leslie's Aunt Alice, thanking her for some little courtesy.
+
+"But isn't that funny!" Leslie said, with her childish widening of the
+eyes. "That you should know Chris!"
+
+"Well, now," said Mrs. Sheridan's voice, cutting across both
+conversations, "where can these girls go for about fifteen minutes? I'll
+tell you my little bit of business, Mrs. Melrose, and then Norma and I
+will go along. It won't take me fifteen minutes, for there's nothing to
+decide to-day," the girls heard her add, comfortably, as they went into
+the hall.
+
+"Leslie!" her grandmother called after her. "If you must change,
+dear--but wait a minute, is that Aunt Annie out there?"
+
+"No, Grandma, just ourselves. What were you going to say?"
+
+"I was going to say, lovey, that you could ask Miss Sheridan to wait in
+the library; her aunt tells me she is fond of books." Mrs. Melrose did
+not quite like to commit Leslie to entertaining the strange girl for
+perhaps half an hour. She was pleasantly reassured by Leslie's answering
+voice:
+
+"We'll have tea in my room, Grandma. Marion and Doris may come in!"
+
+"That's right, have a good time!" her grandmother answered. And then
+settling back comfortably, she added with her kind, fussy superiority,
+"Well, Kate, I've wondered where you were hiding yourself all this time!
+Let's have the business. But first I want to say that I appreciate your
+turning to me. If it's money--I've got it. If it's something else, Chris
+Liggett is one of the cleverest men in New York, and we'll consult him."
+
+"It's not money, thank God!" Mrs. Sheridan said, in her forthright
+voice. "Lord knows where it all comes from, these days, but the children
+always have plenty," she added, glad of a diversion. "They bought
+themselves a car two years ago, and if it isn't a Victrola this week,
+it's a thermos bottle, or a pair of white buckskin shoes! Rose told me
+she paid eight dollars for her corsets. 'Eight dollars for what,' I
+said, 'a dozen?' But then I've the two houses in Brooklyn, you know----"
+
+"You still have those?"
+
+"I have, indeed. And even the baby--we call Norma the baby--is earning
+good money now."
+
+"She has your name, Kate--Sheridan. Had your husband a brother?"
+
+Kate Sheridan's face grew a trifle pale. She glanced at the door to see
+that it was shut, and at the one to the adjoining room to make sure
+that it was closed also. Then she turned to Mrs. Melrose, and it was an
+anxious glance she directed at the older woman.
+
+"Well, now, there's no hurry about this," she began, "and you may say
+that it's all nonsense, and send me packing--and God knows I hope you
+will! But it just began to get on my mind--and I've never been a great
+one to worry! I'll begin at the beginning----"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Marion Duer and Doris Alexander duly arrived for tea with Leslie, and
+Norma was introduced. They all sat in Leslie's room, and laughed as they
+reached for crumpets, and marvelled at the storm. Norma found them
+rather younger than their years, and shyly anxious to be gracious. On
+her part she realized with some surprise that they were not really
+unapproachable, and that Leslie was genuinely anxious to take her to tea
+with Aunt Alice some day, and have them "talk books and things." The
+barriers between such girls as this one and herself, Norma was honest
+enough to admit, were largely of her own imagining. They were neither so
+contemptibly helpless nor so scornfully clever as she had fancied them;
+they were just laughing girls, absorbed in thoughts of gowns and
+admirers and good times, like her cousin Rose and herself.
+
+There had been perhaps one chance in one hundred that she and Leslie
+Melrose might at once become friends, but by fortunate accident that
+chance had favoured them. Leslie's spontaneous laugh in Mrs. Melrose's
+room, her casual mention of tea, her appreciative little phrases as she
+introduced to Marion and Doris the young lady who picked out books for
+Aunt Alice, had all helped to crush out the vaguely hostile impulse
+Norma Sheridan had toward rich little members of a society she only knew
+by hearsay. Norma had found herself sitting on Leslie's big velvet
+couch laughing and chatting quite naturally, and where Norma chatted
+naturally the day was won. She could be all friendliness, and all
+sparkle and fun, and presently Leslie was listening to her in actual
+fascination.
+
+The butler announced a motor-car, a maid came up; Doris and Marion had
+to go. Leslie and Norma went into Leslie's dressing-room, and Leslie's
+maid went obsequiously to and fro, and the girls talked almost
+intimately as they washed their hands and brushed their hair. Neither
+cared that the time was passing.
+
+But the time was passing none the less. Five o'clock came with a pale
+and uncertain sunset, and a cold twilight began to settle over the snowy
+city. Leslie and Norma came back to the fire, and were standing there, a
+trifle uncertainly, but still talking hard and fast, when there was an
+interruption.
+
+They looked at each other, paling. What was that?
+
+There was utter silence in the old house. Leslie, with a frightened look
+at Norma, ran to the hall door. As she opened it Mrs. Sheridan opened
+the door of her grandmother's room opposite, and called, quite loudly:
+
+"It's nothing, dear! Get hold of your grandmother's maid--somebody! She
+feels a little--but she's quite all right!"
+
+Leslie and Norma ran across the hall, and into Mrs. Melrose's room. By
+this time Regina had come flying in, and two of the younger maids, and
+Joseph had run upstairs. Leslie had only one glimpse of her grandmother,
+leaning against Regina's arm, and drinking from a glass of water that
+shook in the maid's hands. Then Mrs. Sheridan guided both herself and
+Norma firmly into the hall, and reassured them cheerfully:
+
+"The room was very hot, dear, and your grandmother said that she had
+gotten tired, walking in the wind. She's quite all right--you can go in
+immediately. No; she didn't faint--she just had a moment of dizziness,
+and called out."
+
+Regina came out, too evidently convinced that she had to deal with a
+murderess, and coldly asked that Mrs. Sheridan would please step back
+for a minute. Mrs. Sheridan immediately complied, but it was hardly more
+than a minute when she joined the girls again.
+
+"She wants to see you, dear," she said to Leslie, whose first frightened
+tears had dried from bewilderment and curiosity, "and we must hurry on.
+Come, Norma, we'll say good-night!"
+
+"Good-night, Miss Melrose," Norma said.
+
+"Good-night," Leslie answered, hesitating over the name. Her wide
+babyish smile, the more appealing because of her wet lashes, made a
+sudden impression upon Norma's heart. Leslie hung childishly on the
+upstairs balustrade, in the dim wide upper hall, and watched them go.
+"I--I almost called you Norma!" she confessed, mischievously.
+
+"I wish you had!" Norma called up from below. She was in great spirits
+as they went out into the deepening cold blue of the street, and almost
+persuaded her aunt to take the omnibus up the Avenue. But Mrs. Sheridan
+protested rather absent-mindedly against this extravagance. They were
+close to the subway and that was quicker.
+
+Norma could not talk in the packed and swaying train, and when they
+emerged at Sixty-fifth Street they had only one slippery, cold, dark
+block to walk. But when they had reached the flat, and snapped on
+lights everywhere, and cast off outer garments, aproned and busy, in the
+kitchen, she burst out:
+
+"What on earth was the matter with that old lady, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose they all eat too much, and sleep too much, and pamper
+themselves as if they were babies," her aunt returned, composedly, "and
+so it doesn't take much to upset 'em!"
+
+"Oh, come now!" the girl said, stopping with arrested knife. "That
+wasn't what made her let out a yell like that!"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, kneeling at the oven of the gas stove, laughed uneasily.
+
+"Oh, you could hear that, could you?"
+
+"Hear it! They heard it in Yonkers."
+
+"Well," Mrs. Sheridan said, "she has always been high-strung, that one.
+I remember years ago she'd be going into crying and raving fits. She's
+got very deep affections, Mrs. Melrose, and when she gets thinking of
+Theodore, and of Alice's accident, and this and that, she'll go right
+off the handle. She had been crying, poor soul, and suddenly she began
+this moaning and rocking. I told her I'd call someone if she didn't
+stop, for she'd go from bad to worse, with me."
+
+"But why with you, Aunt Kate? Do you know her so well?"
+
+"Do I know them?" Mrs. Sheridan dug an opener into a can of corn with a
+vigorous hand. "I know them all!"
+
+"But how was that?" Norma persisted, now dropping her peeled potatoes
+into dancing hot water.
+
+"I've told you five thousand times, but you and Rose would likely have
+one of your giggling fits on, and not a word would you remember!" her
+aunt said. "I've told you that years ago, when your Uncle Tom died, and
+I was left with two babies, and not much money, a friend of mine, a
+milliner she was, told me that she knew a lady that wanted someone to
+help manage her affairs--household affairs. Well, I'd often helped your
+Uncle Tom with his books, and my mother was with me, to look out for the
+children----"
+
+"Where was I, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"You! Wolf wasn't but three, and Rose a year old--where would you be?"
+
+"I was minus two years," Norma said, sententiously. "I was part of the
+cosmic all----"
+
+"You be very careful how you talk about such things until you're a
+married woman!" her aunt said. "Salt those potatoes, darling. Norma, can
+you remember what I did with the corn that Rose liked so?"
+
+Norma was attentive.
+
+"You beat it up with eggs, and it came out a sort of puff," she
+recalled. "I know--you put a little cornstarch in, to give it body!
+Listen, Aunt Kate, how long did you stay with Mrs. Melrose?"
+
+"Well, first I just watched her help for her, and paid the bills, and
+went to market. And then I got gradually managing more and more; I'd go
+to pay her interest, or deposit money, or talk to tenants; I liked it
+and she liked me. And then she talked me into going to France with her,
+but I cried all the way for my children, and I was glad enough to come
+home again! She and Miss Annie spent some time over there, but I came
+back. Miss Alice was in school, and Theodore--dear knows where he
+was--into some mischief somewhere! But I'd saved money, and she'd given
+me the Brooklyn houses, and I took a boarder or two, and that was the
+last I ever worked for any one but my own!"
+
+"Well, that's a nice girl, that Leslie," Norma said, "if her father
+_was_ wild!"
+
+"Her mother was a good girl," Kate said, "I knew her. But the old lady
+was proud, Baby--God save any one of us from pride like that! You'd
+never know it, to see her now, but she was very proud. Theodore's wife
+was a good girl, but she was Miss Annie's maid, and what Mrs. Melrose
+never could forgive was that when she ordered the girl out of the house,
+she showed her her wedding certificate. She was Mrs. Theodore Melrose,
+fast enough--though his mother never would see her or acknowledge her in
+any way."
+
+"They must think the Lord has made a special arrangement for
+them--people like that!" Norma commented, turning a lovely flushed face
+from the pan where she was dexterously crisping bacon. "What business is
+it of hers if her son marries a working girl? That gives me a feeling
+akin to pain--just because she happens to have a lot of money! What does
+Miss Leslie Melrose think of that?"
+
+"I don't know what she thinks--she loves her grandmother, I suppose.
+Mrs. Melrose took her in when she was only a tiny girl, and she's been
+the apple of her eye ever since. Theodore and his wife were divorced,
+and when Leslie was about four or five he came back to his mother to
+die--poor fellow! It was a terrible sorrow to the old lady--she'd had
+her share, one way and another! My goodness, Norma," Mrs. Sheridan
+interrupted herself to say, in half-reproachful appreciation, "I wish
+you'd always help me like this, my dear! You can be as useful as ten
+girls, when you've a mind to! And then perhaps to-morrow you'll be as
+contrary----!"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Kate, aren't you ashamed! When I ironed all your dish-towels
+last night, when you were setting bread, and I made the popovers
+Sunday!" Norma kissed her aunt, brushed a dab of cornstarch from the
+older woman's firm cheek, and performed a sort of erratic dance about
+the protestant and solid figure. "I'm a poor working girl," she said,
+"and I get dragged out with my long, hard day!"
+
+"Well, God knows that's true, too," her aunt said, with a sudden look of
+compunction; "you may make a joke of it, but it's no life for a girl. My
+dear," she added, seriously, holding Norma with a firm arm, and looking
+into her eyes, "I hope I did no harm by what I did to-day! I did it for
+the best, whatever comes of it."
+
+"You mean stirring up the whole thing?" Norma asked, frowning a little
+in curiosity and bewilderment. "Going to see her?"
+
+"That--yes." Mrs. Sheridan rubbed her forehead with her hand, a fashion
+she had when puzzled or troubled, and suddenly resumed, with a great
+rattling of pans and hissing of water, her operations at the sink.
+"Well, nothing may come of it--we'll see!" she added, briskly. Norma,
+who was watching her expectantly, sighed disappointedly; the subject was
+too evidently closed. But a second later she was happily distracted by
+the slamming of the front door; Wolf and Rose Sheridan had come in
+together, and dinner was immediately served.
+
+Norma recounted, with her own spirited embellishments, her adventures of
+the afternoon as the meal progressed. She had had "fun" getting to the
+office in the first place, a man had helped her, and they had both
+skidded into another man, and bing!--they had all gone down on the ice
+together. And then at the shop nobody had come in, and the lights had
+been lighted, and the clerks had all gathered together and talked. Then
+Aunt Kate had come in to have lunch, and to have Norma go with her to
+the gas company's office about the disputed charge, and they had decided
+to make, at last, that long-planned call on the Melroses. There followed
+a description of the big house and the spoiled, pretty girl, and the
+impressive yet friendly old lady.
+
+"And Aunt Kate--I'm sorry to say!--talked her into a nervous convulsion.
+You did, Aunt Kate--the poor old lady gave one piercing yell----"
+
+"You awful girl, there'll be a judgment on you for your impudence!" her
+aunt said, fondly. But Rose looked solicitously at her mother, and said:
+
+"Mother looks as if she had had a nervous convulsion, too. You look
+terribly tired, Mother!"
+
+"Well, I had a little business to discuss with Mrs. Melrose," Mrs.
+Sheridan said, "and I'm no hand for business!"
+
+"You know it!" Wolf Sheridan concurred, with his ready laugh. "Why
+didn't you send me?"
+
+"It was her business, lovey," his mother said, mildly, over her second
+heartening cup of strong black tea.
+
+The Sheridan apartment was, in exterior at least, exactly like one
+hundred thousand others that line the side streets of New York. It faced
+the familiar grimy street, fringed on the great arteries each side by
+cigarette stands and saloons, and it was entered by the usual flight of
+stained and shabby steps, its doorway showing a set of some dozen
+letter-boxes, and looking down upon a basement entrance frequently
+embellished with ash-cans and milk-bottles, and, just at present, with
+banks of soiled and sooty snow. The Sheridans climbed three long flights
+inside, to their own rooms, but as this gained them a glimpse of river,
+and a sense in summer of airiness and height, to say nothing of pleasant
+nearness to the roof, they rarely complained of the stairs--in fact,
+rarely thought of them at all.
+
+With the opening of their own door, however, all likeness to their
+neighbours ceased. Even in a class where home ties and home comforts are
+far more common than is generally suspected, Kate Sheridan was
+exceptional, and her young persons fortunate among their kind. Her
+training had been, she used to tell them, "old country" training, but it
+was not only in fresh linen and hot, good food that their advantage lay.
+It was in the great heart that held family love a divine gift, that had
+stood between them and life's cold realities for some twenty courageous
+years. Kate idolized her own two children and her foster-child with a
+passion that is the purest and the strongest in the world. In possessing
+them, she thought herself the most blessed of women. To keep a roof over
+their heads, to watch them progress triumphantly through long division
+and measles and skates, to see milk glasses emptied and plates scraped,
+to realize that Wolf was as strong morally as he was physically, and
+that all her teachers called Rose an angel, to spoil and adore the
+beautiful, mischievous, and amusing "Baby"; this made a life full to the
+brim, for Kate, of pride and happiness. Kate had never had a servant,
+or a fur coat; for long intervals she had not had a night's unbroken
+rest; and there had been times, when Wolf's fractured arm necessitated a
+doctor's bill, or when coal for the little Detroit house had made a
+disproportionate hole in her bank account, in which even the thrifty
+Kate had known biting financial worry.
+
+But the children never knew it. They knew only her law of service and
+love. They must love each other, whatever happened. There was no
+quarrelling at meals at Kate's house. Rose must of course oblige her
+brother, sew on the button, or take his book to the library; Wolf must
+always protect the girls, and consider them. Wolf firmly believed his
+sister and cousin to be the sweetest girls in the world; Rose and Norma
+regarded Wolf as perfection in human form. They rarely met without
+embraces, never without brightening eyes and light hearts.
+
+That this attitude toward each other was only the result of the healthy
+bodies and honest souls that Kate had given them they would hardly have
+believed. That her resolute training had literally forced them to love
+and depend upon themselves in a world where brothers and sisters as
+habitually teased and annoyed each other, would have struck them as
+fantastic. Perhaps Kate herself hardly knew the power of her own will
+upon them. Her commands in their babyhood had not been couched in the
+language of modern child-analysts, nor had she given, or been able to
+give, any particular reason for her law. But the instinct by which she
+drew Wolf's attention to his sister's goodness, or noted Wolf's
+cleverness for Rose's benefit, was better than any reason. She summed
+the situation up simply for the few friends she had, with the phrase:
+
+"They're all crazy about each other, every one of them!"
+
+Kate's parlour would have caused Annie von Behrens actual faintness. But
+it was a delightful place to Rose and Wolf and their friends. The
+cushioned divan on Sunday nights customarily held a row of them, the
+upright ebony piano sifted popular music impartially upon the taboret,
+the patent rocker, and the Rover rug. They laughed, gossiped, munched
+candy, and experimented in love-making quite as happily as did Leslie
+and her own intimates. They streamed out into the streets, and sauntered
+along under the lights to the moving pictures, or on hot summer nights
+they perched like tiers of birds on the steps, and the world and youth
+seemed sweet to them. In Kate's dining-room, finished in black wood and
+red paper, they made Welsh rarebits and fudge, and in Kate's spotless
+kitchen odours of toast and coffee rose at unseemly hours.
+
+Lately, Rose and Norma had been talking of changes. Rose was employed in
+an office whose severe and beautiful interior decoration had cost
+thousands of dollars, and Norma's Old Book Room was a study in dull
+carved woods, Oriental rugs, dull bronzes, and flawless glass. The girls
+began to feel that a plain cartridge paper and net curtains might well
+replace the parlour's florid green scrolling and Nottingham lace. But
+they did not worry about it; it served as a topic to amuse their leisure
+hours. The subject was generally routed by a shrewd allusion, from Norma
+or Wolf, to the sort of parlour people would like if they got married,
+married to someone who was doing very well in the shoe business, for
+example.
+
+These allusions deepened the colour in Rose's happy face; she had been
+"going" for some three months with an attractive young man who exactly
+met these specifications--not her first admirer, not noticeable for any
+especial quality, yet Rose and Norma, and Kate, too, felt in their souls
+that Rose's hour had come. Young Harry Redding was a big, broad, rather
+inarticulate fellow, whose humble calling was not the more attractive to
+the average young woman because he supported his mother by it. But he
+suited Rose, more, he seemed wonderful to Rose, and because her dreams
+had always been humble and self-sacrificing, Harry was a thousand times
+more than she had dreamed. She felt herself the luckiest girl in the
+world.
+
+Kate sat at the head of her table, and Wolf at the foot. Rose, a gentle,
+quiet copy of her handsome mother, was nearest the kitchen door, to
+which she made constant flying trips. Norma was opposite Rose, and by
+falling back heavily could tip her entire chair against the sideboard,
+from which she extracted forks or salt or candy, as the case might be.
+The telephone was in the dining-room, Wolf's especial responsibility,
+and Mrs. Sheridan herself occasionally left the table for calls to the
+front door or the dumb-waiter.
+
+To-night, after supper, the girls flew through their share of
+clearing-up. It never weighed very heavily upon them; they usually began
+the process of piling and scraping dishes before they left the table,
+Rose whisking the tablecloth into its drawer as Norma bumped through the
+swinging door with the last dishes, and Kate halfway through the washing
+even then. Chattering and busy, they hustled the hot plates onto their
+shelves, rattled the hot plated ware into its basket, clanked saucepans,
+and splashed water. Not fifteen minutes after the serving of the dessert
+the last signs of the meal had been obliterated, and Kate was guilty of
+what the girls called "making excuses" to linger in the kitchen. She was
+mixing cereal, storing cold potatoes and cut bread, soaking dish-towels.
+But these things did not belong to the duties of Norma and Rose, and the
+younger girl could flash with a free conscience to the little room she
+shared with Rose. Wolf had called out for a companion, they were going
+to take a walk and see what the blizzard had done!
+
+Norma washed her face, the velvety skin emerging with its bloom
+untouched, the lips crimson, the blue eyes blazing. She pressed a great
+wave of silky dark hair across her white forehead, and put the
+fur-trimmed hat at a dashing angle. The lace blouse, the pearl beads,
+her fur-collared coat again, and Norma was ready to dance out beside
+Wolf as if fatigue and labours did not exist.
+
+"Where's Rose?" he said, as they went downstairs.
+
+"Oh, Wolf--Saturday night! Harry's coming, of course!" Norma slipped her
+little hand, in its shabby glove, through his big arm. "She and Aunt
+Kate were gossiping!"
+
+"Suits me!" Wolf said, contentedly. He held her firmly on the slippery
+lumps of packed snow. The sidewalks were almost impassable, yet hundreds
+of other happy persons were stumbling and scrambling over them in the
+mild winter darkness. Stars were out; and whether Norma was blinking up
+at them, or staring into lighted windows of candy stores and fruit
+markets, her own eyes danced and twinkled. The elevated trains thundered
+above their heads, and the subway roared under their feet; great
+advertising signs, with thousands of coloured lights, fanned up and down
+in a haze of pink and blue; the air was full of voices, laughing and
+shouting, and the screaming of coasting children.
+
+"I have my pearls on," Norma told her companion. They stopped for some
+molasses peppermints, and their pungent odour mingled for Norma in the
+impression of this happy hour. "Wolf, how do they do that?" the girl
+asked, watching an electric sign on which a maid mopped a dirty floor
+with some prepared cleaner, leaving the floor clean after her mop. Wolf,
+interested, explained, and Norma listened. They stopped at a drug store,
+and studied a picture that subtly altered from Roosevelt's face to
+Lincoln's, and thence to Wilson's face, and Wolf explained that, too.
+Norma knew that he understood everything of that nature, but she liked
+to impress him, too, and did so far more often than she realized, with
+her book-lore. When Norma spoke lightly of a full calf edition de luxe
+of the Sonnets from the Portuguese, she might almost have been speaking
+in that language for all she conveyed to Wolf, but he watched the
+animated face proudly just the same. Rose had always been good and
+steady and thoughtful, but Wolf knew that Norma was clever, taking his
+big-brotherly patronage with admiring awe, but daring where he
+hesitated, and boldly at home where he was ill at ease. When she said
+that when she got married she wanted Dedham china, and just a plain,
+glass bowl for goldfish, Wolf nodded, but he would have nodded just as
+placidly if she had wanted a Turkish corner and bead portières. And
+to-night when she asserted that she wouldn't be Leslie Melrose for
+anything in the world, Wolf asked in simple wonderment why she should
+be.
+
+"Imagine, a maid came to take those big girls home, Wolf! They can speak
+French," Norma confided. Wolf did not look for coherence from her, and
+took the two statements on their face value. "Now, I know I'm not
+pretty," she continued, following, as was usual with her, some obscure
+line of thought, "but I'm prettier than Doris Alexander, and she had her
+picture in the paper!"
+
+"Who broke it to you that you're not pretty?" Wolf asked.
+
+"Well, I _know_ I'm not!" Norma jumped along at his side for a few
+minutes, eyeing him expectantly, but Wolf's mind was honestly busy with
+this assertion, and he did not speak. Wasn't she pretty? Girls had funny
+standards. "You know," she resumed, "you'd hate a girl like Leslie
+Melrose, Wolf!"
+
+"Would I?"
+
+"Oh, you'd loathe her. But I'll tell you who you _would_ like," Norma
+added, in a sudden burst. "You'd love Mr. Liggett!"
+
+"Why should I?" Wolf asked, in some surprise.
+
+"Oh, because he's nice--he's very good-looking, and he has such a
+pleasant voice, as if he knew everything, but wasn't a bit conceited!"
+Norma said. "And he picks out books for his wife, and when I try to tell
+him something about them, he always knows lots more. You know, in a
+pleasant, careless sort of way, not a bit as if he was showing off. And
+I'll tell you what he did. Miss Drake was showing him a pottery bowl
+one day, and she dropped it, and she told me he sort of caught at it
+with his hand, and he said to Mr. Biretta, 'I've very stupidly broken
+this--just put it on my bill, will you?' Of course," Norma added,
+vivaciously, "old B. G. immediately said that it was nothing at all, but
+_you know_ what Miss Drake would have caught, if _she'd_ broken it!"
+
+Perhaps Wolf did, but he was thinking at the moment that the family baby
+was very cunning, with her bright eyes and indignant mouth. He stopped
+her before a vaudeville house, in a flare of bright light.
+
+"Want to go in?"
+
+"Oh, Wolf! Would Aunt Kate care? Oh, Wolf, _let's_!"
+
+There was absolute ecstasy in her eyes as they went through the
+enchanted doorway and up the rising empty foyer toward the house. It was
+nine o'clock; the performance was fairly under way. Norma rustled into a
+seat beside her companion without moving her eyes from the coloured
+comedian on the stage; she could remove hat and gloves and jacket
+without losing an instant of him.
+
+When the lights went up Wolf approved the dark hair and the pearls, and
+bent toward her to hear the unending confidences. Norma thought she had
+never seen anything better, and even Wolf admitted that it was a good
+show. They finished the peppermints, and were very happy.
+
+They had seen the big film, and so could cut the last third of the
+programme, and reach home at ten o'clock. There was no comment from Aunt
+Kate, who was yawning over the evening paper in the dining-room. Rose
+and Harry were murmuring in the dimly lighted parlour. Wolf, who was of
+the slow-thinking, intense type that discovers a new world every time it
+reads a new book, was halfway through a shabby library copy of "War and
+Peace," and went off to his room with the second volume under his arm.
+Norma went to her room, too, but she sat dreaming before the mirror,
+thinking of that Melrose house, and of Leslie's friendliness, until Rose
+came in at eleven o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At almost this same moment Norma's self was the subject of a rather
+unusual talk between Christopher Liggett and his wife.
+
+Christopher had come softly into his house, at about half-past ten, to
+find Alice awake, still on the big couch before her fire. Her little
+bedroom beyond was softly lighted, the white bed turned down, and the
+religious books she always read before going to sleep laid in place by
+Miss Slater. But Alice had no light except her fire and two or three
+candles in old sconces.
+
+She welcomed Christopher with a smile, and he sat down, in his somewhat
+rumpled evening dress, and smiled back at her in a rather weary fashion.
+He often told her that these rooms of hers were a sanctuary, that he
+tested the men and women he met daily in the world by her fine and lofty
+standard. It was part of his utter generosity to her that he talked to
+her as frankly as if he thought aloud, and it was Alice's pride and joy
+to know that this marriage of theirs, which had so sadly and suddenly
+become no marriage at all, was not as one-sided as the world might have
+suspected. Her clear, dispassionate viewpoint and her dignified
+companionship were not wifehood, but they were dear and valuable to him
+none the less, a part of his life that he would not have spared. And he
+could still admire her, too, not only for the exquisite clearness of her
+intellect, her French and Italian, her knowledge of countries and
+affairs, but physically--the clear, childish forehead that was as
+unwrinkled as Leslie's, the fair, beautifully brushed hair, the mouth
+with its chiselling of wisdom and of pain, and the transparent hand from
+which she shook back transparent laces. She was always proud, always
+fresh and fragrant, always free for him and for his problems, and it was
+proverbial in the circle of their intimates that Chris admired Alice
+with all his heart, and never felt himself anything but the privileged
+guardian of a treasure.
+
+To-night he dropped into a chair before her fire, and she watched him
+for five or six restful minutes in silence.
+
+"Stupid dinner?" she ventured.
+
+"Rotten!" he answered, cheerfully. "I was late, but I got in to hear
+Hendrick's speech. The Vice-President was there, everyone else I knew. I
+cut away finally; I'm done up."
+
+"I thought you picked up Hendrick on your way and went together," Mrs.
+Liggett said, sympathetically. "I'm sorry it was dull--I suppose men
+have to go to these political things!"
+
+Chris was leaning forward, his locked hands dropped between his knees,
+and his eyes on the fire.
+
+"Hendrick and I stopped at your mother's," he said, deliberately, "and
+she was so upset that I sent Hendrick on alone!"
+
+Alice's eyes lighted apprehensively, but she spoke very quietly.
+
+"What was it, Chris? Leslie getting saucy?"
+
+"Oh, no, no! It was a complication of things, I imagine!" Christopher
+took out his cigarette-case, looked at its moiré surface reflectively,
+and selected a smoke. "She was tired--she'd been out in the
+snow--Leslie had gone off with Annie to some débutante affair--I daresay
+she felt blue. Alice, do you remember a woman named Kate Sheridan?"
+
+The question was sudden, and Alice blinked.
+
+"Yes, I do," she answered, after a moment's thought, "she was a sort of
+maid or travelling companion of Mama's. We called her Mrs. Sheridan--she
+was quite a superior sort of person."
+
+"What do you remember about her, dear?"
+
+"Well--just that. She came when I was only a child--and then when Annie
+was ill in Paris she went abroad with Mama--and I remember that she came
+back, and she used to come see me at school, for Mama, and once she took
+me up to Grandma's, in Brookline. She was a widow, and she had a
+child--or two, maybe. Why, Chris?"
+
+Her husband did not answer, and she repeated the question.
+
+"Well," he said, at last, flinging the end of his cigarette into the
+fire, "she came to see your mother to-day."
+
+Alice waited, a little at a loss. To her this had no particular
+significance.
+
+"She had her niece with her, young girl about eighteen," Christopher
+said.
+
+"Well--what _of_ it?" Alice demanded, with a sort of superb indifference
+to anything such a woman might do.
+
+He looked at her through his round eyeglasses, with the slight frown
+that many of life's problems brought to his handsome face. Then the
+glass fell, on its black ribbon, and he laughed.
+
+"That's just what I don't _get_," he said, good-humouredly. "But I'll
+tell you exactly what occurred. What's-His-Name, your mother's
+butler----"
+
+"Joseph."
+
+"Joseph. Joseph told me that at about four o'clock this Mrs. Sheridan
+came in. Your mother had told him that she was expecting the lady, and
+that he was to bring her upstairs. With her came this girl--I can't
+remember her name--but it was something Sheridan--Nora Sheridan, maybe.
+Leslie carried the girl off for tea, and the woman stayed with your
+mother.
+
+"Well, at five--or later, this Mrs. Sheridan ran into the hall, and it
+seems--she's all right now!--it seems that your mother had fainted."
+
+"Mama!" Alice said, anxiously, with an incredulous frown.
+
+"Yes, but don't worry. She's absolutely all right now. Leslie,"
+Christopher went back to his narrative, "Leslie cried, and I suppose
+there was a scene. Mrs. Sheridan and the girl went home--Leslie dressed
+and went out--and your mother immediately telephoned Lee----"
+
+"Judge Lee?"
+
+"Yes--she said so. Lee's up in Westchester with his daughter, she
+couldn't get him----"
+
+"But, Chris, why did she want her lawyer?"
+
+"That's just it--_why_? Well, then she telephoned here for me--I was on
+my way there, as it happened, and just before eight Hendrick and I went
+in. I could see she was altogether up stage, so I sent Von on and had it
+out with her."
+
+"And what was her explanation, Chris?"
+
+Christopher laughed again.
+
+"I'll be darned," he said, thoughtfully, "if I can make head or tail of
+it! It would be funny if it wasn't that she's taking it so hard. She was
+in bed, and she had been crying--wouldn't eat any dinner----"
+
+"But, Chris," Alice said, worriedly, "what do you _make_ of it! What did
+she _say_?"
+
+"Well, she clasped my hand, and she said that she had an opportunity to
+undo a great wrong--and that I must help her--and not ask any
+questions--she was just acting as you and I would have her act under the
+circumstances----"
+
+"What circumstances?" Alice said, at an utter loss, as he paused.
+
+"She didn't say," he smiled.
+
+"Oh, come, now, Chris, she must have said more than that!"
+
+"No, she didn't. She said that she must make it up to this girl, and she
+wished to see Lee about it immediately."
+
+"To change her will!" Alice exclaimed.
+
+"She didn't say so. Of course, it may be some sort of blackmail."
+Christopher looked whimsically at his wife. "As I remember my
+father-in-law," he said, "it seems to me improbable that out of the past
+could come this engaging young girl--very pretty, they said----"
+
+"Father! Oh, nonsense!" Alice exclaimed, almost in relief at the
+absurdity. "No, but it might be some business--some claim against the
+firm," she suggested.
+
+"Well, I thought of that. But there are one or two reasons why it
+doesn't seem the solution. I asked your mother if it was money, and she
+said no, said it positively and repeatedly. Then I asked her if she
+would like this Sheridan woman shut up, and she was quite indignant.
+Kate!--Kate was one of the most magnificent women God had ever made, and
+so on!"
+
+"Well, I do remember Mrs. Sheridan as a lovely sort of person," Alice
+contributed. "Plain, you know, but quite wonderful for--well,
+_goodness_. It's funny--but then you know Mama is terribly excitable,"
+she added, "she gets frightfully worked up over nothing, or almost
+nothing. It's quite possible that when Kate recalled old times to her
+she suddenly wished that she had done more for Kate--something like
+that. She'd think nothing of sending for Judge Lee on the spot. You
+remember her recalling us from our wedding-trip because she couldn't
+find the pearls? All the way from Lake Louise to hear that they had been
+lost!"
+
+"I know," Christopher smiled. "She is--unique, _ma belle mère_. By
+George, I'll never forget our rushing into the house like maniacs, not
+knowing what had happened to Leslie or Acton, and having her fall
+sobbing into your arms, with the pearls in her hands!"
+
+"Mama's wonderful," Alice laughed. "Chris, did you eat any dinner?"
+
+He considered.
+
+"But I'm really not hungry, dear," he protested.
+
+Alice, superbly incredulous, rang at once. Who was in the kitchen? Well,
+she was to be asked to send up a tray at once to Mr. Liggett. "Now that
+you asked me, the dinner had reached the point of ice-cream in a paper
+tub, as I sat down," he remembered. "You're a little miracle of healing
+to me, Alice. When I came in here I didn't know _what_ we were up
+against, as a family. Your mother wished the girl pensioned----"
+
+"Oh, Chris, not really?"
+
+"I give you my word!" But he was enough his usual self to have taken his
+seat at the piano, now, and was looking at her across it, while his
+fingers fitted themselves lazily to chords and harmonics.
+
+"I'll tell you something, if you'll promise to stop playing the instant
+your supper comes up!"
+
+"I'll promise!"
+
+"Well, then--the new Puccini is there!" She nodded toward the
+music-shelves, and he turned to the new score with an eager exclamation.
+Fifteen minutes later she had to scold him to bring him to the fire
+again, and to the smoking little supper. While Alice sipped ginger ale,
+Christopher fell upon his meal, and they discussed the probable
+presentation of the opera, and its quality.
+
+But an hour later, when she was in bed, and Christopher was going back
+to the piano for another half-hour of music, she caught his hand.
+
+"Chris, you're not worried about this Sheridan matter?"
+
+"Worried? No, dearest child, what is there to worry about? It isn't
+blackmail, apparently it's nothing but an overdose of imagination on
+your mother's part. If the girl really was promised something, or
+has--for example!--old stock, or if her father was an employee who did
+this or that or the other--Mrs. Sheridan's husband was employed by your
+father at the time of his death, by the way--why, it's easy enough to
+pay the claim, whatever it is! The girl seems to have made a nice
+impression--your mother tells me she's sold me books, but that doesn't
+mean much, I buy books everywhere! No, I don't think you'll ever hear of
+her again. But your mother will be here in a day or two; see what you
+can make of it all!"
+
+"Oh, of course, it's nothing _wrong_!" Alice said, confidently.
+
+And Christopher returned to his beloved piano, relieved in mind by his
+wife's counsel, refreshed in body by the impromptu supper, and ready for
+the music that soothed in him all the restless and unsatisfied fibres of
+his soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Annie, who signed herself "Anne Melrose von Behrens," was the real
+dictator in the various circles of the allied families, and had a
+fashion of finding herself supreme in larger circles, as well. Annie was
+thirty-seven or eight, tall, thin, ash-blonde, superb in manner and
+bearing. Nature had been generous to her, but she had done far more for
+herself than Nature had. Her matchless skin, her figure, her hands, her
+voice, were all the result of painstaking and intelligent care. Annie
+had been a headstrong, undisciplined girl twenty years ago. She had come
+back from a European visit, at twenty-three, with a vague if general
+reputation of being "a terror." But Annie was clever, and she had real
+charm. She spoke familiarly of European courts, had been presented even
+in inaccessible Vienna. She spoke languages, quoted poets, had great
+writers and painters for her friends, and rippled through songs that had
+been indisputably dedicated, in flowing foreign hands, to the beautiful
+Mademoiselle Melrose. Society bowed before Annie; she was the sensation
+of her winter, and the marriage she promptly made was the most brilliant
+in many winters.
+
+Annie proceeded to bear her sober, fine, dull, and devoted Hendrick two
+splendid sons, and thus riveted to herself his lasting devotion and
+trust. The old name was safe, the millions would descend duly to young
+Hendrick and Piet. The family had been rich, conspicuous, and respected
+in the city, since its sturdy Holstein cattle had browsed along the
+fields of lower Broadway, but under Annie's hands it began to shine.
+Annie's handsome motor-cars bore the family arms, her china had been
+made in the ancestral village, two miles from Rotterdam, and also
+carried the shield. Her city home, in Fifth Avenue, was so magnificent,
+so chastely restrained and sober, so sternly dignified, that it set the
+cue for half the other homes of the ultra-aristocratic set. Annie's
+servants had been in the Von Behrens family for years; there was nothing
+in the Avenue house, or the Newport summer home, that was not as
+handsome, as old, as solid, as carven, as richly dull, or as purely
+shining, as human ingenuity could contrive to have it. Collectors saved
+their choicest discoveries for Annie; and there was no painter in the
+new world who would not have been proud to have Annie place a canvas of
+his among her treasures from the old.
+
+If family relics were worth preserving, what could be more remarkable
+than Annie's Washington letter, her Jefferson tray, her Gainsboroughs of
+the Murisons who had been the only Americans so honoured by the painter?
+Melrose and Von Behrens honours crowded each other--here was the thin
+old silver "shepherdess" cup awarded that Johanna von Behrens who had
+won a prize with her sheep, while Washington was yet a boy; and here the
+quaint tortoise-shell snuff-box that a great prince, homeless and
+unknown, had given the American family that took him in; and the silver
+buttons from Lafayette's waistcoat that the great Frenchman had
+presented Colonel Horace Murison of the "Continentals."
+
+These things were not thrust at the visitor, nor indeed were they
+conspicuous among the thousand other priceless souvenirs that Annie had
+gathered about her.
+
+"Rather nice, isn't it?" Annie would say, abstractedly, when some
+enthusiastic girl pored over the colonial letters or the old portraits.
+"See here, Margaret," she might add, casually, "do you see the inside of
+this little slipper, my dear? Read what's written there: 'In these
+slippers Deborah Murison danced with Governor Winthrop, on the night of
+her fifteenth birthday, July 1st, 1742.' Isn't that rather quaint?"
+
+Annie could afford to be casual, to be abstracted. In her all the pride
+of the Melrose and Murison families was gathered; hers was an arrogance
+so sure of itself, a self-confidence so supreme, that the world
+questioned it no more than it questioned the heat of the sun. The old
+silver, the Copleys, and the colonial china, the Knickerbocker "court
+chests" with their great locks of Dutch silver, and the laces that had
+been shown at the Hague two hundred years before, were all confirmed,
+all reinforced, as it were, by the power and prosperity of to-day. It
+was no by-gone glory that made brilliant the lives of Hendrick and Anne
+Melrose von Behrens. Hendrick's cousins and uncles, magnificent persons
+of title, were prominent in Holland to-day, their names associated with
+that of royalty, and their gracious friendship extended to the American
+branch of the family whenever Hendrick chose to claim it. Old maps of
+New York bore the boundary lines of the Von Behrens farm; early
+histories of the city mingled the names of Melrose and Von Behrens among
+those of the men who had served the public need.
+
+Wherever there was needed that tone that only names of prominence and
+wealth can bestow Annie's name was solicited. Wherever it appeared it
+gave the instant stamp of dignity and integrity. She had seen this goal
+dimly in the distance, when she stepped from her rather spoiled and
+wilful girlhood into this splendid wifehood, but even Annie was
+astonished at the rapidity with which it had come about. Mama, of
+course, had known all the right people, even if she _had_ dropped all
+social ties after Papa's death. And Hendrick's name was an open sesame.
+But even so it was surprising, and it was gratifying.
+
+In appearance Annie had no problem. If she was not a beauty she was near
+enough to being one. She was smart enough, and blonde enough, and
+splendidly dressed enough to be instantly identifiable, and that was all
+she desired. Financially, Annie had no problem. Her own inheritance and
+her husband's great wealth silenced all question there. The Murison
+pearls and the famous diamond tiara that her father had given her mother
+years ago had come to Annie, but they were eclipsed by the Von Behrens
+family jewels, and these were all hers, with the laces, and the ivories,
+and the brocades. Life could give nothing more to Annie, but not many
+women would have made so much of what Annie had. There was, far down and
+out of sight, a little streak of the adventuress in her, and she never
+stopped halfway.
+
+A young wife, Annie had dutifully considered her nursery.
+
+"Hendrick's is the elder line, of course, although it is the colonial
+one," Annie had said, superintending a princely layette. The child was a
+son, his father's image, and nobody who knew Annie was in the least
+surprised that fortune had fallen in with her plans. It was the
+magnificent Annie who was quoted as telling Madame Modiste to give her a
+fitter who would not talk; it was Annie who decided what should be done
+in recognizing the principals of the Jacqmain divorce, and that old
+Floyd Densmore's actress-wife should not be accepted. Annie's neat and
+quiet answer to a certain social acquaintance who remarked, in Annie's
+little gallery, "I have seen the original of that picture, in one of the
+European galleries," was still quoted by Annie's friends. "This _is_ the
+original!" Annie had said quite simply and truthfully.
+
+Leslie admired her aunt more than any one else in the world. Grandma was
+old-fashioned, and Aunt Alice insignificant, in Leslie's eyes, but
+stunning, arrogant, fearless Aunt Annie was the model upon which she
+would have based herself if she had known how. Annie's quick
+positiveness with her servants, her cool friendliness with big men, and
+clever men, her calm assurance as to which hats she liked, and which
+hats she didn't, her utter belief in everything that was of Melrose or
+von Behrens, and her calm contempt for everything that was not, were
+masterly in Leslie's eyes.
+
+Annie might have been a strong royalist had she been born a few
+generations earlier. But in Annie's day the ideal of social service had
+been laid down by fashion, and she was consequently a tremendously
+independent and energetic person, with small time for languishing airs.
+She headed committees and boards, knew hundreds of working girls by
+name, kept a secretary and a stenographer, and mentioned topics at big
+dinners that would not have shocked either old Goodwife Melrose of
+Boston, or Vrouw von Behrens of Nieu Amsterdam, for neither had the
+faintest idea that such things, or their names, existed.
+
+Withal, Annie was attractive, even her little affectations were
+impressive, and as she went about from luncheons to meetings, swept up
+to her model nursery to revel in her model boys, tossed aside regal furs
+and tore off princely rings the better to play with them, wrapped her
+beautiful figure in satins and jewels to descend to formal dinners, she
+was almost as much admired and envied and copied as she might fondly
+have hoped to be. She managed her life on modern lines of efficiency,
+planned ahead what she wished, tutored herself not to think of anything
+undesirable as being even in the range of possibility, trod lightly upon
+the sensitive souls of others, and asked no quarter herself, aimed high,
+and enjoyed her life and its countless successes to the full.
+
+Of course there had been setbacks. Her brother Theodore, his most
+unfortunate marriage to a servant, his intemperance, the general scandal
+of his mother's violent detestation of his wife, all this was most
+unpleasant. But Louison, the wife, upon sufficient pressure, had brought
+her child to the Melroses, and had doubtfully disappeared, and Theodore
+had returned from his wanderings to live, silent and unobtrusive, in his
+mother's home, for several years, and to die with his daughter beside
+him, and be duly laid in the Melrose plot at Woodlawn. And
+Leslie--Leslie had repaid them all, for all of it.
+
+Alice was another disappointment, or had been one, to Annie. For Alice,
+after having achieved a most unexpectedly satisfactory marriage, and
+having set up her household gods in the very shadow of her sister's
+brilliant example, as it were, had met with that most unfortunate
+accident. For a few years Annie had been utterly exasperated whenever
+she thought of it. For Christopher was really an extraordinary husband
+for Alice to hold, even in normal circumstances. He was so outrageously,
+frightfully, irresistibly popular with women everywhere, his wife must
+needs keep a very sharp, albeit loving, eye upon him. A sickly wife--a
+wife who was a burden and a reproach, that would be fatal to them all!
+
+But Alice had showed unsuspected courage and pride in this hard trial.
+She had made herself beautiful, well-informed, tactful; she had made
+herself a magnet to her husband's friends, and his home the centre of a
+real social group. Annie respected her for it, and helped her by
+flashing into her rooms not less often than every alternate day, with
+gossip, with books, with hints that showed Alice just where her course
+in this or that matter must lie.
+
+So Alice had come to be an actual asset, and now to her Aunt Annie's
+tremendous satisfaction, Leslie promised to add one more feather to the
+family cap by announcing her engagement to Acton Liggett. Annie smiled
+to herself whenever she thought of it. When this was consummated she
+would have nothing left but the selection of suitable wives for Hendrick
+Junior, now aged ten, and Piet, who was four years younger.
+
+Two or three days after the ending of the big snow-storm, and the
+beginning of that domestic storm that was destined strangely to change
+some of the lives nearest her, Annie went in to have luncheon with her
+sister. It was a brilliant sunshiny winter day, with crossings swimming
+in melting snow and roofs steaming brightly into the clear air.
+
+Annie went straight upstairs to Alice's room, with the usual apology for
+lateness. She kissed Alice lightly on the forehead, and while Freda was
+coming and going with their meal, they discussed the little boys, books,
+politics, and the difficulties of the city in the snow.
+
+But when they were alone Annie asked immediately:
+
+"What on earth is the matter with Mama, Alice?"
+
+"You mean about----? Did she tell you?"
+
+"No; she didn't have to. Leslie ran in yesterday afternoon, and told me
+that Mama has been in bed since Saturday! I telephoned Sunday morning,
+but Hendrick and I were taking the boys up to his uncle's house, in
+Westchester, and--as she didn't say one word about being ill--I didn't
+see her that day, nor yesterday, as it happened, for we didn't come down
+until noon. When Leslie came in, there were other people there for tea,
+and I didn't have a chance to speak to her alone. But I went over to
+Mama this morning, and she seems all broken up!"
+
+"What did she tell you?" Alice asked, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, my dear, you know Mama! She wept, and patted my hand, and said that
+it was sad to be the last of your own generation, and she hoped you and
+I would always have each other, and that she had always loved us, and
+tried to do her best for us----"
+
+Alice laughed.
+
+"Poor Mama! She gets so worked up!" she said.
+
+"But what do you make of it?" demanded Annie. "She talked of this Kate
+Sheridan--I remember her perfectly, she came to Paris when I was so
+ill, years ago. Poor Mama cried, and said that she wished to do
+something for Kate. Now you know, Alice," Annie went on reasonably,
+"nobody is tying Mama's hands! If she wants to educate this young
+girl--this Norma person--to please Kate, or all her children for that
+matter, she doesn't have to go into hysterics, and send for Judge Lee.
+She said she didn't feel at all well, and she wanted to secure to Kate
+some money in her will I told her it was ridiculous--she never looked
+better in her life! I wish she could get over to see you, Alice; you
+always soothe her so. What on earth does Chris make of it?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what we've done," Alice smiled. "Chris went to see
+her Sunday, and they had a long talk. He tells me that she was just as
+vague and unsatisfactory as ever, but calmer, and she finally admitted
+that all she really wanted to do was to befriend this niece of Kate
+Sheridan. Of course Chris and I think Mama has one of her funny notions
+about it, but if the child's mother had befriended Mama, for example, a
+thousand years ago, or if Mama had borrowed five dollars from Kate, and
+forgotten to return it, you know that would be enough to account for all
+this excitement."
+
+"Yes, I know!" Annie admitted, with her favourite look of intolerant,
+yet indulgent, scorn.
+
+"Well, it seems the girl is in Biretta's Bookshop, and Chris has often
+bought books of her. So to quiet Mama he promised that he would bring
+her out here to have tea with me some day soon. Mama was delighted, and
+I think she hopes that a friendship will come of it." Alice threw
+herself back into the pillows, and drew a great breath as if she were
+weary. "I only want to please Mama!" she finished.
+
+"You're an angel," Annie said, absently. "I suppose I could get the
+truth out of Mama in five seconds," she mused. "It looks to me rather
+like blackmail!"
+
+"No; she said not!" Alice contradicted, quickly.
+
+"Well, it's all so silly," the elder sister said, impatiently. "And
+coming just now----" she added, significantly.
+
+"Yes. I know!" Alice agreed, with a comprehending look. And in lowered
+tones they began to talk of Leslie's possible engagement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Norma Sheridan saw the engagement announced in a morning paper two weeks
+later, and carried the picture of pretty Miss Melrose home, to entertain
+the dinner table. The news had been made known at a dinner given to
+forty young persons, in the home of the débutante's aunt, Mrs. Hendrick
+von Behrens. Miss Melrose, said the paper, was the daughter and heiress
+of the late Theodore Melrose, and made her home with her grandmother.
+Mr. Liggett was the brother of Christopher Liggett, whose marriage to
+Miss Alice Melrose was a social event some years ago. A number of
+dinners and dances were already planned in honour of the young pair.
+
+Norma looked at the pictured face with a little stir of feelings so
+confused that she could not define them, at her heart. But she passed
+the paper to her aunt with no comment.
+
+"You might send them two dozen kitchen towels, Mother," Wolf suggested,
+drily, and Rose laughed joyously. Her own engagement present from her
+mother had been this extremely practical one, and Rose loved to open her
+lower bureau drawer, and gloat over the incredible richness of
+possessing twenty-four smooth, red-striped, well-hemmed glass-towels,
+all her own. Norma had brought her two thick, dull gray Dedham bowls,
+with ducks waddling around them, and these were in the drawer, too,
+wrapped in tissue paper. And beside these were the length of
+lemon-coloured silk that Rose had had for a year, without making up, and
+six of her mother's fine sheets of Irish linen, and two glass
+candlesticks that Rose had won at a Five-hundred party. Altogether, Rose
+felt that she was making great strides toward home-making, especially as
+she and Harry must wait for months, perhaps a year. Norma had promised
+her two towels a month, until there were a whole dozen, and Wolf,
+prompted by the same generous little heart, told her not to give the
+gas-stove a thought, for she was to have the handsomest one that money
+could buy, with a stand-up oven and a water-heater, from her brother.
+Rose walked upon air.
+
+But Norma was in a mood that she herself seemed unable to understand or
+to combat. She felt a constant inclination toward tears. She didn't hate
+the Melroses--no, they had been most friendly and kind. But--but it was
+a funny world in which one girl had everything, like Leslie, and another
+girl had no brighter prospect than to drudge away in a bookstore all her
+life, or to go out on Sundays with her cousin. Norma dreamed for hours
+of Leslie's life, the ease and warmth and beauty of it, and when Leslie
+was actually heralded as engaged the younger girl felt a pang of the
+first actual jealousy she had ever known. She imagined the beautiful
+drawing-room in which Acton Liggett--perhaps as fascinating a person as
+his brother!--would clasp pearls about Leslie's fair little throat; she
+imagined the shining dinner tables at which Leslie's modestly dropped
+blonde head would be stormed with compliments and congratulations.
+
+And suddenly molasses peppermints and dish-washing became odious to
+her, and she almost disliked Rose for her pitiable ecstasies over china
+bowls and glass-towels. All the pleasant excitement of her call upon
+Mrs. Melrose, with Aunt Kate, died away. It had seemed the beginning of
+some vaguely dreamed-of progress toward a life of beauty and
+achievement, but it was two weeks ago now, and its glamour was fading.
+
+True, Christopher Liggett had come into Biretta's bookstore, with
+Leslie, and he and Norma had talked together for a few minutes, and
+Leslie had extended her Aunt Alice's kind invitation for tea. But no day
+had been set for the tea, Norma reflected gloomily. Now, she supposed,
+the stir of Leslie's engagement would put all that out of Christopher's
+head.
+
+Wolf was not particularly sympathetic with her, she mused,
+disconsolately. Wolf had been acting in an unprecedented manner of late.
+Rose's engagement seemed to have completely turned his head. He laughed
+at Norma, hardly heard her words when she spoke to him, and never moved
+his eyes from her when they were together. Norma could not look up from
+her book, or her plate, or from the study of a Broadway shop window,
+without encountering that same steady, unembarrassed, half-puzzled
+stare.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Wolf?" she would ask, impatiently. But Wolf
+never told her.
+
+As a matter of fact, he did not know. He was a silent, thoughtful
+fellow, old for his years in many ways, and in some still a boy. Norma
+and Rose had known only the more prosperous years of Kate's life, but
+Wolf remembered many a vigil with his mother, remembered her lonely
+struggles to make a living for him and for the girls. He himself was the
+type that inevitably prospers--industrious, good, intelligent, and
+painstaking, but as a young boy in the working world he had early seen
+the terrors in the lives of men about him: drink, dirt, unemployment and
+disease, debt and dishonour. Wolf was not quick of thought; he had
+little imagination, rather marvelling at other men's cleverness than
+displaying any of his own, and he had reached perhaps his twenty-second
+or twenty-third summer before he realized that these terrors did not
+menace him, that whatever changes he made in his work would be
+improvements, steps upward. For actual months after the move to New York
+Wolf had pondered it, in quiet gratitude and pleasure. Rent and bills
+could be paid, there might be theatre treats for the girls, and chicken
+for Sunday supper, and yet the savings account in the Broadway bank
+might grow steadily, too. Far from being a slave to his employer, Wolf
+began to realize that this rather simple person was afraid of him,
+afraid that young Sheridan and some of the other smart, ingenious,
+practically educated men in his employ might recognize too soon their
+own independence.
+
+And when the second summer in New York came, and Wolf could negotiate
+the modest financial deal that gave him and the girls a second-hand
+motor-car to cruise about in on Sundays and holidays, when they could
+picnic up in beautiful Connecticut, or unpack the little fringed red
+napkins far down on the Long Island shore, life had begun to seem very
+pleasant to him. Debt and dirt and all the squalid horrors of what he
+had seen, and what he had read, had faded from his mind, and for awhile
+he had felt that his cup could hold no more.
+
+But now, just lately, there was something else, and although the full
+significance of it had not yet actually dawned upon him, Wolf began to
+realize that a change was near. It was the most miraculous thing that
+had ever come to him, although it concerned only little Norma--only the
+little cousin who had been an actual member of his family for all these
+years.
+
+He had heard his mother say a thousand times that she was pretty; he had
+laughed himself a thousand times at her quick wit. But he had never
+dreamed that it would make his heart come up into his throat and
+suffocate him whenever he thought of her, or that her lightest and
+simplest words, her most casual and unconscious glance, would burn in
+his heart for hours.
+
+During his busy days Wolf found himself musing about this undefined and
+nebulous happiness that began to tremble, like a growing brightness
+behind clouds, through all his days and nights. Had there ever been a
+time, he wondered, when he had taken her for granted, helped her into
+her blessed little coat as coolly as he had Rose? Had it been this same
+Norma who scolded him about throwing his collars on the floor, and who
+had sent his coat to the cleaner with a ten-dollar bill in the pocket?
+
+Wolf remembered summer days, and little Norma chattering beside him on
+the front seat, as the shabby motor-car fled through the hot, dry city
+toward shade and coolness. He remembered early Christmas Mass, and Norma
+and Rose kneeling between him and his mother, in the warm, fir-scented
+church. He remembered breakfast afterward, in a general sense of hunger
+and relaxation and well-being, and the girls exulting over their
+presents. And every time that straight-shouldered, childish figure came
+into his dream, that mop of cloudy dark hair and flashing laugh, the
+new delicious sense of some unknown felicity touched him, and he would
+glance about the busy factory self-consciously, as if his thoughts were
+written on his face for all the world to read.
+
+Wolf had never had a sweetheart. It came to him with the blinding flash
+of all epoch-making discoveries that Norma was his girl--that he wanted
+Norma for his own, and that there was no barrier between them. And in
+the ecstasy of this new vision, which changed the whole face of his
+world, he was content to wait with no special impatience for the hour in
+which he should claim her. Of course Norma must like him--must love him,
+as he did her, unworthy as he felt himself of her, and wonderful as this
+new Norma seemed to be. Wolf, in his simple way, felt that this had been
+his destiny from the beginning.
+
+That a glimpse of life as foreign and unnatural as the Melrose life
+might seriously disenchant Norma never occurred to him. Norma had always
+been fanciful, it was a part of her charm. Wolf, who worked in the great
+Forman shops, had felt it no particular distinction when by chance one
+day he had been called from his luncheon to look at the engine of young
+Stanley Forman's car. He had left his seat upon a pile of lumber, bolted
+the last of his pie, and leaned over the hood of the specially designed
+racer interested only in its peculiarities, and entirely indifferent to
+the respectful young owner, who was aware that he knew far less about it
+than this mechanic did. Sauntering back to his work in the autumn
+sunlight, Wolf had followed the youthful millionaire by not even a
+thought. If he had done so, it might have been a half-contemptuous
+decision that a man who knew so little of engines ought not to drive a
+racer.
+
+So Norma's half-formed jealousies, desires, and dreams were a sealed
+book to him. But this very unreasonableness lent her an odd exotic charm
+in his eyes. She was to Wolf like a baby who wants the moon. The moon
+might be an awkward and useless possession, and the baby much better
+without it, still there is something winning and touching about the
+little imperious mouth and the little upstretched arms.
+
+One night, when he had reached home earlier than either of the girls,
+Wolf was in the warm bright kitchen, alone with his mother. He was
+seated at the end of the scrubbed and bleached little table; Kate at the
+other end was neatly and dexterously packing a yellow bowl with bread
+pudding.
+
+"Do you remember, years and years ago, Mother," Wolf said, chewing a
+raisin, thoughtfully, "that you told me that Norma isn't my real
+cousin?"
+
+Kate's ruddy colour paled a little, and she looked anxious. Not Perseus,
+coming at last in sight of his Gorgon, had a heart more sick with fear
+than hers was at that instant.
+
+"What put that into your head, dear?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. But it's true, isn't it?"
+
+Kate scattered chopped nuts from the bowl of her spoon.
+
+"Yes, it's true," she said. "There's not a drop of the same blood in
+your veins, although I love her as I do you and Rose."
+
+She was silent, and Wolf, idly turning the egg-beater in an empty dish,
+smiled to himself.
+
+"But what made you think of that, Wolf?" his mother asked.
+
+"I don't know!" Wolf did not look at her, but his big handsome face was
+suffused with happy colour. "Harry and Rose, maybe," he admitted.
+
+Kate sat down suddenly, her eyes upon him.
+
+"Not the Baby?" she half whispered.
+
+Her son leaned back in his chair, and folded his big arms across his
+chest. When he looked at her the smile had faded from his face, and his
+eyes were a trifle narrowed, and his mouth set.
+
+"I guess so!" he said, simply. "I guess it's always been--Norma. But I
+didn't always know it. I used to think of her as just another
+sister--like Rose. But I know now that she'll never seem that
+again--never did, really."
+
+He was silent, and Kate sat staring at him in silence.
+
+"Has she any relatives, Mother?"
+
+"Has--what?"
+
+"Has she people--who are they?"
+
+Kate looked at the floor.
+
+"She has no one but me, Son."
+
+"Of course, she's not nineteen, and I don't believe it's ever crossed
+her mind," Wolf said. "I don't think Norma ever had a real affair--just
+kid affairs, like Paul Harrison, and that man at the store who used to
+send her flowers. But I don't believe those count."
+
+"I don't think she ever has," Kate said, heavily getting to her feet,
+and beginning to pour her custard slowly through the packed bread.
+Presently she stopped, and set the saucepan down, her eyes narrowed and
+fixed on space. Then Wolf saw her press the fingers of one hand upon
+her mouth, a sure sign of mental perturbation.
+
+"I know I'm not worthy to tie her little shoes for her, Mother," he
+said, suddenly, and very low.
+
+"There's no woman in the world good enough for you," his mother
+answered, with a troubled laugh. And she gave the top of his head one of
+her rare, brisk kisses as she passed him, on her way out of the room.
+
+Wolf was sufficiently familiar with the domestic routine to know that
+every minute was precious now, and that she was setting the table. But
+his heart was heavy with a vague uneasiness; she had not encouraged him
+very much. She had not accepted this suggestion as she did almost all of
+the young people's ideas, with eager cooperation and sympathy. He sat
+brooding at the kitchen table, her notable lack of enthusiasm chilling
+him, and infusing him with her own doubts.
+
+When she came back, she stood with her back turned to him, busied with
+some manipulation of platters and jars in the ice-box.
+
+"Wolf, dear," she said, "I want to ask you something. The child's too
+young to listen to you--or any one!--now. Promise me--_promise me_, that
+you'll speak to me again before you----"
+
+"Certainly I'll promise that, Mother!" Wolf said, quickly, hurt to the
+soul. She read his tone aright, and came to lay her cheek against his
+hair.
+
+"Listen to me, Son. Since the day her mother gave her to me I've hoped
+it would be this way! But there's nothing to be gained by hurry.
+You----"
+
+"But you would be glad, Mother! You do think that she might have me?"
+poor Wolf said, eagerly and humbly. He was amazed to see tears brimming
+his mother's eyes as she nodded and turned away.
+
+Before either spoke again a rush in the hall announced the home-coming
+girls, who entered the kitchen gasping and laughing with the cold.
+
+"Whew!" panted Norma, catching Wolf's hands in her own half-frozen ones.
+"I'm dying! Oh, Wolf, feel my nose!" She pressed it against his
+forehead. "Oh, there's a wind like a knife--and look at my shoe--in I
+went, right through the ice! Oh, Aunt Kate, let me stay here!" and
+locking both slender arms about the older woman's neck, she dropped her
+dark, shining head upon her breast like a storm-blown bird. "It's four
+below zero in Broadway this minute," she added, looking sidewise under
+her curling lashes at Wolf.
+
+"Who said so?" Wolf demanded.
+
+"The man I bought that paper from said so; go back and ask him. Oh, joy,
+that looks good!" said Norma, eyeing the pudding that was now being
+drawn, crackling, bubbling, and crisp, from the oven. "Rose and I fell
+over the new lineoleum in the hall; I thought it was a dead body!" she
+went on, cheerfully. "I came _down_ on my family feature with such a
+noise that I thought the woman downstairs would be rattling the
+dumb-waiter ropes again long before this!" She stepped to the
+dumb-waiter, and put her head into the shaft. "What is it, darling?" she
+called.
+
+"Norma, behave yourself. It would serve you good and right if she heard
+you," Mrs. Sheridan said, in a panic. "Go change your shoes, and come
+and eat your dinner. I believe," her aunt added, pausing near her, "that
+you _did_ skin your nose in the hall."
+
+"Oh, heavens!" Norma exclaimed, bringing her face close to the dark
+window, as to a mirror. "Oh, say it will be gone by Friday! Because on
+Friday I'm going to have tea with Mrs. Liggett--her husband came in
+to-day and asked me. Oh, the darling! He certainly is the--well, the
+most--well, I don't know!----His voice, and the quiet, _quiet_ way----"
+
+"Oh, for pity's sake go change your shoes!" Rose interrupted. "You are
+the biggest idiot! I went into the store to get her," Rose explained,
+"and I've had all this once, in the subway. How Mr. Liggett picks up his
+glasses, on their ribbon, to read the titles of books----"
+
+"Oh, you shut up!" Norma called, departing. And unashamed, when dinner
+was finished, and the table cleared, she produced a pack of cards and
+said that she was going to play _The Idle Year_.
+
+"... and if I get it, it'll mean that the man I marry is going to look
+exactly like Chris Liggett."
+
+She did not get it, and played it again. The third time she interrupted
+Wolf's slow and patient perusal of the _Scientific American_ to announce
+that she was now going to play it to see if he was in love with Mary
+Redding.
+
+"Think how nice that would be, Aunt Kate, a double wedding. And if Wolf
+or Rose died and left a lot of children, the other one would always be
+there to take in whoever was left--you know what I mean!"
+
+"You're the one Wolf ought to marry, to make it complete," Rose, who was
+neatly marking a cross-stitch "R" on a crash towel, retaliated neatly.
+
+"I can't marry my cousin, Miss Smarty."
+
+"Oh, don't let a little thing like that worry you," Wolf said, looking
+across the table.
+
+"Our children would be idiots--perhaps they would be, anyway!" Norma
+reminded him, in a gale of laughter. Her aunt looked up disapprovingly
+over her glasses.
+
+"Baby, don't talk like that. That's not a nice way to talk at all. Wolf,
+you lead her on. Now, we'll not have any more of that, if you please. I
+see the President is making himself very unpopular, Wolf--I don't know
+why they all make it so hard for the poor man! Mrs. McCrea was in the
+market this morning----"
+
+"If I win this game, Rose, by this time next year," Norma said, in an
+undertone, "you'll have----"
+
+"Norma Sheridan!"
+
+"Yes, Aunt Kate!"
+
+"Do you want me to speak to you again?"
+
+"No, ma'am!"
+
+Norma subsided for a brief space, Rose covertly watching the game.
+Presently the younger girl burst forth anew.
+
+"Listen, Wolf, I'll bet you that I can get more words out of the letters
+in Christopher than you can!"
+
+Wolf roused himself, smiled, took out his fountain pen, and reached for
+a sheet of paper. He was always ready for any sort of game. Norma,
+bending herself to the contest, put her pencil into her mouth, and
+stared fixedly at the green-shaded drop light. Rose, according to
+ancient precedent, was permitted to assist evenly and alternately.
+
+And Kate, watching them and listening, even while she drowsed over the
+Woman's Page, decided that after all they were nothing but a pack of
+children.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+To Leslie Melrose had come the very happiest time of her life. She had
+always had everything she wanted; it had never occurred to her to
+consider a fortunate marriage engagement as anything but a matter of
+course, in her case. She was nineteen, she was "mad," in her own terms,
+about Acton Liggett, and the engagement was the natural result.
+
+But the ensuing events were far more delightful than Leslie had dreamed,
+even in her happy dreams. All her world turned from its affairs of
+business and intrigue and amusement to centre its attention upon her
+little person for the moment, and to shower her with ten times enough
+flattery and praise to turn a much steadier head. Presents rained upon
+Leslie, and every one of them was astonishingly handsome and valuable;
+newspapers clamoured for her picture, and wherever she went she was
+immediately the focus for all eyes. That old Judge Lee should send her
+some of his mother's beautiful diamonds; that Christopher and Alice
+should order for her great crates of specially woven linen that were
+worthy of a queen; that Emanuel Massaro, the painter of the hour, should
+ask her to sit for him, were all just so much sheer pleasure added to
+the sum total of her happiness in loving the man of her choice and
+knowing herself beloved by him.
+
+Leslie found herself, for the first time in her life, a person of
+importance with Aunt Annie, too. The social leader found time to advise
+her little niece in the new contingencies that were perpetually arising,
+lent Leslie her private secretary for the expeditious making of lists or
+writing of notes, and bullied her own autocratic modiste into promising
+at least half of the trousseau. It was Annie who decided that the
+marriage must be at a certain Park Avenue church, and at a certain hour,
+and that the reception at the house must be arranged in a certain
+manner, and no other. Hendrick or Judge Lee would give away the bride,
+Christopher would be his brother's best man, and Leslie would be given
+time to greet her guests and change her gown and be driven to Alice's
+house for just one kiss before she and Acton went away.
+
+Acton had begged for an Easter wedding, but Leslie, upon her aunt's
+advice, held out for June. If the war was over by that time--and
+everyone said it must be, for so hideous a combat could not possibly
+last more than six or eight months--then they would go to England and
+the Continent, but otherwise they might drift through Canada to the
+Pacific Coast, and even come back by San Francisco and the newly opened
+Canal.
+
+Meanwhile, Annie entertained her niece royally and untiringly. Formal
+dinners to old family friends must come first, but when spring arrived
+Leslie was promised house parties and yachting trips more after her own
+heart. The girl was so excited, so bewildered and tired, even after the
+first two weeks, that she remained in bed until noon every day, and had
+a young maid especially detailed to take her dressmaker's fittings for
+her. But even so she lost weight, her cheeks burned and her eyes
+glittered feverishly, and her voice took an unnaturally high key, her
+speech a certain shallow quickness. Acton's undeviating adoration she
+took with a pretty, spoiled acquiescence, and with old family friends
+she was charmingly dutiful and deferential, but always with the air of
+sparing a few glittering drops to their age and dulness from the
+overflowing cup of her youth and beauty and power. But with her
+grandmother and aunts she had a new attitude of self-confidence, and to
+her girl friends she was no longer the old intimate and equal, but a
+being who had, for the moment at least, left them all behind. She would
+show them the new silver, the new linens, the engagement-time frocks
+that were in themselves a trousseau, and wish that Doris or Marion or
+Virginia were engaged, too; it was such fun! And with older women, the
+débutantes of six and eight and ten years ago, who had failed of all
+this glory, who could only listen sweetly to the chatter of plans and
+honours, and look in uncomplaining admiration at the blazing ring,
+Leslie was quite merciless. The number of times that she managed to
+mention her age, the fact that Madame Modiste had tried to give her
+fittings after three o'clock under the impression that she was a
+schoolgirl, and the "craziness" of "little me" going over all the late
+Mrs. Liggett's chests of silver and china, perhaps only these
+unsuccessful candidates for matrimony could estimate. Certainly Leslie
+herself was quite unconscious of it, and truly believed what she heard
+on all sides, that she was "adorable," and "not changed one bit," and
+"just as unconscious that there was anything else in the world but
+Acton, as a little girl with her first doll."
+
+Christopher and Alice, in the first years of their married life, had
+built a home at Glen Cove, and Christopher made this his wedding
+present to his brother. Necessarily, even the handsomest of country
+homes, if ten years old, needs an almost complete renovation, and this
+renovation Acton and Leslie, guided by a famous architect, began
+rapturously to plan, reserving a beautiful apartment not far from Alice
+in Park Avenue for autumn furnishing and refitting.
+
+All these activities and interests kept the lovers busy, and kept them
+apart indeed, or united them only in groups of other people. But Acton
+could bring his pretty sweetheart home from a dinner now and then, and
+come into the old Melrose house for a precious half hour of murmuring
+talk, or could sometimes persuade her to leave a tea or a matinée early
+enough to walk a few blocks with him.
+
+In this fashion they slipped away from a box party one Friday afternoon,
+and found themselves walking briskly northward, into the neighbourhood
+of Alice's house. Leslie had had, for several days, a rather guilty
+feeling in regard to this lovely aunt. It was really hard, rising at
+noon, and trying to see and please so many persons, to keep in close
+touch with the patient and uncomplaining invalid, who had to depend
+wholly upon the generosity of those she loved for knowledge of them. So
+Leslie was glad to suggest, and Acton glad to agree, that they had
+better go in and see Aunt Alice for a few minutes.
+
+As usual, Mrs. Liggett had company, although it proved only to be the
+pretty Miss Sheridan who had called upon Leslie's grandmother on the
+first day of that mysterious indisposition that had kept the old lady
+bedridden almost ever since.
+
+Alice looked oddly tired, but her eyes were shining brightly, and Norma
+was charmingly happy and at ease. She jumped up to shake hands with
+Acton with a bright comment that he was not in the _least_ like his
+brother, and recalled herself to Leslie before offering her all sorts of
+good wishes. Norma, hoping that it would some day occur, had indeed
+anticipated this meeting with Leslie by a little mental consideration of
+what she should say, but the effect was so spontaneous and sincere that
+the four were enabled to settle down comfortably to tea, in a few
+moments, like old friends.
+
+"Miss Sheridan--or Norma, rather--and I have been having a perfectly
+delicious talk," said Alice. "She loves Christina Rossetti, and she knew
+the 'Hound of Heaven' by heart, and she has promised to send me a new
+man's work that sounds delightful--what was it? Something about General
+Booth?"
+
+"If I haven't chattered you to death!" Norma said, penitentially. And
+Leslie added: "Aunt Alice, you _do_ look tired! Not that talking poetry
+ever would tire you!" she hastened to add, with a smile for Norma.
+
+"No, I'm not--or rather, I was, but I feel wonderfully!" Alice said.
+"Pour the tea, Kitten. What have you two little adventurers been doing
+with yourselves?"
+
+"Mrs. Dupré's party--Yvette Guilbert," Leslie said. "She is quite too
+wonderful!"
+
+"I've always wanted to see her, and I've always known I would adore
+her," Norma interpolated, dreamily.
+
+Alice glanced at her quickly.
+
+"Does she give another matinée, Leslie?"
+
+"Two----" Leslie looked at Acton. "Is it two weeks from to-day?" she
+questioned.
+
+"I'll send you seats for it," Alice said, making a little note on her
+ivory memoranda pages, as she nodded to Norma. The colour rushed into
+Norma's face, and she bit her lip.
+
+"But, Mrs. Liggett--honestly--I truly didn't mean--I only meant----" she
+began to stammer, half laughing. Alice laid her hand upon Norma's
+reassuringly.
+
+"My dear, you know I don't think you hinted! But I want to do it. I
+can't"--Alice said, smiling--"I can't do anything for little Miss
+Aladdin here, and it gives me the greatest pleasure, now and then----"
+
+"I want to tell you something about Mrs. Liggett," Acton said; "she's
+got a grasping nature and a mean soul--you can see that! She's the
+limit, all right!" He smiled down at her as he gave her her teacup, and
+Leslie laughed outright. Acton was a person of few words, but when he
+chose to talk, Leslie found his manner amusing. Christopher, coming up
+to join them fifteen minutes later, said that from the noise they made
+he had supposed at least fifty persons to be in his wife's room.
+
+Did Norma, as she gave the master of the house her hand, have sudden
+memory of all her recent absurd extravagances in his name--the games,
+the surmises, the wild statements that had had Chris Liggett as their
+inspiration? If she did, she gave no sign of it beyond the bright flush
+with which she greeted her oldest acquaintance in this group.
+Christopher sat down, content to be a listener and an onlooker, as he
+sipped his tea, but Norma saw that his wife's look of white fatigue made
+him uneasy, and immediately said that she must go.
+
+He made no protest, but said that the car was at the door, and she must
+let him send her home. Norma agreed, and Acton asked if he and Leslie
+might not use it, too. The three departed in high spirits, Alice
+detaining the radiant and excited Norma long enough to exact from her
+the promise of another visit soon, and to send an affectionate message
+to Mrs. Sheridan from "Miss Alice." Then they went down to the big car,
+an exciting and delightful experience to Norma.
+
+Leslie was left first, and Acton, pleading that he was already late for
+another engagement, was dropped at his club. Then Norma had the car to
+herself, and as it smoothly flew toward the humble doorway of the
+Sheridans, could giggle, almost aloud, in her pleasure and exhilaration
+at an afternoon that had gone without a single awkward minute, all
+pleasant, harmonious, and vaguely flattering. And the wonderful Mrs.
+Liggett had asked her to come soon again, and had made that delightful
+suggestion about the concert. The name of Yvette Guilbert meant little
+to Norma, but the thought that Alice Liggett really wanted to hold her
+friendship was nothing less than intoxicating.
+
+She looked out of the car, the streets were bare of snow now, there was
+not a leaf showing in the park, and the ground was dark and unpromising.
+But a cool, steady wind was blowing through the lingering twilight, men
+were running after rolling hats, and at least the milliners' windows
+were radiant with springtime bloom. Children were playing in Norma's
+street, wrapped and muffled children, wild with joy to be out of doors
+again, and a tiny frail little moon was floating in the opal sky just
+above the grim line of roofs. Norma looked up at it, and the pure
+blowing air touched her hot face, and her heart sang with the sheer joy
+of living.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Christopher had gone down to the door with his brother and the girls,
+and had sent a glance up and down the quiet, handsome block, feeling in
+the moving air what Norma felt, what all the city felt--the bold, wild
+promise of spring. He turned back into the house with something like a
+sigh; Acton and Leslie in their young happiness were somehow a little
+haunting to-night.
+
+The butler was starting upstairs with the papers; Christopher took them
+from him, and went back to Alice's room with his eyes idly following the
+headlines. The pretty apartment was somewhat disordered, and looked dull
+and dark in the half light. Christopher walked to a window, and pushed
+it open upon its railed balcony.
+
+"Chris!" whispered his wife's voice, thick and dry in the gloom.
+
+Aghast in the instant apprehension of something wrong, he sprang to her
+couch, dropped to his knees, and put an arm about her.
+
+"Alice! What is it, my darling?"
+
+She struggled for speech, and he could see that her face was ashen.
+
+"Chris--no, don't ring. Chris, _who is that girl_?"
+
+Christopher touched the chain that flooded the couch with rosy light. He
+bent in eager sympathy over his wife's relaxed form.
+
+"Alice, what is it?" he asked, tenderly. "Don't worry, dear, don't try
+to talk too fast! Just tell Chris what frightened you----"
+
+Alice laughed wretchedly as she detached the fingers he had pressed
+anxiously upon her forehead.
+
+"No, I'm not feverish!" she assured him, holding tight to his hand. "But
+I want you to tell me, Chris, I must know--and no matter what promise
+you have given Mother--or given any one----"
+
+"Now, now, now!" he soothed her. "I'll tell you anything, sweetheart,
+only don't let yourself get so excited. Just tell me what it is, Alice,
+and I'll do anything in the world for you, of course!"
+
+"Chris," she said, swallowing with a dry throat, and sitting up with an
+air of regaining self-control, "you must tell me. You know you can trust
+me, you _know_----! That girl----"
+
+"But _what_ girl--what are you talking about, dear? Do--do try to be
+just a little clearer, and calmer----"
+
+"Who"--said Alice, with a ghastly look, sweeping the hair back from her
+damp forehead--"who is that Norma Sheridan?"
+
+"Why, I told you, dear, that I don't know," her husband protested. "I
+told you weeks ago, after your mother made that scene, the night of
+Hendrick's speech, that I couldn't make head or tail of it!"
+
+"Chris"--Alice was regarding him fixedly--"you _must_ know!"
+
+"Dearest, couldn't your mother simply wish to befriend a girl whose
+parents----"
+
+Alice flung her loosened hair back, and at her gesture and her glance at
+the little carafe on her table he poured her a glass of cold water.
+Drinking it off, and raising herself in her cushions, she stretched her
+hand to touch the chair beside her, and still without a word indicated
+that he was to take it. With a face of grave concern Christopher sat
+down beside her, holding her hands in both his own.
+
+"Chris," she said, clearly and quickly, if with occasional catches of
+breath, "the minute that girl came into the room I knew that--I knew
+that _horror_ had come upon us all! I knew that she was one of us--one
+of us Melroses, somehow----"
+
+"Alice!" he said, pleadingly.
+
+"But Mama," she said, with a keen look, "didn't tell you that?"
+
+"She told me only what I told you that night, on my honour as a
+gentleman! Alice, what makes you say what you do?"
+
+"Ah, Chris," his wife cried, almost frantically, "look at her! _Look_ at
+her! Why, her voice is Annie's, the same identical voice--she looks like
+my father, like Theodore--she looks like us all! She and Leslie were so
+much alike, as they sat there, in spite of the colouring, that I almost
+screamed it at them! Surely--surely, you see it--everyone sees it!"
+
+He stared at her, beginning to breathe a little quickly in his turn.
+
+"By George!" she heard him whisper, as if to himself.
+
+"Do you see it, Chris?" Alice whispered, almost fearfully.
+
+"But--but----" He got up and walked restlessly to the window, and came
+back to sit down again. "But there's a cousinship somewhere," he said,
+sensibly. "There's no reason to suppose that the thing can't be
+explained. I do think you're taking this thing pretty hard, my dear.
+What can you possibly suppose? There might be a hundred girls----"
+
+His voice fell. Alice was watching him expectantly.
+
+"Mama felt it--saw it--as I do," she said. "You may be very sure that
+Mama wouldn't have almost lost her mind, as she did, unless something
+had given her cause!"
+
+They looked at each other in silence, in the utter silence of the
+lovely, cool-toned room.
+
+"Alice," Chris said in a puzzled voice after awhile, "you suspect me of
+keeping something from you. But on my honour you know all that your
+mother told me--all that I know!"
+
+"Oh, Chris," she said, with a sort of wail. "If I don't know more!"
+
+Her husband's slow colour rose.
+
+"How could you know more?" he asked, bewilderedly.
+
+Alice was unhappily silent.
+
+"Chris, if I tell you what I'm afraid of--what I fear," she said,
+presently, after anxious thought, "will you promise me never, never to
+speak of it--never even to think of it!--if it--if it proves not to be
+true?"
+
+"I don't have to tell you that, Alice," he said.
+
+"No, of course you don't--of course you don't!" she echoed with a
+nervous laugh. "I'll tell you what I think, Chris--what has been almost
+driving me mad--and you can probably tell me a thousand reasons why it
+can't be so! You see, I've never understood Mama's feverish distress
+these last weeks. She's been to see me, she's done what had to be done
+about Leslie's engagement, but she's not herself--you can see that!
+Yesterday she began to cry, almost for nothing, and when I happened to
+mention--or rather when I mentioned very deliberately--that Miss
+Sheridan was coming here, she almost shrieked. Well, I didn't know what
+to make of it, and even then I rather wondered----
+
+"Even then," Alice began again, after a painful pause, and with her own
+voice rising uncontrollably, "I suspected something. But not this! Oh,
+Chris, if I'm wrong about this, I shall be on my knees for gratitude for
+the rest of my life; I would die, I would die to have it just--just my
+wretched imagination!--A thing like this--to us--the Melroses--who have
+always been so straight--so respected!"
+
+"Now, Alice--now, Alice!"
+
+"Yes, I know!" she said, quickly. "I know!" And for a moment she lay
+back quietly, stroking his hand. "Chris," she resumed, composedly, after
+a moment, "you know the tragedy of Annie's life?"
+
+Chris, taken by surprise, frowned.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so," he admitted, unwillingly.
+
+"Chris, did it ever occur to you that she might have had a child--by
+that fiend?"
+
+Chris looked at his wife a moment, and his eyes widened, and his mouth
+twitched humorously.
+
+"Oh, come now, Alice--come now!"
+
+"You think it's folly!" she asked, eagerly.
+
+"Worse!" he answered, briefly, his eyes smiling reproach.
+
+Alice's whole tense body relaxed, and she stared at him with light
+dawning in her eyes.
+
+"Well, probably it is," she said, very simply.
+
+"Of course it is," Chris said. "Now, you are dead tired, dear, and you
+have let the thing mill about in your head until you can't see anything
+normally. I confess that I don't understand your mother's mysterious
+nervousness, but then I am free to say that I don't by any means always
+understand your mother! You remember the pearl episode, and the time
+that she had Annie and Hendrick cabling from Italy--because Hendrick
+Junior had a rash! And then there was Porter--a boy nineteen years old,
+and she actually had everyone guessing exactly what she felt toward
+him----"
+
+"Oh, Chris, no, she didn't! She simply felt that he was a genius, and he
+hadn't a penny," Alice protested, reproachful and hurt.
+
+"Well, she had him there at the house until his mother came after him,
+and then, when he finally was sent abroad, she asked me seriously if I
+thought two hundred dollars a month was enough for his musical
+education!"
+
+"Yes, I know!" Alice said, ruefully, shaking her head.
+
+"Now this comes along," said Christopher, encouraged by the effect of
+his words, "and you begin to fret your poor little soul with all sorts
+of wild speculations. I wish to the Lord that your mother was a little
+bit more trusting with her confidences, but when it all comes out it'll
+prove to be some sister of your grandfather who married a tailor or
+something, and left a line of pretty girls to work in Biretta's----"
+
+"But, Chris, she reminded me so of Annie to-day I almost felt _sick_,"
+Alice said, still frightened and dubious.
+
+"Well, that merely shows that you're soft-hearted; it's no reflection on
+Annie!" Chris said, giving her her paper, and opening his own. But
+Alice did not open her paper.
+
+A maid came in, and moved about noiselessly setting chairs and rugs in
+order. Another soft light was lighted and the little square table set
+before the fire. The cool fresh air drifted in at the half-open window,
+and sent a delicate breath, from Alice's great bowl of freesia lilies,
+through the peaceful room. The fire snapped smartly about a fresh log,
+and Alice's great tortoise-shell cat came to make a majestic spring into
+her lap.
+
+"Chris--I'm so worried!" said his wife.
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Christopher, quietly, after a while,
+"did----Annie was very ill, I know, but was there--was there any reason
+to suppose that there might have been--that such a situation as to-day's
+might have arisen?"
+
+Alice looked at him with apprehension dawning afresh.
+
+"Oh, yes--that is, I believe so. I didn't know it then, of course."
+
+"I never knew that," Christopher said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Well, I didn't at the time, you know. It was--of course it was
+sixteen--eighteen years ago," Alice said. And in a whisper she added,
+"Chris, that girl is eighteen!"
+
+Christopher pursed his lips to whistle, but made no sound, and looked
+into the fire.
+
+"You see I was only about thirteen or fourteen," Alice said. "I was
+going to Miss Bennet's school, and we were all living in the Madison
+Avenue house. Papa had been dead only a year, or less, for I remember
+that Annie was eighteen, and wasn't going out much, because of mourning.
+Theodore had been worrying Mama to death, and had left the house then,
+and Mama was sending him and his wife money, I believe, but of course
+lots of that was kept from me. Annie was terribly wild and excitable
+then, always doing reckless things; I can remember when she and Belle
+Duer dressed up as boys and had their pictures taken, and once they put
+a matrimonial advertisement in the papers--of course they were just
+silly--at least that was. But then she began to rave about this man
+Müller----"
+
+"The acrobat!" Christopher, who was listening intently, supplied.
+
+"No, dearest! He was their riding master--I suppose that isn't much
+better, really. But he was an extremely handsome man--really stunning.
+Carry Winchester's mother forbade her taking any more lessons because
+_she_ was so wild about him, and Annie told me once that that was why
+Ida Burnett was popped into a boarding school. He was big, and dark, and
+he had a slight foreign accent, and he was ever so much older than
+Annie--forty, at least. She began to spend all her time at the riding
+club; it used to make Mama wild--especially as Annie was so headstrong
+and saucy about it! Poor Mama, I remember her crying and complaining!"
+
+"And how long did this go on?" Christopher asked.
+
+"Oh, weeks! Well, and then one hot day, just before Easter vacation it
+was, I remember, I came home early from school with a headache, and when
+I reached the upper hall I could hear Mama crying, and Annie shouting
+out loud, and this Kate--this very same Kate Sheridan!--trying to quiet
+Mama, and everything in an uproar! Finally I heard Annie sobbing--I was
+frightened to death of course, and I sat down on the stairs that go up
+to the nursery--and I heard Annie say something about being
+eighteen--and she was eighteen the very day before; and she ran by me,
+in her riding clothes, with the derby hat that girls used to wear then,
+and her hair clubbed on her neck, and she ran downstairs, and I could
+hear her crying, and saying to herself: 'I'll show them; I'll show
+them!' And that was the last I saw of her," Alice finished sadly, "for
+almost two years."
+
+"She went out?" Christopher asked.
+
+"Yes; she slammed the door. Mama fainted."
+
+"Of course!"
+
+"Oh, Chris," said his wife, half crying, "wasn't that enough to make any
+one faint?--let alone Mama. Anyway, she was dreadfully ill, and they
+rather shut me up about it, and told everyone that Annie had gone
+abroad. We had been living very quietly, you know, and nobody cared much
+what Annie did, then. And she really had gone abroad, she wrote Mama
+from Montreal, and she had been married to Emil Müller in Albany. They
+had taken a train there, and were married that same afternoon. They went
+to London, and they were in Germany, and then--then it all broke up, you
+know about that!"
+
+"How much later was that?"
+
+Alice considered.
+
+"It was about Christmas time. Don't you remember that I went to your
+mother, and Acton and I got measles? Mama was abroad then."
+
+"And this Kate went with her?"
+
+"Yes. That was--that was one of the things I was--just thinking about!
+Annie wrote Mama that she was very ill, in Munich, and poor Mama just
+flew. Müller had left her; indeed there was a woman and two quite big
+girls that had a claim on him, and if Mama hadn't been so anxious to
+shut it all up, she might have proved that he was a bigamist--but I
+don't know that she was ever sure. Judge Lee put the divorce through for
+Annie, and Mama took her to the Riviera and petted her, and pulled her
+through. But all her hair came out, and for weeks they didn't think she
+would live. She had brain fever. You see, Annie had had some money
+waiting for her on her eighteenth birthday, and your own father, who was
+her guardian, Chris, had given her the check--interest, it was, about
+seven or eight thousand dollars. And he told her to open her own
+account, and manage her own income, from then on. And we thought--Mama
+and I--that in some way Müller must have heard of it. Anyway, she never
+deposited the check, and when her money gave out he just left her."
+
+"But what makes you think that her illness didn't commence--or wasn't
+entirely--brain fever?"
+
+"That she might have had a baby?" Alice asked, outright.
+
+Christopher nodded, the point almost insufferably distasteful to him.
+
+"Oh, I know it!" Alice said.
+
+"You _know_ it?" the man echoed, almost in displeasure.
+
+"Yes, she told me herself! But of course that was years later. At the
+time, all I knew was that Kate Sheridan came home, and came to see me at
+school, and told me that Mama and Annie were very well, but that Annie
+had been frightfully sick, and that Mama wouldn't come back until Annie
+was much stronger. As a matter of fact, it was nearly two
+years--Theodore took me over to them a year from that following summer,
+and then Annie stayed with some friends in England; she was having a
+wonderful time! But years afterward, when little Hendrick was coming, in
+fact, she was here one day, and she seemed to feel blue, and finally I
+happened to say that if motherhood seemed so hard to a person like
+herself, whose husband and whose whole family were so mad with joy over
+the prospect of a baby, what on earth must it be to the poor girls who
+have every reason to hate it. And she looked at me rather oddly, and
+said: 'Ah, I know what _that_ is!' Of course I guessed right away what
+she meant, and I said: 'Annie--not really!' And she said: 'Oh, yes, that
+was what started my illness. I had been so almost crazy--so blue and
+lonesome, and so sick with horror at the whole thing, that it all
+happened too soon, the day after Mama and Kate got there, in fact!' And
+then she burst out crying and said: 'Thank God it was that way! I
+couldn't have faced _that_.' And she said that she had been too
+desperately ill to realize anything, but that afterward, at Como, when
+she was much better, she asked Mama about it, and Mama said she must
+only be glad that it was all over, and try to think of it as a terrible
+dream!"
+
+"Well, there you are," said Chris, "she herself says that no child was
+born!"
+
+"Yes, but, Chris, mightn't it be that she didn't know?" Alice submitted,
+timidly.
+
+Her husband eyed her with a faint and thoughtful frown.
+
+"It seems to me that that is rather a fantastic theory, dear! Where
+would this child be all this time?"
+
+"Kate" Alice said, simply.
+
+"Kate!" he echoed, struck. And Alice saw, with a sinking heart, that he
+was impressed. After a full moment of silence he said, simply: "You
+think this is the child?"
+
+"Chris," his wife cried, appealingly, "I don't say I think so! But it
+occurred to me that it might be. I hope, with all my soul, that you
+don't think so!"
+
+"I'm afraid," he answered, thoughtfully, "that I do!"
+
+Alice's eyes filled with tears, and she tightened her fingers in his
+without speaking.
+
+"The idea being," Christopher mused, "that Mrs. Sheridan brought the
+baby home, and has raised her. That makes Miss Sheridan--Norma--the
+child of Annie and that German blackguard!"
+
+"I suppose so!" Alice admitted, despairingly.
+
+"But why has it been kept quiet all this time!"
+
+"Well, that," Alice said, "I don't understand. But this I _am_ sure of:
+Annie hasn't the faintest suspicion of it! She supposes that the whole
+thing ended with her terrible illness. She was only eighteen, and
+younger and more childish even than Leslie is! Oh, Chris," said Alice,
+her eyes watering, "isn't it horrible! To come to us, of all people!
+Will everybody know?"
+
+"Well, it all depends. It's a nasty sort of business, but I suppose
+there's no help for it. How much does Hendrick know?"
+
+"About Annie? Oh, everything that she does; I know that. Annie told him,
+and Judge Lee told him about Müller and the divorce, or nullification,
+or whatever it was! There was nothing left unexplained there. But if the
+child lived, she didn't know that--only Mama did, and Kate. Oh, poor
+Annie, it would kill her to have all that raked up now! Why Kate kept it
+secret all these years----"
+
+"I must say," Christopher exclaimed, "that----By George, I hate this
+sort of thing! No help for it, I suppose. But if it gets out we shall
+all be in for a sweet lot of notoriety. We shall just have to make terms
+with these Sheridans, and keep our mouths shut. I didn't get the idea
+that they were holding your mother up. I believe it's more that she
+wants justice done; she would, you know, for the sake of the family. The
+girl herself, this Norma, evidently hasn't been raised on any
+expectations--probably knows nothing about it!"
+
+"Oh, I'm sure of that!" Alice agreed, eagerly. "And if she has Melrose
+blood in her, you may be sure she'll play the game. But, Chris, I can't
+stand the uncertainty. Mama's coming to have luncheon with me to-morrow,
+and I'm going to ask her outright. And if this Norma is really--what we
+fear, what do you think we ought to do?"
+
+"Well, it's hard to say. It's all utterly damnable," Christopher said,
+distressed. "And Annie, who let us all in for it, gets off scot free! I
+wish, since she let it go so long, that your mother had forgotten it
+entirely. But, as it is, this child isn't, strictly speaking,
+illegitimate. There was a marriage, and some sort of divorce, whether
+Müller deceived Annie as to his being a bachelor or not!"
+
+A maid stood in the doorway.
+
+"Mrs. Melrose, Mrs. Liggett."
+
+"Oh," Alice said, in an animated tone of pleasure, "ask her to come
+upstairs!" But the eyes she turned to her husband were full of
+apprehension. "Chris, here's Mama now! Shall we----? Would you dare?"
+
+"Use your own judgment!" he had time to say hastily, before his wife's
+mother came in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Mrs. Melrose frequently came in to join Alice for dinner, especially
+when she was aware, as to-night, that Christopher had an evening
+engagement. She was almost always sure of finding Annie alone, and
+enjoying the leisurely confidences that were crowded out of the daytime
+hours.
+
+She had had several weeks of nervous illness now, but looked better
+to-night, looked indeed her handsome and comfortable self, as she
+received Chris's filial kiss on her forehead, and bent to embrace her
+daughter. Freda carried away her long fur-trimmed cloak, and she pushed
+her veil up to her forehead, and looked with affectionate concern from
+husband to wife.
+
+"Now, Chris, I'm spoiling things! But I thought Carry Pope told me that
+you were going to her dinner before the opera!"
+
+"I'm due there at eight," he said, reassuringly. "And by the same token,
+I ought to be dressing! But Alice and I have been loafing along here
+comfortably, and I'd give about seven dollars to stay at home with my
+wife!"
+
+"He always says that!" Alice said, smilingly. "But he always has a nice
+time; and then the next night he plays over the whole score, and tells
+me who was there, and so I have it, too!"
+
+Chris had walked to the white mantelpiece, and was lighting a
+cigarette.
+
+"Alice had that little protégée of yours here, to-day, Aunt Marianna,"
+he said, casually.
+
+There was no mistaking the look of miserable and fearful interest that
+deepened instantly in the older woman's eyes.
+
+"Miss Sheridan?" she said.
+
+"Mama," Alice exclaimed, suddenly, clasping a warm hand over her
+mother's trembling one, and looking at her with all love and
+reassurance, "you know how Chris and I love you, don't you?"
+
+Tears came into Mrs. Melrose's eyes.
+
+"Of course I do, lovey," she faltered.
+
+"Mama, you know how we would stand behind you--how anxious we are to
+share whatever's worrying you!" Alice went on, pleadingly. "Can't
+you--I'm not busy like Annie, or young like Leslie, and Chris is your
+man of business, after all! Can't you tell us about it? Two heads--three
+heads," said Alice, smiling through a sudden mist of tears, "are better
+than one!"
+
+"Why," Mrs. Melrose stammered, with a rather feeble attempt at
+lightness, "have I been acting like a person with something on her mind?
+It's nothing, children, nothing at all. Don't bother your dear, generous
+hearts about it another second!"
+
+And she looked from one to another with a gallant smile.
+
+Chris eyed his wife with a faint, hopeless movement of the head, and
+Alice correctly interpreted it to mean that the situation was worse
+instead of better.
+
+"You remember the night you sent for me, some weeks ago, Aunt Marianna?"
+he ventured. Mrs. Melrose moistened her lips, and swallowed with a dry
+throat, looking at him with a sort of alert defiance.
+
+"I confess that I was all upset that night," she admitted, bravely. "And
+to tell you children the truth, Kate Sheridan coming upon me so
+unexpectedly----"
+
+"Joseph quite innocently told me that evening that you had anticipated
+her coming!" Christopher said, quietly, as she paused.
+
+"Joseph was mistaken!" Mrs. Melrose said, warmly, with red colour
+beginning to burn in her soft, faded old face. "Kate had been associated
+with a terrible time in my life," she went on, almost angrily. "And it
+was quite natural--or at least it seems so to me!--I don't know what
+other people would feel, but to _me_----But what are you two
+cross-examining me for?" she interrupted herself to ask, with a sudden
+rush of tears, as Chris looked unconvinced, and Alice still watched her
+sorrowfully. "Little do you know, either of you, what I have been
+through----"
+
+"Mama," entreated Alice, earnestly, "will you answer me one question? I
+promise you that I won't ask another. You know how anxious we are only
+to help you, to make everything run smoothly. You know what the family
+is--to us. Don't you _see_ we are?" Alice asked suddenly, seeing that
+the desire for sympathy and advice was rapidly breaking up the ice that
+had chilled her mother's heart for long weeks. "Won't you tell me just
+this--it's about Annie, Mama. When she was so ill in Munich. Was--was
+her little baby born there?"
+
+"Yes!" Mrs. Melrose whispered, with fascinated eyes fixed on her
+daughter's face.
+
+Alice, ashen faced, fell back against her pillows without speaking.
+
+"Kate Sheridan brought the child home," Christopher stated, rather than
+asked, very quietly. His mother-in-law looked at him apathetically.
+
+"Kate--yes!"
+
+"Does Annie know it, Mama?" Alice whispered, after a silence.
+
+"Annie? Oh, my God, no!" The mother's voice rose almost to a wail. "Oh,
+Chris--Alice--if you love me, Annie must not know! So proud, so happy;
+and she would never bear it! I know her--I know her! She would kill
+herself before----"
+
+"Darling, you must be quiet!" Alice said, commandingly. "No one shall
+know it. What we do for this child shall be done for--well, our cousin.
+Chris will help you manage everything, and no one shall ever suspect it
+from me. It will all work out right, you'll see. Other people aren't
+watching us, as we always think they are; it's nobody's business if a
+cousin of ours suddenly appears in the family. No one would dare whisper
+one word against the Melroses. Only be quiet, Mama darling, and don't
+worry. Now that we know it, we will never, never allude to it again,
+will we, Chris? You can trust us."
+
+Mrs. Melrose had sunk back into her chair; her face was putty-coloured,
+beads of water stood on her forehead.
+
+"Oh, the relief--the relief!" she kept whispering, as she clung to
+Alice's hand. "Alice, for the sake of the name--dear--for all our
+sakes!----"
+
+"Now, if you two girls will take my advice!" Christopher suggested,
+cheerfully, "you'll stop talking about all this, and let it wait until
+to-morrow. Then we'll consult, and see just what proposition we can make
+to little Miss Sheridan, and what's best to be done. Alice, why don't
+you go over that wedding list of Leslie's with your mother? And ring for
+dinner. I'm going to dress."
+
+"We will!" Alice agreed, sensibly. "As a family we've always faced
+things courageously. We're fighters--we Melroses--and we'll stand
+together!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+This was on Friday, and it was on the following Monday that Wolf and
+Rose Sheridan came home to find news awaiting them. The day before had
+been surprisingly sunny and sweet, and Wolf and Harry Redding had taken
+the girls to Newark, where Wolf's motor-car had been stored all winter,
+and they had laughed, and joked, and chattered all the way like the
+care-free young things they were. Mrs. Sheridan, urged to join them, had
+pleaded business: she had promised old Mrs. Melrose to go and see her.
+So she had left them at the church door, after Mass, and they had gone
+their way rejoicing in sunshine and warm breezes, a part of the
+streaming holiday crowds that were surging and idling along the drying
+pavements.
+
+Wolf was neither of an age nor type for piety, but to-day he had prayed
+that this little Norma kneeling beside him, with the youth and fire and
+audacity shining in her face even while she prayed, might turn that same
+mysterious and solemn smile upon him again some day, as his wife. And
+all day long, as she danced along by his side, as she eagerly debated
+the question of luncheon, as she enslaved the aged coloured man in the
+garage, the new thrill of which he had only recently become so
+pleasantly conscious, stirred in his heart, and whatever she touched, or
+said, or looked, was beautified almost beyond recognition.
+
+He had thought, coming home Monday night, that he and she would take a
+little walk, in the lingering dusk of the cool spring evening, and
+perhaps see the twelfth installment of "The Stripe-Faced Terror," which
+was playing in the near-by moving-picture house.
+
+But he found her in a new mood, almost awed with an unexpected ecstasy
+in which he had no part--would never have a part. She and Aunt Kate had
+been to see Mrs. Melrose again.
+
+"And, Wolf, what do you think! They want me to go live there--with the
+Liggetts, to help with lists and things for Leslie's wedding. Mrs.
+Melrose kissed me, Wolf, and said--didn't she, Aunt Kate?--that I must
+try to feel that I belong to them; and she was so sweet--she put her arm
+about me, and said that I must have some pretty clothes! And the car is
+coming for me on Wednesday; isn't it like a dream? Oh, Rose, if I'm
+thankful enough! And I'm to come back here for dinner once a week, and
+of course you and Rose are to come there! Oh, Rose, but I wish it was us
+both--I wish it was you, you're so good!"
+
+"I wouldn't have it, Norma," Rose said, in her honest, pleasant voice.
+"You know I'd feel like a fool."
+
+"Oh, but I am so happy!" And Norma, who had gotten into Aunt Kate's lap,
+as the marvellous narrative progressed, dug her face into Aunt Kate's
+motherly soft shoulder, and tightened her arms about her neck, and cried
+a little, for sheer joy.
+
+But Wolf said almost nothing, and when he went to wash his hands for
+supper he went slowly, and found himself staring absently at the towel,
+and stopping short in the hall, still staring. He seemed himself at
+dinner, and his mother, at first watching him anxiously, could resume
+her meal, and later, could fall asleep, in the confident hope that it
+would all come right, after all. But Wolf slipped from the house after
+awhile, and walked the streets until almost dawn.
+
+It was almost dawn, too when the old mistress of the Melrose mansion
+fell asleep. She had called Regina more than once, she had tried the
+effect of reading, and of hot milk, and of a cold foot-bath. But still
+the crowded, over-furnished room was filled with ghosts, and still she
+watched them, pleaded with them, blamed them.
+
+"I've done all I could!" she whispered at last, into the heavy dark
+before the dawn. "It isn't my fault if they think she's Annie's child!
+I've never said so--it was Alice and Chris who said so. Annie and Leslie
+will never know anything more, and the girl herself need never know
+anything at all. Perhaps, as Kate said yesterday, it will all work out
+right, this way! At least it's all we can do now!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+So it came about quite naturally that the little unknown cousin of the
+Melroses was made a familiar figure in their different family groups,
+and friends of the house grew accustomed to finding pretty little Norma
+Sheridan lunching with Leslie, reading beside Alice's couch in the late
+summer afternoons, or amusing and delighting the old head of the family
+in a hundred charming ways. Norma called Mrs. Melrose "Aunt Marianna"
+now, as Chris and Acton did. She did not understand the miracle, it
+remained a marvel still, but it was enough that it continued to deepen
+and spread with every enchanted hour.
+
+She had longed--what girl in Biretta's Bookstore did not?--to be rich,
+and to move and have her being "in society." And now she had her wish, a
+hundred times fulfilled, and of course she was utterly and absolutely
+happy.
+
+That is, except for the momentary embarrassments and jealousies and
+uncertainties, and for sometimes being bored, she thought that she might
+consider herself happy. And there were crumpled rose-leaves everywhere!
+she reminded herself sternly. She--Norma Sheridan--could spend more
+money upon the single item of shoes, for example, than Miss Smith, head
+of Biretta's Bookshop, could earn in a whole long year of hot months and
+cold, of weary days and headachy days.
+
+That part of it was "fun", she admitted to herself. The clothes were
+fun, the boxes and boxes and boxes that came home for her, the
+petticoats and stockings, the nightgowns heavy with filet lace, and the
+rough boots for tramping and driving, and the silk and satin slippers
+for the house. Nothing disappointing there! Norma never would forget the
+ecstasies of those first shopping trips with Aunt Marianna. Did she want
+them?--the beaded bag, the woolly scarf, the little saucy hat, were all
+to be sent to Miss Sheridan, please. Norma lost her breath, and laughed,
+and caught it again and lost it afresh. They had so quickly dropped the
+little pretence that she was to make herself useful, these wonderful and
+generous Melroses; they had so soon forgotten everything except that she
+was Leslie's age, and to be petted and spoiled as if she had been
+another Leslie!
+
+And now, after more than half a year, she knew that they liked her; that
+all of them liked her in their varying degrees. Old Mrs. Melrose and
+Alice--Mrs. Christopher Liggett--were most warmly her champions,
+perhaps, but Leslie was too unformed a character to be definitely
+hostile, and the little earlier jealousies and misunderstandings were
+blown away long ago, and even the awe-inspiring Annie had shown a real
+friendliness of late. Acton Liggett and Hendrick von Behrens were always
+kind and admiring, and Norma had swiftly captivated Annie's little boys.
+But of them all, she still liked Chris Liggett the best, and felt
+nearest Chris even when he scolded her, or hurt her feelings with his
+frank advice. And she knew that Chris thoroughly liked her, in spite of
+the mistakes that she was continually making, and the absurd ways in
+which her ignorance and strangeness still occasionally betrayed her.
+
+It had been a time full of mistakes, of course. Chris often told her
+that she had more brains in her little finger than most of the girls of
+her set had in their whole bodies, but that had not saved her. If she
+was pretty, they were all pretty, too. If she wore beautiful clothes,
+they wore clothes just as beautiful, and with more assurance. If her wit
+was quick, and her common sense and human experience far greater than
+theirs, these were just the qualities they neither needed nor trusted.
+They spoke their own language, the language of youthful arrogance and
+ignorance, the language of mutual compliments and small personalities,
+and Norma could not speak this tongue any more than she could join them
+when they broke easily into French or German or Italian. She could ride,
+because she was not afraid of the mild-mannered cobs that were used at
+the riding school and in the park, but she knew little of correct
+posture and proper handling of reins. She could swim, as Wolf had taught
+her, in the old river years ago, but she knew nothing of the terms and
+affectations of properly taught swimming. When she went to see Aunt
+Kate, she was almost ashamed of the splendour of her clothing and the
+utter luxury of the life she led, but with Leslie and her friends she
+often felt herself what perhaps they thought her, an insignificant
+little poor relation of the Melroses, who had appeared from nobody knew
+where, and might return unchallenged at any moment to her original
+obscurity.
+
+This phase of the new life was disappointing, and Norma realized herself
+that she spent a quite disproportionate amount of time in thinking about
+it. Wasn't it enough, she would ask herself impatiently, to be one of
+them at all, to see one's picture in the fashionable weeklies, as a
+member of the family, at the Liggett-Melrose wedding; to have clothes
+and motor-cars, and a bedroom that was like a picture; to know Newport
+at first-hand; to have cruised for a week in the Craigies' yacht, and
+have driven to Quebec and back in the Von Behrens' car? A year ago, she
+reminded herself, it would have seemed Paradise to have had even a
+week's freedom from the bookshop; now, she need never step into
+Biretta's again!
+
+But it was not enough, and Norma would come impatiently to the end of
+her pondering with the same fretted sense of dissatisfaction. It was not
+enough to be tremulously praised by old Aunt Marianna, to be joked by
+Chris, greeted by Alice, his wife, with a friendly smile. Norma wanted
+to belong to this life, to be admired and sought by Leslie, rather than
+endured; to have the same easy familiarity with Duers, and Alexanders,
+and Rutgers that Leslie had.
+
+As was quite natural, she and Leslie had eyed each other, from the very
+beginning, somewhat as rivals. But Leslie, even then preparing for her
+marriage, had so obviously held all the advantages, that her vague
+resentment and curiosity concerning the family's treatment of the
+unknown newcomer were brief. If Aunt Alice liked Norma to come in and
+talk books and write notes, if Chris chose to be gallant, if Grandma
+lavished an unusual affection upon this new protégée, well, it robbed
+Leslie of nothing, after all.
+
+But with Norma it was different. She was brought into sharp contact with
+another girl, only slightly her senior, who had everything that this new
+turn of fortune had given Norma herself, and a thousand times more.
+Norma saw older women, the important and influential matrons of the
+social world, paying court to the promised wife of Acton Liggett. Norma
+knew that while Alice and Chris were always attentive to her own little
+affairs, the solving of Leslie's problems they regarded as their own
+sacred obligation. Norma had hours and hours of this new enchanting
+leisure to fill; she could be at anybody's beck and call. But Leslie,
+she saw, was only too busy. Everybody was claiming Leslie; she was
+needed in forty places at once; she must fly from one obligation to
+another, and be thanked for sparing just a few minutes here and there
+from her crowded days.
+
+Mrs. Melrose had immediately made Norma an allowance, an allowance so
+big that when Norma first told Aunt Kate about it, it was with a sense
+of shame. Norma had her check-book, and need ask nobody for spending
+money. More than that her generous old patron insisted that she use all
+the family charge accounts freely: "You mustn't think of paying in any
+shop!" said Aunt Marianna and Aunt Alice, earnestly.
+
+But Leslie was immensely rich in her own right. The hour in which Norma
+realized this was one of real wretchedness. Chris was her innocent
+informant.
+
+It was only two or three days before the wedding, a warm day of rustling
+leaves and moving shadows, in late May. The united families were still
+in town, but plans for escape to the country were made for the very day
+after the event. Norma had been fighting a little sense of hurt pride
+because she was not to be included among Leslie's wedding attendants.
+She knew that Aunt Marianna had suggested it to Leslie, some weeks
+before, and that the bride had quite justifiably reminded her
+grandmother that the eight maids, the special maid and matron of honour,
+and the two little pages, had all been already asked to perform their
+little service of affection, and that a readjustment now would be
+difficult. So Norma had been excluded from the luncheons, the
+discussions of frocks and bouquets, and the final exciting rehearsals in
+the big Park Avenue church.
+
+She had chanced to be thinking of all these things on the day when Chris
+made a casual allusion to "needing" Leslie.
+
+"The poor kid has got a stupid morning coming to-morrow, I'm afraid!" he
+had said, adding, in answer to Norma's raised eyebrows, "Business. She
+has to sign some papers, and alter her will--and I want all that done
+before they go away!"
+
+"Has Leslie a will?" Norma had asked.
+
+"My child, what did you suppose she had? Leslie inherited practically
+all of her Grandfather Melrose's estate. At least, her father, Theodore,
+did, and Leslie gets it direct through him. Of course your Aunt Annie
+got her slice, and my wife hers, but the bulk was left to the son. Poor
+Teddy! he didn't get much out of it. But during her minority the
+executors--of which I happen to be one--almost doubled it for Leslie.
+And to-morrow Judge Lee and I have got to go over certain matters with
+her."
+
+He had been idling at the piano, while Alice dozed in the heat, and
+Norma played with a magazine. Now he had turned back to his music, and
+Norma had apparently resumed her reading. But she really had been shaken
+by a storm of passionate jealousy.
+
+Jealousy is in its nature selfish, and the old Norma of Aunt Kate's
+little group had not been a selfish girl. But Norma had had a few weeks
+now of a world governed by a different standard. There was no necessity
+here, none of the pure beauty of sacrifice and service and
+insufficiency. This was a world of superfluities, a standard of excess.
+To have merely meals, clothing, comfort, and ease was not enough here.
+All these must be had in superabundance, and she was the best woman and
+the happiest who had gowns she could not wear, jewels lying idle, money
+stored away in banks, and servants standing about uselessly for hours,
+that the momentary needs of them might be instantly met.
+
+The poison of this creed had reached Norma, in spite of herself. She was
+young, and she had always been beloved in her own group for what she
+honestly gave of cheer and service and friendship. It hurt her that
+nobody needed what she could give now, and she hated the very memory of
+Leslie's wedding.
+
+But when that was over, Mrs. Melrose had taken her to Newport, whither
+Alice was carefully moved every June. Leslie was gone now, and Norma
+free from pricking reminders of her supremacy, and as old friends of
+Mrs. Melrose began to include her in the summer's merrymaking, she had
+some happy times. But even here the cloven hoof intruded.
+
+Norma had always imagined this group as being full of friendly women and
+admiring men, as offering her a hundred friendships where the old life
+had offered one. She discovered slowly, and with pained surprise, that
+although there were plenty of girls, they were not especially anxious
+for intimacy with her, and that the men she met were not, somehow,
+"real." They were absorbed in amusement, polo and yachting, they moved
+about a great deal, and they neither had, nor desired to have, any
+genuine work or interest in life. She began to see Leslie's wisdom in
+making an early and suitable marriage. As a matron, Leslie was
+established; she could entertain, she had dignified duties and
+interests, and while Norma felt awkward and bashful in asking young men
+to dine with Aunt Marianna, Acton brought his friends to his home, and
+Leslie had her girl friends there, and the whole thing was infinitely
+simpler and pleasanter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Norma had indeed chanced to make one girl friend, and one of whom Leslie
+and Alice, and even Annie, heartily approved. Caroline, the
+seventeen-year-old daughter of the Peter Craigies, was not a débutante
+yet, but she would be the most prominent, because the richest, of them
+all next winter. Caroline was a heavy-lidded, slow-witted girl, whose
+chief companions in life had been servants, foreign-born governesses,
+and music-masters. Norma had been seated next to her at the
+international tennis tournament, and had befriended the squirming and
+bashful Caroline from sheer goodness of heart. They had criticized the
+players, and Caroline had laughed the almost hysteric, shaken laugh that
+so worried her mother, and had blurted confidences to Norma in her
+childish way.
+
+The next day there had been an invitation for Norma to lunch with
+Caroline, and Mrs. von Behrens had promptly given another luncheon for
+both girls. Norma was pleased, for a few weeks, with her first social
+conquest, but after that Caroline became a dead weight upon her. She
+hated the flattery, the inanities, the utter dulness of the great
+Craigie mansion, and she began to have a restless conviction that time
+spent with Caroline was time lost.
+
+The friendship had cost her dear, too. Norma hated, even months later to
+remember just what she had paid for it.
+
+In August a letter from Rose had reached her at Newport, announcing
+Rose's approaching marriage. Harry Redding's sister Mary was engaged to
+a most satisfactory young man of Italian lineage, one Joe Popini, and
+Mrs. Redding would hereafter divide her time between the households of
+her daughter and her son. Harry, thus free to marry, had persuaded Rose
+to wait no longer; the event was to be on a Monday not quite two weeks
+ahead, and Norma was please, _please_, PLEASE to come down as soon as
+she could.
+
+Norma had read this letter with a sensation of pain at her heart. She
+felt so far away from them nowadays; she felt almost a certain
+reluctance to dovetail this life of softness and perfume and amusement
+in upon the old life. But she would go. She would go, of course!
+
+And then she had suddenly remembered that on the Monday before Rose's
+wedding, the Craigies' splendid yacht was to put to sea for a four- or
+five-days' cruise, and that Caroline had asked her to go--the only other
+young person besides the daughter of the house. And great persons were
+going, visiting nobility from England, a young American Croesus and his
+wife, a tenor from the Metropolitan. Annie had been delighted with this
+invitation; even Leslie, just returned from California and Hawaii, had
+expressed an almost surprised satisfaction in the Craigies'
+friendliness.
+
+If they got back Friday night, then Norma could go down to the city
+early Saturday morning, and have two days with Rose and Aunt Kate. But
+if the yacht did not return until Saturday--well, even then there would
+be time. She and Rose could get through a tremendous lot of talking in
+twenty-four hours. And the voyage certainly would not be prolonged over
+Saturday, for had not Mrs. Craigie said, in Norma's hearing, that
+Saturday was the very latest minute to which she could postpone the
+meeting for the big charity lawn party?
+
+So Norma and the enslaved Caroline continued to plan for their sea trip,
+and Norma commissioned Chris to order Rose's wedding present at
+Gorham's.
+
+Mrs. von Behrens had been a trifle distant with the newcomer in the
+family until now, but the day before the cruise began she extended just
+a little of her royal graciousness toward Norma. Like Leslie, Norma
+admired her Aunt Annie enormously, and hungered for her most casual
+word.
+
+"You've plenty of frocks, Kiddie?" asked Annie. "One uses them up at the
+rate of about three a day!"
+
+"Oh!"--Norma widened her innocent eyes--"I've a wardrobe trunk full of
+them: white skirts and white shoes and hats!"
+
+"Well, I didn't suppose you had them tied in a handkerchief!" Annie had
+responded, with her quiet smile. "See if that fits you!"
+
+They had been up in Mrs. von Behrens's big bedroom, where that lady was
+looking at a newly arrived box of gowns. "That" was the frail,
+embroidered coat of what Norma thought the prettiest linen suit she had
+ever seen.
+
+"It's charming on you, you little slender thing," Annie had said. "The
+skirt will be too long; will you pin it, Keating? And see that it goes
+at once to my mother's house."
+
+Keating had pinned, admired. And Norma, turning herself before the
+mirror, with her eyes shy with pleasure and gratitude, had known that
+she was gaining ground.
+
+So they had started radiantly on the cruise. But after the first few
+miraculous hours of gliding along beneath the gay awnings that had all
+been almost astonishingly disappointing, too. Caroline, to begin with,
+was a dreadful weight upon her young guest. Caroline for breakfast,
+luncheon, and dinner; Caroline retiring and rising, became almost
+hateful. Caroline always wanted to do something, when Norma could have
+dreamed and idled in her deck chair by the hour. It must be deck golf or
+deck tennis, or they must go up and tease dignified and courteous
+Captain Burns, "because he was such an old duck," or they must harass
+one or two of the older people into bridge. Norma did not play bridge
+well, and she hated it, and hated Caroline's way of paying for her
+losses almost more than paying them herself.
+
+Norma could not lie lazily with her book, raising her eyes to the
+exquisite beauty of the slowly tipping sea, revelling in coolness and
+airiness, because Caroline, fussing beside her, had never read a book
+through in her life. The guest did not know, even now, that Caroline had
+been a mental problem for years, that Caroline's family had consulted
+great psycho-analysts about her, and had watched the girl's
+self-centredness, her odd slyness, her hysteric emotions, with deep
+concern. She did not know, even now, that the Cragies were anxious to
+encourage this first reaching out, in Caroline, toward a member of her
+own sex, and that her fancies for members of the opposite sex--for
+severely indifferent teachers, for shocked and unresponsive
+chauffeurs--were among the family problems, a part of the girl's
+unfortunate under-development. Caroline's family was innocently
+surprised to realize that her mind had not developed under the care of
+maids who were absorbed in their own affairs, and foreigners who would
+not have been free to attend her had they not been impecunious and
+unsuccessful in more lucrative ways. They had left her to Mademoiselles
+and Fräuleins quite complacently, but they did not wish her to be like
+these too-sullen or too-vivacious ladies.
+
+So they welcomed her friendship with Norma, and Caroline's passionate
+desire to be with her friend was not to find any opposition on the part
+of her own family. Little Miss Sheridan had an occasional kindly word
+from Caroline's mother, a stout woman, middle-aged at thirty-five, and
+good-natured smiles from Caroline's father, a well-groomed young man.
+And socially, this meant that the Melroses' young protégée was made.
+
+But Norma did not realize all this. She only knew that all the charm and
+beauty of the yacht were wasted on her. Everyone ate too much, talked
+too much, played, flirted, and dressed too much. The women seldom made
+their appearance until noon; in the afternoons there was bridge until
+six, and much squabbling and writing of checks on the forward deck, with
+iced drinks continually being brought up from the bar. At six the women
+loitered off to dress for dinner, but the men went on playing for
+another half hour. The sun sank in a blaze of splendour; the wonderful
+twilight fell; but the yacht might have been boxed up in an armoury for
+all that her passengers saw of the sea.
+
+After the elaborate dinner, with its ices and hot rolls, its warm wines
+and chilled champagne, cards began again, and unless the ocean was so
+still that they might dance, bridge continued until after midnight.
+
+Norma's happiest times had been when she arose early, at perhaps seven,
+and after dressing noiselessly in their little bathroom, crept upstairs
+without waking Caroline. Sunshine would be flooding the ocean, or
+perhaps the vessel would be nosing her way through a luminous fog--but
+it was always beautiful. The decks, drying in the soft air, would be
+ordered, inviting, deserted. Great waves of smooth water would flow
+evenly past, curving themselves with lessening ripples into the great
+even circle of the sea. A gentle breeze would stir the leaves of the
+potted plants on the deck and flap the fringes of the awnings.
+
+Norma, hanging on the railing, would look down upon a group of maids and
+stewards laughing and talking on the open deck below. These were happy,
+she would reflect, animated by a thousand honest emotions that never
+crept to the luxurious cabins above. They would be waiting for
+breakfast, all freshly aproned and brushed, all as pleased with the
+_Seagirl_ as if they had been her owners.
+
+On the fifth day, Friday, she had been almost sick with longing to hear
+some mention of going back. Surely--surely, she reasoned, they had all
+said that they must get back on Friday night! If the plan had changed,
+Norma had determined to ask them to run into harbour somewhere, and put
+her on shore. She was so tired of Caroline, so tired of wasting time, so
+headachy from the heavy meals and lack of exercise!
+
+Late on Friday afternoon some idle remark of her hostess had assured her
+that the yacht would not make Greble light until Monday. They were
+ploughing north now, to play along the Maine coast; the yachting party
+was a great success, and nobody wanted to go home.
+
+Norma, goaded out of her customary shyness, had pleaded her cousin's
+marriage. Couldn't they run into Portland--or somewhere?--and let her go
+down by train? But Caroline had protested most affectionately and
+noisily against this, and Caroline's mother said sweetly that she
+couldn't think of letting Norma do that alone--Annie von Behrens would
+never forgive her! However, she would speak to Captain Burns, and see
+what could be done. Anyway, Mrs. Craigie had finished, with her
+comfortable laugh, Norma had only to tell her cousin that she was out
+with friends on their yacht, and they had been delayed. Surely that was
+excuse enough for any one?
+
+It was with difficulty that Norma had kept the tears out of her eyes.
+She had not wanted an excuse to stay away from Rose's wedding. Her heart
+had burned with shame and anger and helplessness. She could hardly
+believe, crying herself to sleep on Friday night, that two whole days
+were still to spare before Monday, and that she was helpless to use
+them. Her mind worked madly, her thoughts rushing to and fro with a
+desperation worthy an actual prisoner.
+
+On Saturday evening, after a day of such homesickness and
+heavy-heartedness as she had never known before in her life, she had
+realized that they were in some port, lying a short half mile from
+shore.
+
+It was about ten o'clock, warm and star-lighted; there was no moon.
+Norma had slipped from the deck, where Caroline was playing bridge, and
+had gone to the lowered gang-plank. Captain Burns was there, going over
+what appeared to be invoices, with the head steward.
+
+"Captain," Norma had said, her heart pounding, "can't you put me on
+shore? I must be in New York to-morrow--it's very important! If I get a
+coat, will you let me go in when you go?"
+
+He had measured her with his usual polite, impersonal gaze.
+
+"Miss Sheridan, I really could not do it, Miss! If it was a telegram, or
+something of that sort----But if anything was to happen to you, Miss, it
+would be--it really would be most unfortunate!"
+
+Norma had stood still, choking. And in the starlight he had seen the
+glitter of tears in her eyes.
+
+"Couldn't you put it to Mrs. Craigie, Miss? I'm sure she'd send
+someone--one of the maids----"
+
+But Norma shook her head. It would anger Caroline, and perhaps
+Caroline's mother, and Annie, too, to have her upset the cruise by her
+own foolish plans. There was no hope of her hostess's consent.
+What!--send a girl of eighteen down to New York for dear knows what
+fanciful purpose, without a hint from parent or guardian? Mrs. Craigie
+knew the modern girl far too well for that, even if it had not been
+personally extremely inconvenient to herself to spare a maid. They were
+rather short of maids, for two or three of them had been quite ill.
+
+The launch had put off, with Captain Burns in the stern. Norma had stood
+watching it, with her heart of lead. Oh, to be running away--flying--on
+the train--in the familiar streets! They could forgive her later--or
+never----
+
+"Norma, aren't you naughty?" Caroline had interrupted her thoughts, and
+had slipped a hand through her arm. "Buoso is going to sing--do come in!
+My dear, you know that last hand? Well, we made it----!"
+
+The next two days were the slowest, the hardest, the bitterest of
+Norma's life. She felt that nobody had ever had to bear so aching a
+heart as hers, as the most beautiful yacht in the world skimmed over the
+blue ocean, and the sun shone down on her embroidered linen suit, and
+her white shoes, and the pearl ring that Caroline had given her for her
+birthday.
+
+What were they doing at Aunt Kate's? What were they saying as the hours
+went by? At what stage was the cake--and the gown? Was Rose really to be
+married to-morrow--to-day?
+
+In New Brunswick she had managed to send a long wire, full of the
+disappointment and affection and longing she truly felt, and after that
+she had been happier. But it was a very subdued little Norma who had
+come quietly into Aunt Kate's kitchen three weeks later, and had
+relieved her over-charged heart with a burst of tears on Aunt Kate's
+shoulder.
+
+Aunt Kate had been kind, kind as she always was to the adored
+foster-child. And Norma had stayed to dinner, and made soft and penitent
+eyes at Wolf until the agonized resolutions of the past lonely months
+had all melted out of his heart again, and they had all gone over to
+Rose's, for five minutes of kissing and crying, before the big car came
+to carry Norma away.
+
+So the worst of that wound was healed, and life could become bright and
+promising to Norma once more. Autumn was an invigorating season, anyway,
+full of hope and enchantment, and Caroline Craigie, by what Norma felt
+to be a special providence, was visiting her grandmother in Baltimore
+for an indefinite term. The truth was that there was a doctor there
+whose advice was deemed valuable to Caroline, but Norma did not know
+that. Norma did not know the truth, either, about Mrs. von Behrens's
+sudden graciousness toward her, but it made her happy. Annie had become
+friendly and hospitable toward the newcomer in the family for only one
+reason. As a social dictator, she was accustomed to be courted and
+followed by scores of women who desired her friendship for the prestige
+it gave them. Annie was extremely autocratic in this respect, and could
+snub, chill, and ignore even the most hopeful aspirants to her favour,
+with the ease of long practice. It made no difference to Annie that
+dazzling credentials were produced, or that past obscurity was more than
+obliterated by present glory.
+
+"One truly must be firm," Annie frequently said. "It devolves upon a few
+of us, as an actual duty, to see that society is maintained in its true
+spirit. Let the bars down once----!"
+
+Norma, a negligible factor in Annie's life when she first appeared, had
+quite innocently become a problem during that first summer. While not a
+Melrose, she was a member of the Melrose family, making her home with
+one of the daughters of the house. Annie might ignore Norma, but there
+were plenty of women, and men, too, who saw in the girl a valuable
+social lever. To become intimate with little Miss Sheridan meant that
+one might go up to her, at teas and dinners, while she was with Mrs.
+Melrose, or young Mrs. Liggett, or even Mrs. von Behrens herself, in a
+casual, friendly manner that indicated, to a watching world, a
+comfortable footing with the family. Norma was consequently selected
+for social attention.
+
+Annie saw this immediately, and when all the families were settled in
+town again, she decided to take Norma's social training in hand, as she
+had done Leslie's, and make sure that no undesirable cockle was sown
+among the family fields. She would have done exactly the same if Norma
+had been the least attractive of girls, but Norma fancied that her own
+qualities had won Annie's reluctant friendship, and was accordingly
+pleased.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Eight months later, in the clear sunshine of a late autumn morning, a
+slender young woman came down the steps of the Melrose house, after an
+hour's call on the old mistress, and turned briskly toward Fifth Avenue.
+In figure, in carriage, and even in the expression of her charming and
+animated face, she was different from the girl who had come to that same
+house to make a call with Aunt Kate, on the day after the big blizzard,
+yet it was the same Norma Sheridan who nodded a refusal to the driver of
+the big motor-car that was waiting, and set off by herself for her walk.
+
+The old Norma, straight from Biretta's Bookshop, had been pretty in
+plain serge and shabby fur. But this Norma--over whose soft thick belted
+coat a beautiful silver-fox skin was linked, whose heavy, ribbed silk
+hose disappeared into slim, flat, shining pumps that almost caressed the
+slender foot, whose dark hair had the lustre that comes from intelligent
+care, and whose handsome little English hat was the only one of its
+special cut in the world--was a conspicuously attractive figure even in
+a world of well-groomed girls, and almost deserved to be catalogued as a
+beauty. From the hat to the shoes she was palpably correct, and Norma
+knew, and never could quite sufficiently revel in the knowing, that the
+blouse and the tailored skirt that were under the coat were correct,
+too, and that under blouse and skirt were cobwebby linens and perfumed
+ribbons and sheerest silks that were equally perfect in their way.
+Leslie's bulldog, pulling on his strap, kept her moving rapidly, and
+girl and dog exacted from almost all the passers-by that tribute of
+glances to which Norma was now beginning to be accustomed.
+
+She was walking to Mrs. von Behrens's after an unusually harmonious
+luncheon with old Mrs. Melrose. This was one of Norma's happy times, and
+she almost danced in the crisp November air that promised snow even now.
+Leslie had asked her to come informally to tea; Annie had sent a message
+that she wished to see Norma; and Alice, who, like all invalids, had
+dark moods of which only her own household was aware, had been her
+nicest self for a week. Then Christopher was coming home to-night, and
+Norma had missed him for the three weeks he had been away, duck-shooting
+in the South, and liked the thought that he was homeward bound.
+
+She found Leslie with Annie to-day, in Annie's big front bedroom. Leslie
+was in a big chair by the bed where Annie, with some chalky preparation
+pasted in strips on those portions of her face that were most inclined
+to wrinkle, was lying flat. Her hair, rubbed with oils and packed in
+tight bands, was entirely invisible, and over her arms, protruding from
+a gorgeous oriental wrap, loose chamois gloves were drawn. Annie had
+been to a luncheon, and was to appear at two teas, a dinner, and the
+theatre, and she was making the most of an interval at home. She looked
+indescribably hideous, as she stretched a friendly hand toward Norma,
+and nodded toward a chair.
+
+"Look at the child's colour--Heavens! what it is to be young," said
+Annie. "Sit down, Norma. How's Alice?"
+
+"Lovely!" Norma said, pulling off her gloves. "She had a wire from
+Chris, and he gets back to-night. I had luncheon with your mother, and I
+am to go to stay with her for two or three nights, anyway. But Aunt
+Alice said that she would like to have me back again next week for her
+two teas."
+
+"How old are you, Norma?" Annie asked, suddenly. Any sign of interest on
+her part always thrilled the girl, who answered, flushing:
+
+"Nineteen; twenty in January, Aunt Annie."
+
+"I'm thinking, if you'd like it, of giving you a little tea here next
+month," Annie said, lazily. "You know quite enough of the youngsters now
+to have a thoroughly nice time, and afterward we'll have a dinner here,
+and they can dance!"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Annie--if I'd like it!" Norma exclaimed, rosy with pleasure.
+
+"You would?" Annie asked, looking at a hand from which she had drawn the
+glove, and smiling slightly. "It means that you don't go anywhere in the
+meantime. You're not out until then, you know!"
+
+"Oh, but I won't be going anywhere, anyway," Norma conceded,
+contentedly.
+
+"You'll have a flood of invitations fast enough after the tea," Annie
+assured her, pleased at her excitement, "and until then, you can simply
+say that you are not going out yet."
+
+"Chris said he might take me to the opera on the first night; I've never
+been," Norma said, timidly. "But I can explain to him!"
+
+"Oh, that won't count!" Annie assured her, carelessly. "We'll all be
+there, of course! Have you worn the corn-coloured gown yet?"
+
+"Oh, no, Aunt Annie!"
+
+"Well, keep it for that night. And you and Chris might----No, he'll want
+to dine with Alice, and she'll want to see you in your new gown. I was
+going to say that you might dine here, but you'd better not."
+
+"I think Leslie and Acton are going to be asked to dine with us," Norma
+said. "Aunt Alice said something about it!"
+
+"Well," Annie agreed indifferently. "Ring that bell, Norma--I've got to
+get up! Where are you girls going now?"
+
+"Some of the girls are coming to my house for tea," Leslie answered,
+listlessly. "I've got the car here. Come on, Norma!"
+
+"But you're not driving, Kiddie?" her aunt asked, quickly.
+
+Leslie, who neither looked nor felt well, raised half-resentful eyes.
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not driving, and I'm lying in bed mornings, and I don't
+play squash, or ride horseback, or go in for tennis!" she drawled, half
+angrily. "I'm having a perfectly _lovely_ time! I wish Acton had a
+little of it; he wouldn't be so pleased! Makes me so mad," grumbled
+Leslie, as she wandered toward the door, busily buttoning her coat.
+"Grandma crying with joy, and Aunt Alice goo-gooing at me, and
+Acton----"
+
+"Come, now, be a little sport, Leslie!" her aunt urged, affectionately,
+with her arm about her. "It's rotten, of course, but after all, it does
+mean a lot to the Liggetts----"
+
+"Oh, now, don't _you_ begin!" Leslie protested, half-mollified, with her
+parting nod. "Don't--for pity's sake!--talk about it," she added,
+rudely, to Norma, as Norma began some consolatory murmur on the stairs.
+But when they were before her own fire, waiting for the expected girls,
+she made Norma a rather ungracious confidence.
+
+"I don't want Aunt Alice or any one to know it, but if Acton Liggett
+thinks I am going to let him make an absolute fool of me, he's
+mistaken!" Leslie said, in a sort of smouldering resentment.
+
+"What has Acton done?" Norma asked, flattered by the intimation of trust
+and not inclined to be apprehensive. She had seen earlier differences
+between the young married pair, and now, when Leslie was physically at a
+disadvantage, she and Alice had agreed that it was not unnatural that
+the young wife should grow exacting and fanciful.
+
+"Acton is about the most selfish person I ever knew," Leslie said,
+almost with a whimper. "Oh, yes, he is, Norma! You don't see it--but I
+do! Chris knows it, too; I've heard Chris call him down a thousand times
+for it! I am just boiling at Acton; I have been all day! He leaves
+everything to me, everything; and I'm not well, now, and I can't stand
+it! And I'll tell him I can't, too."
+
+"I suppose a man doesn't understand very well," Norma ventured.
+
+"_He_ doesn't!" Leslie said, warmly. "All Acton Liggett thinks of is his
+own comfort--that's all! I do everything for him--I pay half the
+expenses here, you know, more than half, really, for I always pay for my
+own clothes and Milly, and lots of other things. And then he'll do some
+_mean_, ugly thing that just makes me furious at him--and he'll walk out
+of the house, perfectly calm and happy!"
+
+"He's always had his own way a good deal," Norma who knew anything
+except sympathy would utterly exasperate Leslie conceded, mildly.
+
+"Yes," Leslie agreed, flushing, and stiffening her jaw rather ominously,
+"and it's just about time that he learned that he isn't always going to
+have it, too! It's very easy for him to have me do anything that is hard
+and stupid----Do you suppose," she broke off, suddenly, "that _I'm_ so
+anxious to go to the Duers' dinner? I wouldn't care if I never saw one
+of them again!"
+
+Norma gathered that a dinner invitation from the Duers had been the main
+cause of the young Liggetts' difference, and framed a general question.
+
+"That's Saturday night?"
+
+"Friday," Leslie amended. "And what does he do? He meets Roy Duer at the
+club, and says oh, no, he can't come to the dinner Friday, but _Leslie_
+can! He has promised to play bridge with the Jeromes and that crowd. But
+Leslie would _love_ to go! So there I am--old lady Duer called me up the
+next morning, and was so sorry Acton couldn't come! But she would expect
+me at eight o'clock. It's for her daughter, and she goes away again on
+Tuesday. And then"--Leslie straightened herself on the couch, and fixed
+Norma with bright, angry eyes;--"then Spooky Jerome telephoned here, and
+said to tell Acton that if he couldn't stir up a bridge party for
+Friday, he'd stir up something, and for Acton to meet him at the club!"
+
+Norma laughed.
+
+"And did you give Acton that message?" she inquired.
+
+"No, indeed, I didn't--that was only this morning!" Leslie said, in
+angry satisfaction. "I telephoned Mrs. Duer right away, and said that
+Acton would be so glad to come Friday, and if Acton Liggett doesn't like
+it, he knows what he can do! You laugh," she went on with a sort of
+pathetic dignity, "but don't you think it's a rotten way for a man to
+treat his wife, Norma? Don't you, honestly? There's nothing--nothing
+that I don't give way in--absolutely nothing! And I don't believe most
+men----Oh, hello, Doris," Leslie broke off, gaily, as there was a stir
+at the door; "come in! Come in, Vera--aren't you girls angels to come in
+and see the poor old sick lady!"
+
+Norma was still lingering when Acton came home, an hour later. She heard
+his buoyant voice in the hall, and began to gather her wraps and gloves
+as he came to the tea table.
+
+"Acton," Leslie said, firmly, "the bridge party is off for Friday, and
+you're going to Mrs. Duer's with me, and you ought to be ashamed of
+yourself!"
+
+"Whew! I can see that I'm popular in the home circle, Norma!" Acton
+said, leaning over the big davenport to kiss his wife. "How's my baby?
+All right, dear, anything you say goes! I was going to cancel the game,
+anyway. Look what Chris brought you, Cutey-cute! Say, Norma, has she
+been getting herself tired?"
+
+Leslie, instantly mollified, drew his cold, firm cheek against hers, and
+looked sidewise toward Norma.
+
+"Isn't he the nice, big, comfy man to come home to his mad little old
+wife?" she mumbled, luxuriously.
+
+"Yes," Acton grumbled, still half embracing her, "but you didn't talk
+that way at breakfast, you little devil!"
+
+"Am I a devil?" Leslie asked, lazily. And looking in whimsical penitence
+at Norma, she added, "I _am_ a devil. But you were just as mean as you
+could be," she told him, widening her eyes and shaking her head.
+
+"I know it. I felt like a dog, walking down town," her husband admitted
+promptly. "I tried to telephone but you weren't here!"
+
+"I was at Aunt Annie's," Leslie said, softly. Her husband had slipped in
+beside her on the wide davenport, and she was resting against his
+shoulder, and idly kissing the little rebel lock of hair that fell
+across one temple. "He's a pretty nice old husband!" she murmured,
+contentedly.
+
+"And she's a pretty nice little wife, if she did call me some mean
+names!" Acton returned, kissing the top of her head without altering her
+position. Norma looked at them with smiling contempt.
+
+"You're a great pair!" she conceded, indulgently.
+
+Leslie now was free to examine, with a flush and a laugh, the
+microscopic pair of beaded Indian moccasins that Chris had brought from
+Florida. Norma asked about Chris.
+
+"Oh, he's fine," Acton answered, "looks brown and hard; he had a
+gorgeous time! He said he might be round to see Grandma to-morrow
+morning!"
+
+"I'll tell her," Norma said, getting up to go. She left them still
+clinging together, like a pair of little love-birds, with peace fully
+restored for the time being.
+
+Mrs. Melrose's car had been waiting for some time, and she was whirled
+home through the dark and wintry streets without the loss of a second.
+Lights were lighted everywhere now, and tempered radiance filled the old
+hall as she entered it. It was just six o'clock, but Norma knew that she
+and the old lady were to be alone to-night, and she went through the
+long drawing-room to the library beyond it, thinking she might find her
+still lingering over the teacups. Dinner under these circumstances was
+usually at seven, and frequently Mrs. Melrose did not change her gown
+for it.
+
+There was lamplight in the library, but the old lady's chair was empty,
+and the tea table had been cleared away. Norma, supposing the room
+unoccupied, gave a little gasp of surprise and pleasure as Chris
+suddenly got to his feet among the shadows.
+
+She was so glad to see him, so much more glad than she would have
+imagined herself, that for a few minutes she merely clung tight to the
+two hands she had grasped, and stood laughing and staring at him. Chris
+back again! It meant so much that was pleasant and friendly to Norma.
+Chris advised her, admired her, sympathized with her; above all, she
+knew that he liked her.
+
+"Chris; it's so nice to see you!" she exclaimed.
+
+The colour came into his face, and with it an odd expression that she
+had never seen there before. Without speaking he put his arm about her,
+and drew her to him, and kissed her very quietly on the mouth.
+
+"Hello, you dear little girl!" he said, freeing her, and smiling at her,
+somewhat confusedly. "You're not half so glad to see me as I am to be
+back! You're looking so well, Norma," he went on, with almost his usual
+manner, "and Alice tells me you are making friends everywhere. What's
+the news?"
+
+He threw himself into a large leather chair, and, hardly knowing what
+she was doing, in the wild hurrying of her senses, Norma sat down
+opposite him. Her one flurried impulse was not to make a scene. Chris
+was always so entirely master of a situation, so utterly unemotional and
+self-possessed, that if he kissed her, upon his return from a
+three-weeks' absence, it must be a perfectly correct thing to do.
+
+Yet she felt both shaken and protestant, and it was with almost
+superhuman control that she began to carry on a casual conversation,
+giving her own report upon Alice and Leslie, Acton and the world in
+general.
+
+When Mrs. Melrose, delighted at the little attention from her
+son-in-law, came smilingly in, five minutes later, Norma escaped
+upstairs. She had Leslie's old room here when she spent the night, but
+it was only occasionally that Alice spared her, for her youth and high
+spirits, coupled with the simplicity and enthusiasm with which she was
+encountering the new world, made her a really stimulating companion for
+the sick woman.
+
+Regina came in to hook her into a simple dinner gown, but Norma did not
+once address her, except by a vague smile of greeting. Her thoughts were
+in a whirl. Why had he done that? Was it just brotherly--friendliness?
+He was much older than she--thirty-seven or eight; perhaps he had felt
+only an older man's kindly----
+
+But her face blazed, and she flung this explanation aside angrily. He
+had no business to do it! He had no right to do it! She was furious at
+him!
+
+She stood still, staring blankly ahead of her, in the centre of the
+room. The memory came over her in a wave; the odd, half-hesitating,
+half-confident look in his eyes as his arms enveloped her, the faint
+aroma of talcum powder and soap, the touch of his smoothly shaven cheek.
+
+It was almost an hour later that she went cautiously downstairs. He was
+gone--had been gone since half-past six o'clock, Joseph reported. Norma
+went in to dinner with Mrs. Melrose, and they talked cheerfully of
+Chris's return, of Leslie and Annie.
+
+By eight o'clock, reading in Mrs. Melrose's upstairs sitting-room, that
+first room that she had seen in this big house, eight months ago, Norma
+began to feel just a trifle flat. Chris Liggett was one of the most
+popular men in society, in demand everywhere, spoiled by women
+everywhere. He had quite casually, and perhaps even absent-mindedly,
+kissed his wife's young protégée upon meeting her after an absence, and
+she had hastily leaped to conclusions worthy of a schoolgirl! He would
+be about equally amused and disgusted did he suspect them.
+
+"He likes you, you little fool," Norma said to herself, "and you will
+utterly spoil everything with your idiocy!"
+
+"What did you say, lovey?" the old lady asked, half closing her book.
+
+"Nothing!" Norma said, laughing. She reopened her novel, and tried to
+interest herself in it. But the thought of that quarter hour in the
+study came back over and over again. She came finally to the conclusion
+that she was glad Chris liked her.
+
+The room was very still. A coal fire was glowing pink and clear in the
+grate, and now and then the radiators hissed softly. Norma had one big
+brilliant lamp to herself, and over the old lady's chair another
+glowed. Everything was rich, soft, comfortable. Regina was hovering in
+the adjoining room, folding the fat satin comforters, turning down the
+transparent linen sheets with their great scroll of monogram, and behind
+Regina were Joseph and Emma, and all the others, and behind them the
+great city and all the world, eager to see that this old woman, who had
+given the world very little real service in her life, should be shielded
+and warmed and kept from the faintest dream of need.
+
+Money was a strange thing, Norma mused. What should she do, if--as her
+shamed and vague phrase had it--if "something happened" to Aunt
+Marianna, and she was not even mentioned in her will? Of course it was a
+hateful thing to think of, and a horrible thing, sitting here opposite
+Aunt Marianna in the comfortable upstairs sitting-room, but the thought
+would come. Norma wished that she knew. She would not have shortened the
+old lady's life by a single second, and she would have died herself
+rather than betray this thought to any one, even to Wolf--even to Rose!
+But it suddenly seemed to her very unjust that she could be picked out
+of Biretta's bookstore to-day, by Aunt Marianna's pleasure, and perhaps
+put back there to-morrow through no fault of her own. They were all
+kind, they were all generous, but this was not just. She wanted the
+delicious and self-respecting feeling of being a young woman with
+"independent means."
+
+Such evenings as this one, even in the wonderful Melrose house, were
+undeniably dull. She and Rose had often grumbled, years ago, because
+there were so many of these quiet times, in between the Saturday and
+Sunday excitements. But Norma, in those days, had never supposed that
+dulness was ever compatible with wealth and ease.
+
+"Cards?" said old Mrs. Melrose, hopefully, as the girl made a sudden
+move. She loved to play patience, but only when she had an audience.
+Norma, who had just decided to give her French verbs a good hour's
+attention, smiled amiably, and herself brought out the green table. She
+sat watching the fall of kings and aces, reminding her companion of at
+least every third play. But her thoughts went back to Chris, and the
+faint odour of powder and soap, and the touch of his shaved cheek.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Norma met Chris again no later than the following afternoon. It was
+twilight in Alice's room, and she and Norma were talking on into the
+gloom, discussing the one or two guests who had chanced to come in for
+tea, and planning the two large teas that Alice usually gave some time
+late in November.
+
+Chris came in quietly, kissed his wife, and nodded carelessly to Norma.
+The girl's sudden mad heartbeats and creeping colour could subside
+together unnoticed, for he apparently paid no attention to her, and
+presently drifted to the piano, leaving the women free to resume their
+conference.
+
+Alice was a person of more than a surface sweetness; she loved harmony
+and serenity, and there was almost no inclination to irritability or
+ugliness in her nature. Her voice was always soothing and soft, and her
+patience in the unravelling of other people's problems was
+inexhaustible. Alice was, as all the world conceded, an angel.
+
+But Norma had not been a member of her household for eight months
+without realizing that Alice, like other household angels, did not wish
+an understudy in the rôle. She did not quite enjoy the nearness of
+another woman who might be all sweet and generous and peace-making, too.
+That was her own sacred and peculiar right. She could gently and
+persistently urge objections and find inconsistencies in any plan of
+her sister or of Norma, no matter how advantageous it sounded, and she
+could adhere to a plan of her own with a tenacity that, taken in
+consideration with Alice's weak body and tender voice, was nothing less
+than astonishing.
+
+Norma, lessoned in a hard school, and possessing more than her share of
+adaptability and common sense, had swiftly come to the conclusion that,
+since it was not her part to adjust the affairs of her benefactors, she
+might much more wisely constitute herself a sort of Greek chorus to
+Alice's manipulations. Alice's motives were always of the highest, and
+it was easy to praise them in all honesty, and if sometimes the younger
+woman had mentally arrived at a conclusion long before Alice had
+patiently and sweetly reached it, the little self-control was not much
+to pay toward the comfort of a woman as heavily afflicted as Alice.
+
+For Norma knew in her own heart that Alice was heavily afflicted,
+although the invalid herself always took the attitude that her
+helplessness brought the best part of life into her room, and shut away
+from her the tediousness and ugliness of the world.
+
+"'Aïda' two weeks from to-night!" Alice said this evening, with her
+sympathetic smile.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Alice--if you could go! Didn't you love it?"
+
+"Love the opera? Do you hear her, Chris? But I didn't love people
+talking all about me--and they will do it, you know! And that makes one
+furious!"
+
+"I see you getting furious," Norma observed, incredulously.
+
+"You don't know me! But I was a bashful, adoring sort of little person,
+on my first night----"
+
+"Yes, you were," Chris teased her, over a lazy ripple of thirds. "She
+was such a bashful little person at the Mardi Gras dance she promised
+Artie Peyton her first cotillion the following season."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Alice--you didn't!"
+
+Alice's rather colourless face flushed happily, and she half lowered her
+lids.
+
+"Chris thinks that is a great story on me. As a matter of fact, I did do
+that; I was just childish enough. But I can't think how the story got
+out, for I was desperately ashamed of it."
+
+"I told Aunt Annie and Leslie to-day that you wanted the Liggetts to
+dine here that night," Norma said, suddenly. Instantly she realized that
+she had made a mistake. And there was no one in the world whose light
+reproof hurt her as Alice's did.
+
+"You--you gave my invitation to Leslie?" Alice asked, quietly.
+
+"Well--not quite that. But I told her that you had said that you meant
+to ask them," Norma replied, uncomfortably.
+
+"But, Norma, I did not ask you to mention it." Alice was even smiling,
+but she seemed a little puzzled.
+
+"I'm so sorry--if you didn't want me to!"
+
+"It isn't that. But one feels that one----"
+
+"What is Norma sorry about?" Chris asked, coming back to the fire.
+"Norma, you're up against a terrible tribunal, here! Alice has been
+known--well, even to give new hats to the people who make her angry!"
+
+This fortunate allusion to an event now some months old entirely
+restored Alice's good humour. Norma had accepted a certain almost-new
+hat from Leslie just before the wedding, and Alice, burning with her
+secret suspicion as to Norma's parentage, and in the first flush of her
+affection for the girl, had told Norma that in her opinion Leslie should
+not have offered it. It was not for Norma to take any patronage from her
+cousin, Alice said to herself. But Norma's distress at having
+disappointed Alice was so fresh and honest that the episode had ended
+with Alice's presenting her with a stunning new hat, to wipe out the
+terrible effect of her mild criticism.
+
+"You're a virago," said Chris, seating himself near his wife. "Tell me
+what you've been doing all day. Am I in for that dinner at Annie's
+to-night? I wish I could stay here and gossip with you girls."
+
+"Dearest, you'd get so stupid, tied here to me, that you wouldn't know
+who was President of the United States!" Alice smiled. "Yes, I promised
+you to Annie two weeks ago. To-morrow night Norma goes to Leslie, and
+you and I have dinner all alone, so console yourself with that."
+
+"_Très bien_," Christopher agreed. And as if the phrase suggested it, he
+went on to test Norma's French. Norma was never self-conscious with him,
+and in a few seconds he and Alice were laughing at her earnest
+absurdities. When husband and wife went on into a conversation of their
+own, Norma sat back idly, conscious that the atmosphere was always easy
+and pleasant when Chris was at home, there were no petty tensions and no
+sensitive misconstructions while Chris was talking. Sometimes with Annie
+and Alice, and even with Leslie, Norma could be rapidly brought to the
+state of feeling prickly all over, afraid to speak, and equally
+uncomfortable in silence. But Chris always smoothed her spirit into
+utter peace, and reëstablished her sense of proportion, her sense of
+humour.
+
+Neither he nor Alice noticed her when she presently went away to change
+her gown for dinner, but when she came out of her room, half an hour
+later, Chris was just coming up to his. Their rooms were on the same
+floor--his the big front room, and hers one of the sunny small ones at
+the back of the house. Norma's and that of Miss Slater, Alice's nurse,
+were joined by a bathroom; Chris had his own splendid dressing-room and
+bath, fitted, like his bedroom, with rugs and chests and highboys worthy
+of a museum.
+
+"Aren't you going to be late, Chris?" Norma asked, when they met at the
+top of the stairs. Fresh from a bath, with her rich dark hair pushed
+back in two shining wings from her smooth forehead, and her throat
+rising white and soft from the frills of a black lacy gown, she was the
+incarnation of youth and sweetness as she looked up at him. "Seven
+o'clock!" she reminded him.
+
+For answer he surprised her by catching her hand, and staring gravely
+down at her.
+
+"Were you angry at me, Norma?" he asked, in a quiet, businesslike voice.
+
+"Angry?" she echoed, surprised. But her colour rose. "No, Chris. Why
+should I be?"
+
+"There is no reason why you should be, of course," he answered, simply,
+almost indifferently. And immediately he went by her and into his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+On the memorable night of her first grand opera Norma and Chris dined at
+Mrs. von Behrens's. It was Alice who urged the arrangement, urged it
+quite innocently, as she frequently did the accidental pairing of Norma
+and Chris, because her mother was going for a week to Boston, the
+following day, and they wanted an evening of comfortable talk together.
+
+Norma, with Freda and Miss Slater as excited accomplices, laid out the
+new corn-coloured gown at about five o'clock in the afternoon, laid
+beside it the stockings and slippers that exactly matched it in colour,
+and hung over the foot of her bed the embroidered little stays that were
+so ridiculously small and so unnecessarily beautiful. On a separate
+chair was spread the big furred wrap of gold and brown brocade, the high
+carriage shoes, and the long white gloves to which the tissue paper
+still was clinging. The orchids that Annie had given Norma that morning
+were standing in a slender vase on the bureau, and as a final touch the
+girl, regarding these preparations with a sort of enchanted delight,
+unfurled to its full glory the great black ostrich-feather fan. Norma
+amused Alice and Mrs. Melrose by refusing tea, and disappeared long
+before there was need, to begin the great ceremony of robing.
+
+Miss Slater manicured her hands while Freda brushed and dressed the dark
+thick hair. Between Norma and the nurse there had at first been no
+special liking. Both were naturally candidates for Alice's favour. But
+as the months went by, and Norma began to realize that Miss Slater's
+position was not only far from the ideally beautiful one it had seemed
+at first, but that the homely, elderly, good-natured woman was actually
+putting herself to some pains to make Norma's own life in the Liggett
+house more comfortable than it might have been, she had come genuinely
+to admire Alice's attendant, and now they were fast friends. It was
+often in Norma's power to distract Alice's attention from the fact that
+Miss Slater was a little late in returning from her walk, or she would
+make it a point to order for the invalid something that Miss Slater had
+forgotten. They stood firmly together in many a small domestic
+emergency, and although the nurse's presence to-night was not, as Norma
+thought with a little pang, like having Rose or Aunt Kate with her,
+still it was much, much better than having no one at all.
+
+She sat wrapped luxuriously in a brilliant kimono, while Freda brushed
+and rolled busily, and Miss Slater polished and clipped. Then ensued a
+period of intense concentration at the mirror, when the sparkling pins
+were put in her hair, and the little pearl earrings screwed into her
+ears, and when much rubbing and greasing and powdering went on, and even
+some slight retouching of the innocent, red young mouth.
+
+"Shall I?" Norma asked, dubiously eyeing the effect of a trace of rouge.
+
+"Don't be an idiot, Miss Sheridan!" Miss Slater said. "You've got a
+lovely colour, and it's a shame to touch it!"
+
+"Oh, but I think I look so pale!" Norma argued.
+
+"Well, when you've had your dinner----Now, you take my advice, my dear,
+and let your face alone."
+
+"Well, all the girls do it," Norma declared, catching up the little
+girdle, and not unwilling to be over-persuaded. She gave an actual
+shiver of delight as Freda slipped the gown over her head.
+
+It fell into shape about her, a miracle of cut and fit. The little
+satiny underskirt was heavy with beads, the misty cloud of gauze that
+floated above it was hardly heavy enough to hold its own embroideries.
+Little beaded straps held it to the flawless shoulders, and Norma made
+her two attendants laugh as she jerked and fussed at the gold lace and
+tiny satin roses that crossed her breast.
+
+"Leave it alone!" Miss Slater said.
+
+"Oh, but it seems so low!"
+
+"Well, you may be very sure it isn't--Lenz knows what he's doing when he
+makes a gown.... Here, now, what are you going to do with your flowers?"
+
+"Oh, I'm going to wrap the paper round them, and carry them until just
+before I get to Aunt Annie's. Wouldn't you?"
+
+"Wouldn't I? I like that!" said Miss Slater, settling her eyeglasses on
+the bridge of her nose with a finger and thumb. Norma had a momentary
+pang of sympathy; she could never have been made to understand that a
+happy barnyard duck may look contentedly up from her pool at the peacock
+trailing his plumes on the wall.
+
+"Norma--for the love of Allah!" Chris shouted from downstairs.
+
+Norma gave a panicky laugh, snatched her fan, wrap, and flowers, and
+fled joyously down to be criticized and praised. On the whole, they were
+pleased with her: Alice, seizing a chance for an aside to tell her not
+to worry about the lowness of the gown, that it was absolutely correct
+she might be very sure, and Mrs. Melrose quite tremulously delighted
+with her ward. Chris did not say much until a few minutes before they
+planned to start, when he slipped a thin, flat gold watch from his vest
+pocket, and asked speculatively:
+
+"Norma, has your Aunt Kate ever seen you in that rig?"
+
+"No!" she answered, quickly. And then, with less sparkle, "No."
+
+"Well, would you like to run in on her a moment?--she'd probably like it
+tremendously!" said Chris.
+
+"Oh, Chris--I would love it!" Norma exclaimed, soberly, over a disloyal
+conviction that she would rather not. "But have we time?"
+
+"Tons of time. Annie's dinners are a joke!"
+
+Norma glanced at the women; Mrs. Melrose looked undecided, but Alice
+said encouragingly:
+
+"I think that would be a sweet thing to do!"
+
+So it was decided: and Norma was bundled up immediately, and called out
+excitedly laughing good-byes as Chris hurried her to the car.
+
+"You know, it means a lot to your own people, really to see you this
+way, instead of always reading about it, or hearing about it!" Chris
+said, in his entirely prosaic, big-brotherly tone, as the car glided
+smoothly toward the West Sixties.
+
+"I know it!" Norma agreed. "But I don't know how you do!" she added, in
+shy gratitude.
+
+"Well, I'm nearly twice your age, for one thing," he replied,
+pleasantly. And as the car stopped unhesitatingly at the familiar door
+he added: "Now make this very snappy!"
+
+She protested against his getting out, but he accompanied her all the
+way upstairs, both laughing like conspirators as they passed somewhat
+astonished residents of the apartment house on the way.
+
+Aunt Kate and Wolf, and Rose and Harry, as good fortune would have it,
+were all gathered under the dining-room lamp, and there was a burst of
+laughter and welcome for Norma and "Mister Chris." Norma's wrap was
+tossed aside, and she revolved in all her glory, waving her fan at arm's
+length, pleasantly conscious of Wolf's utter stupefaction, and
+conscious, too, a little less pleasantly, that Aunt Kate's maternal eye
+did not agree with Aunt Annie's in the matter of _décolletage_.
+
+Then she and Chris were on their way again, and the legitimate delights
+of being young and correctly dressed and dining with the great Mrs. von
+Behrens, and going to Grand Opera at the Metropolitan, might begin.
+Norma had perhaps never in her life been in such wild spirits as she was
+to-night. It was not happiness, exactly, not the happiness of a serene
+spirit and a quiet mind, for she was too nervous and too much excited to
+be really happy. But it was all wonderful.
+
+She was the youngest person at the long dinner table, at which eighteen
+guests sat in such stately and such separated great carved chairs as
+almost to dine alone. Everyone was charmingly kind to the little Melrose
+protégée, who was to be introduced at a formal tea next week. The men
+were all older than Leslie's group and were neither afraid nor too
+selfishly wrapped up in their own narrow little circle to be polite.
+Norma had known grown young men, college graduates, and the sons of
+prominent families, who were too entirely conventional to be addressed
+without an introduction, or to turn to a strange girl's rescue if she
+spilled a cup of tea. But there was none of that sort of thing here.
+
+To be sure, Annie's men were either married, divorced, or too old to be
+strictly eligible in the eyes of unsophisticated nineteen, but that did
+not keep them from serving delightfully as dinner partners. Then Aunt
+Annie herself was delightful to-night, and joined in the general, if
+unexpressed, flattery that Norma felt in the actual atmosphere.
+
+"Heavens--do you hear that, Ella?" said Annie, to an intimate and
+contemporary, when Norma shyly asked if the dress was all as it should
+be--if the--well, the neck, wasn't just a little----? "Heavens!" said
+Mrs. von Behrens, roundly, "if I had your shoulders--if I were nineteen
+again!--you'd see something a good deal more sensational than that!"
+
+This was not the sort of thing one repeated to Aunt Kate. It was, like
+much of Annie's conversation, so daring as to be a little shocking. But
+Annie had so much manner, such a pleasant, assured voice, that somehow
+Norma never found it censurable in her.
+
+To-night, for the first time, Hendrick von Behrens paid her a little
+personal attention. Norma had always liked the big, blond, silent man,
+with his thinning fair hair, and his affection for his sons. It was of
+his sons that he spoke to her, as he came up to her to-night.
+
+"There are two little boys up in the nursery that don't want to go to
+sleep until Cousin Norma comes up to say good-night," said Hendrick,
+smiling indulgently. Norma turned willingly from Chris and two or three
+other men and women; it was a privilege to be sufficiently at home in
+this magnificent place to follow her host up to the nursery upstairs,
+and be gingerly hugged by the little silk-pajamed boys.
+
+Chris watched her go, the big fan and the blue eye and the delightful
+low voice all busy as she and Hendrick went away, and an odd thought
+came to him. That was her stepfather upon whom she was turning the
+battery of those lovely eyes; those little boys who were, he knew,
+jumping up and down in their little Dutch colonial beds, and calling
+"Norma--Norma--Norma!" were her half-brothers.
+
+He glanced toward Annie; her beautiful figure wrapped in a sparkling
+robe that swept about her like a regal mantle, her fair hair scalloped
+like waves of carved gold, her fingers and throat and hair and ears
+sparkling with diamonds. Annie had on the famous Murison pearls, too,
+to-night; she was twisting them in her fingers as her creditable Italian
+delighted the ears of the Italian ambassador. Her own daughter to-night
+sat among her guests. Chris liked to think himself above surprise, but
+the strangeness of the situation was never absent a second from his
+thoughts. He drifted toward his hostess; he was proud of his own
+languages, and when Norma came back she came to stand wistfully beside
+them, wondering if ever--ever--ever--she would be able to do that!
+
+It was all thrilling--exhilarating--wonderful! Norma's heart thumped
+delightfully as the big motor-cars turned into Broadway and took their
+place in the slowly moving line. She pressed her radiant face close to
+the window; snow was fluttering softly down in the darkness, and men
+were pushing it from the sidewalks, and shouting in the night. There
+was the usual fringe of onlookers in front of the opera house, and it
+required all Norma's self-control to seem quite naturally absorbed in
+getting herself safely out of the motor-car, and quite unconscious that
+her pretty ankles, and her pretty head, and the great bunched wrap, were
+not being generally appraised.
+
+Women were stepping about gingerly in high heels; lights flashed on
+quivering aigrettes, on the pressed, intense faces of the watchers, and
+on the gently turning and falling snow, against the dark street. Norma
+was caught in some man's protecting arm, to push through into the
+churning crowd in the foyer; she had a glimpse of uniformed ushers and
+programme boys, of furred shoulders, of bared shoulders, of silk hats,
+of a sign that said: "Footmen Are Not Allowed in This Lobby."
+
+Then somehow through, criss-crossed currents in the crowd, they reached
+the mysterious door of the box, and Norma saw for the first time the
+great, dimly lighted circle of the opera house, the enormous rise of
+balcony above balcony, the double tiers of boxes, and the rows of seats
+downstairs, separated by wide aisles, and rapidly filling now with the
+men and women who were coming down to their places almost on a run.
+
+The orchestra was already seated, and as Norma stood awed and ecstatic
+in the front of the Von Behrens box, the conductor came in, and was met
+with a wave of applause, which had no sooner died away than the lights
+fanned softly and quickly down, there was the click of a baton on wood,
+and in the instantly ensuing hush the first quivering notes of the opera
+began.
+
+"Sit down, you web-foot!" Acton Liggett whispered, laughing, and Norma
+sank stiffly upon her chair, risking, as the curtain had not yet risen,
+a swift, bewildered smile of apology toward the dim forms that were
+rustling and settling behind her.
+
+"Oo--oo--ooo!" was all that she could whisper when presently Chris
+murmured a question in her ear. And when the lights were on again, and
+the stars taking their calls, he saw that her face was wet, and her
+lashes were caught together with tears.
+
+"It _is_ wonderful music; the best of Verdi!" he said to Annie; and
+Annie, agreeing, sent him off with "that baby," to have her dry her
+eyes. Norma liked his not speaking to her, on her way to the great
+parlour where women were circling about the long mirrors, but when she
+rejoined him she was quite herself, laughing, excited, half dancing as
+he took her back to the box.
+
+She sat down again, her beautiful little head, with its innocent sweep
+of smooth hair, visible from almost every part of the house, her
+questions incessant as the blue eyes and the great fan swept to and fro.
+Once, when she turned suddenly toward him, in the second entr'acte, she
+saw a look on Chris's face that gave her an odd second of something like
+fear, but the house darkened again before she could analyze the emotion,
+and Norma glued her eyes to the footlights.
+
+What she did not see was a man, not quite at ease at his own first grand
+opera, not quite comfortable in his own first evening dress, lost--and
+willingly lost, among the hundreds who had come in just to stand far at
+the back, behind the seats, edging and elbowing each other, changing
+feet, and resting against any chair-back or column that offered itself,
+and sitting down, between acts, on the floor.
+
+Wolf was not restless. He was strong enough to stand like an Indian, and
+tall enough to look easily over the surrounding heads. More than that,
+"Aïda" did not interest him in itself, and at some of its most brilliant
+passages he was guilty of slipping away to pace the hallways in
+solitude, or steal to the foyer for a brief cigarette. But when the
+house was lighted again, he went back into the auditorium, and then his
+eyes never left the little dark head of the girl who sat forward in one
+of the lower tier of boxes, waving her big fan, and talking over her
+bare shoulder to one or another of the persons beside or behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+It was long afterward that Norma dated from the night of "Aïda" a new
+feeling in herself toward Chris, and the recognition of a new feeling in
+Chris toward her. She knew that a special sort of friendship existed
+between them from that time on.
+
+He had done nothing definite that night; he had never done or said
+anything that could be held as marking the change. But Norma felt it,
+and she knew that he did. And somehow, in that atmosphere of fragrant
+flowers and women as fragrant, of rustling silks and rich furs, of music
+and darkness, and the old passion of the story, it had come to her for
+the first time that Chris was not only the Chris of Alice's room, Aunt
+Marianna's son-in-law and Leslie's brother-in-law, but her own Chris,
+too, a Chris who had his special meaning for her, as well as for the
+rest.
+
+She liked him, it was natural that she should especially and truly like
+him. Almost all women did, for he was of the type that comes closest to
+understanding them, and he had made their favour an especial study.
+Chris could never be indifferent to any woman; if he did not actively
+dislike her, he took pains to please her, and, never actively disliking
+Norma, he had from the first constituted himself her guide and friend.
+
+Long before he was conscious that there was a real charm to this little
+chance member of their group, Norma had capitulated utterly. His
+sureness, his pleasant suggestions, his positive approval or kindly
+protests, had done more to make her first months among the Melroses
+happy than any other one thing. Norma loved him, and was grateful to
+him, even when he hurt her. In the matter of a note of acceptance, of a
+little act of thanks, of a gown or hat, his decision was absolute, and
+she had never known it mistaken.
+
+Besides this, she saw him everywhere welcome, everywhere courted and
+admired, and everywhere the same Chris--handsome, self-possessed,
+irreproachably dressed whether for golf or opera, adequate to the claims
+of wife, mother, family, or the world. She had heard Acton turn to him
+for help in little difficulties; she knew that Leslie trusted him with
+all her affairs, and he was as close as any man could be to an intimacy
+with Hendrick von Behrens. Quietly, almost indifferently, he would
+settle his round eyeglasses on their black ribbon, narrow his fine, keen
+eyes and set his firm jaw, and take up their problems one by one, always
+courteous, always interested, always helpful.
+
+Then Chris had charm, as visible to all the world as to Norma. He had
+the charm of race, of intelligence and education, the charm of a man who
+prides himself upon his Italian and French, upon his knowledge of books
+and pictures, and his capacity for holding his own in any group, on any
+subject. He was quite frankly a collector, a connoisseur, a dilettante
+in a hundred different directions, and he had had leisure all his life
+to develop and perfect his affectations. In all this new world Norma
+could not perhaps have discovered a man more rich in just what would
+impress her ignorance, her newness, to the finer aspects of
+civilization.
+
+For a few weeks after "Aïda," as other operas and Annie's tea, and the
+opening social life of the winter softened the first impression, Norma
+tried to tell herself that she had imagined a little tendency, on
+Chris's part, too--well, to impress her with his friendliness. She had
+seen him flirt with other women, and indeed small love affairs of all
+sorts were constantly current, not only in Annie's, but in Leslie's
+group. A certain laxity was in the air, and every month had its
+separation or divorce, to be flung to the gossips for dissection.
+
+Norma was not especially flattered at first, and rather inclined to
+resent the assurance with which Chris carried his well-known tendency
+for philandering into his own family, as it were. But as the full days
+went by, and she encountered in him, wherever they met, the same grave,
+kindly attention, the same pleasant mouth and curiously baffling eyes,
+in spite of herself she began to experience a certain breathless and
+half-flattered and half-frightened pride in his affection.
+
+He never kissed her again, never tried to arrange even the most casual
+meeting alone with her, and never let escape even a word of more than
+brotherly friendliness. But in Leslie's drawing-room at tea time, or at
+some studio tea or Sunday luncheon in a country house, he always quietly
+joined her, kept, if possible, within the sound of her voice, and never
+had any plan that would interfere with possible plans of hers. If she
+was ready to go, he would drive her, perhaps to discourse impersonally
+upon the quality of the pictures, or the countryside mantled with snow,
+upon the way. If she wanted a message telephoned, a telegram sent, even
+a borrowed book returned, it was "no trouble at all"; Chris would of
+course attend to it.
+
+At dinner parties he was rarely placed beside her; hers was naturally
+the younger set. But he found a hundred ways to remind her that he was
+constantly attentive. Norma would feel her heart jump in her side as he
+started toward her across a ball-room floor, handsome, perfectly poised,
+betraying nothing but generous interest in her youthful good times as he
+took his place beside her.
+
+So Christmas came and went, and the last affairs of the brief season
+began to be announced: the last dances, the last dinners, the
+"pre-Lenten functions" as the papers had it. Norma, apologizing, in one
+of her flying calls on Aunt Kate, for the long intervals between visits,
+explained that she honestly did not know where the weeks flew!
+
+"And are you happy, Baby?" her aunt asked, holding her close, and
+looking anxiously into her eyes.
+
+"Oh--happy!" the girl exclaimed, with a sort of shallow, quick laugh
+that was quite new. "Of course I am. I never in my life dreamed that I
+could be so happy. I've nothing left to wish for. Except, of course,
+that I would like to know where I stand; I would like to have my own
+position a little more definite," she added. But the last phrases were
+uttered only in her own soul, and Mrs. Sheridan, after a rather
+discontented scrutiny of the face she loved so well, was obliged to
+change the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+In mid-Lent, when an early rush of almost summery warmth suddenly poured
+over the city, Chris and Norma met on the way home from church. Norma
+walked every Sunday morning to the big cathedral, but Chris went only
+once or twice a year to the fashionable Avenue church a few blocks away.
+This morning he had joined her as she was quietly leaving the house, and
+instantly it flashed into her mind that he had deliberately planned to
+do so, knowing that Miss Slater, who usually accompanied her, was away
+for a week's vacation.
+
+Their conversation was impersonal and casual, as always, as they walked
+along the drying sidewalks, in the pleasant early freshness, but as
+Chris left her he asked her at about what time she would be returning,
+and Norma was not surprised, when she came out of the cathedral, a
+little later than the great first tide of the outpouring congregation,
+to see him waiting for her.
+
+The thought of him had been keeping her heart beating fast, and her mind
+in confusion, even while she tried to pray. And she had thought that she
+might leave the church by one of the big side doors, and so at least run
+a fair risk of missing him. But Norma half feared an act that would
+define their deepening friendship as dangerous, and half longed for the
+fifteen minutes of walking and chatting in the sunshine. So she came
+straight to him, and with no more than a word of greeting they turned
+north.
+
+It was an exquisite morning, and the clean, bare stretches of the Avenue
+were swimming in an almost summerlike mist of opal and blue. Such
+persons as were visible in the streets at all were newsboys, idle
+policemen, or black-clad women hurrying to or from church, and when they
+reached the Park, it was almost deserted. The trees, gently moving in a
+warm breeze, were delicately etched with the first green of the year;
+maples and sycamores were dotted with new, golden foliage, and the grass
+was deep and sweet. A few riders were ambling along the bridle-path, the
+horses kicking up clods of the damp, soft earth.
+
+Norma and Christopher walked slowly, talking. The girl was hardly
+conscious of what they said, realizing suddenly, and almost with terror,
+that just to be here, with Chris, was enough to flood her being with a
+happiness as new and miraculous as the new and miraculous springtime
+itself. There was no future and no past to this ecstasy, no Alice, no
+world; it was enough, in its first bloom, that it existed.
+
+"You've had--what is it?--a whole year of us, Norma," Chris said, "and
+on the whole, it's been happy, hasn't it?"
+
+"Fourteen months," she corrected him. "Fourteen months, at least, since
+Aunt Kate and I called on Aunt Marianna. Yes, it's been like a miracle,
+Chris. I never will understand it. I never will understand why a
+friendless girl--unknown and having absolutely no claim--should have
+been treated so wonderfully!"
+
+"And you wouldn't want to go back?" he mused, smiling.
+
+"No," she said, quickly. "I am afraid, when I think of ever going back!"
+
+"I don't see why you should," Chris said. "You will inherit, through
+your grandmother's will----"
+
+He had been following a train of thought, half to himself. Norma's round
+eyes, as she stopped short in the path, arrested him.
+
+"My _grandmother_!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Your Aunt Marianna," he amended, flushing. But their eyes did not move
+as they stared at each other.
+
+A thousand remembered trifles flashed through Norma's whirling brain; a
+thousand little half-stilled suspicions leaped to new life. She had
+accepted the suggested kinship in childish acquiescence, but doubt was
+aflame now, once and for all. The man knew that there was no further
+evading her.
+
+"Chris, do you know anything about me?" she asked, directly.
+
+"Yes, I think--I know everything," he answered, after a second's
+hesitation.
+
+Norma looked at him steadily. "Did you know my father and mother?" she
+demanded, presently, in an odd, tense voice.
+
+There was another pause before Chris said, slowly:
+
+"I have met your father. But I knew--I know--your mother."
+
+"You _know_ her?" The world was whirling about Norma. "Is Aunt Kate my
+mother?" she asked, breathing hard.
+
+"No. I don't know why you should not know. You call her Aunt Annie,"
+Chris said.
+
+Norma's hands dropped to her sides. She breathed as if she were
+suffocating.
+
+"_Aunt Annie!_" she whispered, in stupefaction.
+
+And she turned and walked a few steps blindly, her eyes wide and vacant,
+and one hand pressed to her cheek. "My God!--my God!" he heard her say.
+
+"Annie eloped when she was a girl," Chris began presently, when she was
+dazedly walking on again. "She was married, and the man deserted her.
+She was ill, in Germany----But shall I talk now? Would you rather not?"
+
+"Oh, no--no! Go on," Norma said, briefly.
+
+"Alice was the first to guess it," Christopher pursued. "Her sister
+doesn't know it, or dream it!"
+
+"Aunt Annie doesn't! She does not know that I'm her own daughter!... But
+what _does_ she think?"
+
+"She supposes that her baby died, dear. I'm sorry to tell you, Norma,
+but I couldn't lie to you! You'll understand everything, now--why your
+grandmother wants to make it all up to you----"
+
+"Does Leslie know?" Norma demanded, suddenly, from a dark moment of
+brooding.
+
+"Nobody knows! Your Aunt Kate, your grandmother, Alice, and I, are
+absolutely the only people in the world! And Norma, _nobody else must
+know_. For the sake of the family, for everyone's sake----"
+
+"Oh, I see that!" she answered, quickly and impatiently. And for awhile
+she walked on in silence, and apparently did not hear his one or two
+efforts to recommence the conversation. "Aunt Annie!" she said once,
+half aloud. And later she added, absently: "Yes, I should know!"
+
+They had walked well up into the Park, now they turned back; the sun was
+getting hot, first perambulators were making their appearance, and
+Norma loosened her light furs.
+
+"So I am a Melrose!" she mused. And then, abruptly: "Chris, what _is_ my
+name?"
+
+"Melrose," he answered, flushing.
+
+Her eyes asked a sudden, horrified question, and she took the answer
+from his look without a word. He saw the colour ebb from her face,
+leaving it very white.
+
+"You said--they--my parents--were married, Chris?" she asked, painfully.
+
+"Annie supposed they were. But he was not free!"
+
+Norma did not speak again. In silence they crossed the Avenue, and went
+on down the shady side street. Chris, with chosen words and quietly,
+told her the story of Annie's girlhood, who and what her father had
+been, the bitter grief of her grandmother, the general hushing up of the
+whole affair. He watched her anxiously as he talked, for there was a
+drawn, set look to her face that he did not like.
+
+"Why did Aunt Kate ever decide to bring me to my--my grandmother, after
+so many years?" she asked.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know that. Alice and I have fancied that Kate might
+have kept in touch with your father all this time, and that he might be
+dead now, and not likely to--make trouble."
+
+"That is it," Norma agreed, quickly. "Because not long before she came
+to see Aunt Marianna she _had_ had some sort of news--from Canada, I
+think. An old friend was dead; I remember it as if it were yesterday."
+
+"Then that fits in," Chris said, glad she could talk.
+
+"But I can't believe it!" she cried in bewilderment. And suddenly she
+burst out angrily: "Oh, Chris, is it fair? Is it fair? That one girl,
+like Leslie, should have so--so much! The name, the inheritance, the
+husband and position and the friends--and that another, through no fault
+of hers, should be just--just--a nobody?"
+
+She choked, and Christopher made a little protestant sound.
+
+"Oh, yes, I am!" she insisted, bitterly. "Not recognized by my own
+mother--she's _not_ my mother! No mother could----"
+
+"Listen, dear," Chris begged, really alarmed by the storm he had raised.
+"Your grandmother, for reasons of her own, never told Annie there was a
+baby. It is obvious why she kept silent; it was only kindness--decency.
+Annie was young, younger than you are, and poor old Aunt Marianna only
+knew that her child was ill, and had been ill-treated, and most cruelly
+used. You were brought up safely and happily, with good and loving
+people----"
+
+"The best in the world!" Norma said, through her teeth, fighting tears.
+
+"The best in the world. Why, Norma, what a woman they've made you!
+You--who stand alone among all the girls I know! And then," Chris
+continued quickly, seeing her a little quieter, "when you are growing
+up, your aunt brings you to your grandmother, who immediately turns her
+whole world topsy-turvy to make you welcome! Is there anything so unfair
+in that? Annie made a terrible mistake, dear----"
+
+"And everyone but Annie pays!" Norma interrupted, bitterly.
+
+"Norma, she is your mother!" Chris reminded her, in the tone that,
+coming from him, always instantly affected her. Her eyes fell, and her
+tone, when she spoke, was softer.
+
+"Just bearing a child isn't all motherhood," she said.
+
+"No, my dear; I know. And if Annie were ever to guess this, it isn't
+like her not to face the music, at any cost. But isn't it better as it
+is, Norma?"
+
+The wonderful tone, the wonderful manner, the kindness and sympathy in
+his eyes! Norma, with one foot on the lowest step, now raised her eyes
+to his with a sort of childish penitence.
+
+"Oh, yes, Chris! But"--her lips trembled--"but if Aunt Kate had only
+kept me from knowing for ever!" she faltered.
+
+"She wouldn't take that responsibility, dear, and one can't blame her. A
+comfortable inheritance comes from your grandmother; it isn't the
+enormous fortune Leslie inherited, of course, but it is all you would
+have had, even had Annie brought you home openly as her daughter. It is
+enough to make a very pretty wedding-portion for me to give away with
+you, my dear, in a few years," Chris added more lightly. The suggestion
+made her face flame again.
+
+"Who would marry me?" she said, under her breath, with a scornful look,
+under half-lowered lids, into space.
+
+For answer he gave her an odd glance--one that lived in her memory for
+many and many a day.
+
+"Ah, Norma--Norma--Norma!" he said--quickly, half laughingly. Then his
+expression changed, and his smile died away. "I have something to bear,"
+he said, with a glance upward toward Alice's windows. "Life isn't roses,
+roses, all the way for any one of us, my dear! Now, you've got a bad bit
+of the road ahead. But let's be good sports, Norma. And come in now,
+I'm famished; let's have breakfast. My honour is in your hands," he
+added, more gravely, "perhaps I had no right to tell you all this! You
+mustn't betray me!"
+
+"Chris," she responded, warmly, "as if I could!"
+
+He watched her eating her breakfast, and chatting with Alice, a little
+later, and told himself that some of Annie's splendid courage had
+certainly descended to this gallant little daughter. Norma was pale, and
+now and then her eyes would meet his with a certain strained look, or
+she would lose the thread of the conversation for a few seconds, but
+that was all. Alice noticed nothing, and in a day or two Chris could
+easily have convinced himself that the conversation in the spring
+greenness of the Sunday morning had been a dream.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+However, that hour had borne fruit, and in two separate ways had had its
+distinct effect upon Norma's mind and soul. In the first place, she had
+a secret now with Chris, and understanding that made her most casual
+glance at him significant, and gave a double meaning to almost every
+word they exchanged. It was at his suggestion that she decided to keep
+the revelation from Alice, even though she knew what Alice knew, for
+Alice was not very well, and Chris was sure that it would only agitate
+and frighten the invalid to feel that the family's discreditable secret
+was just that much nearer betrayal. So she and Chris alone shared the
+agitation, strain, and bewilderment of the almost overwhelming
+discovery; and Norma, in turning to him for advice and sympathy,
+deepened tenfold the tie between them.
+
+But even this result was not so far-reaching as the less-obvious effect
+of the discovery upon her character. Everything that was romantic,
+undisciplined, and reckless in Norma was fostered by the thought that so
+thrilling and so secret a history united her closely to the Melrose
+family. That she was Leslie's actual cousin, that the closest of all
+human relationships bound her to the magnificent Mrs. von Behrens, were
+thoughts that excited in her every dramatic and extravagant tendency to
+which the amazing year had inclined _her_. With her growing ease in her
+changed environment, and the growing popularity she enjoyed there, came
+also a sense of predestination, the conviction that her extraordinary
+history justified her in any act of daring or of unconventionality.
+There was nothing to be gained by self-control or sanity, Norma might
+tell herself, at least for those of the Melrose blood.
+
+Her shyness of the season before had vanished, and she could plunge into
+the summer gaiety with an assurance that amazed even herself. Her first
+meeting with Annie, after the day of Chris's disclosures, was an ordeal
+at which he himself chanced to be a secretly thrilled onlooker. Norma
+grew white, and her lips trembled; there was a strained look in her
+blue, agonized eyes. But Annie's entire unconsciousness that the
+situation was at all tense, and the presence of three or four total
+outsiders, helped Norma to feel that this amazing and dramatic moment
+was only one more in a life newly amazing and dramatic, and she escaped
+unnoticed from the trial. The second time was much less trying, and
+after that Norma showed no sign that she ever thought of the matter at
+all.
+
+Mrs. von Behrens took Norma to her Maine camp in July, and when the girl
+joined the Chris Liggetts in August, it was for a season of hard tennis,
+golf, polo, dancing, yachting, and swimming. Norma grew lean and tanned,
+and improved so rapidly in manner and appearance that Alice felt,
+concerning her, certain fears that she one day confided to her mother.
+
+It was on an early September day, dry and airless, and they were on the
+side porch of the Newport cottage.
+
+"You see how pretty she's growing, Mama," Alice said. And then, in a
+lower tone, with a quick cautious glance about: "Mama, doesn't she
+often remind you of Annie?"
+
+Mrs. Melrose, who had been contentedly rocking and drowsing in the heat,
+paled with sudden terror and apprehension, and looked around her with
+sick and uneasy eyes.
+
+"Alice--my darling," she stammered.
+
+"I know, Mama--I'm not going to talk about it, truly!" Alice assured
+her, quickly. "I never even _think_ of it!" she added, earnestly.
+
+"No--no--no, that's right!" her mother agreed, hurriedly. Her soft old
+face, under the thin, crimped gray hair, was full of distress.
+
+"Mama, there is no reason why it should worry you," Alice said,
+distressed, too. "Don't think of it; I'm sorry I spoke! But sometimes,
+even though she is so dark, Norma is so like Annie that it makes my
+blood run cold. If Annie ever suspected that she is--well, her own
+daughter----"
+
+Mrs. Melrose's face was ashen, and she looked as if touched by the heat.
+
+"No--no, dear!" she said, with a sort of terrified brevity. "You and
+Chris were wrong there. I can't talk to you about it, Alice," she broke
+off, pleadingly; "you mustn't ask me, dear. You said you wouldn't," she
+pleaded, trembling.
+
+Alice was stupefied. For a full minute she lay in her pillows, staring
+blankly at her mother.
+
+"_Isn't_----!" she whispered at last, incredulous and bewildered.
+
+"No, dear. Poor Annie----! No, no, no; Norma's mother is dead. But--but
+you must believe that Mama is acting as she believes to be for the
+best," she interrupted herself, in painful and hesitating tones, "and
+that I can't talk about it now, Alice; I can't, indeed! Some day----"
+
+"Mama darling," Alice cried, really alarmed by her leaden colour and
+wild eyes, "please--I'll never speak of it again! Why, I know that
+everything you do is for us all, darling! Please be happy about it. Come
+on, we'll talk of something else. When do you leave for
+town--to-morrow?"
+
+"Poole drives us as far as Great Barrington to-morrow, Norma and me,"
+the old lady began, gaining calm as she reviewed her plans. Chris needed
+her for a little matter of business, and Norma was anxious to see her
+Cousin Rose's new baby. The conversation drifted to Leslie's baby, the
+idolized Patricia who was now some four months old.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Two days later found Norma happily seated beside the big bed she and
+Rose had shared less than two years ago, where Rose now lay, with the
+snuffling and mouthing baby, rolled deep in flannels, beside her. Rose
+had come home to her mother, for the great event, and Mrs. Sheridan was
+exulting in the care of them both. Just now she was in the kitchen, and
+the two girls were alone together, Norma a little awed and a little
+ashamed of the emotion that Rose's pale and rapt and radiant face gave
+her; Rose secretly pitying, from her height, the woman who was not yet a
+mother.
+
+"And young Mrs. Liggett was terribly disappointed that her baby was a
+girl," Rose marvelled. "I didn't care one bit! Only Harry is glad it's a
+boy."
+
+"Well, Leslie was sure that hers was going to be a boy," Norma said,
+"and I wish you could have heard Aunt Annie deciding that the Melroses
+usually had sons----"
+
+"She'll have a boy next," Rose suggested.
+
+Norma glanced at her polished finger-tip, adjusted the woolly tan bag
+she carried.
+
+"She says never again!" she remarked, airily. Rose's clear forehead
+clouded faintly, and Norma hastened to apologize. "Well, my dear, that's
+what she _said_," she remarked, laughingly, with quick fingers on Rose's
+hand.
+
+"It's sad that Mrs. Chris Liggett didn't have just one, before her
+accident. It would make such a difference in her life," Rose mused, with
+her eyes fixed thoughtfully on Norma's face. There was something about
+Norma to-day that she did not understand.
+
+"Oh, it's frightfully sad," Norma agreed, easily. And because she liked
+the mere sound of his name, she added: "Chris is fond of children, too!"
+Then, with a sudden change of manner that even unsuspicious Rose thought
+odd, she said, gaily: "Isn't Aunt Kate perfectly delicious about the
+nurse? I knew she would be. Of course, she does everything, and Miss
+Miller simply looks on."
+
+"Well, almost," Rose said, with an affectionate laugh. "She didn't want
+a nurse at all, but Harry and Wolf insisted. And then--night before
+last--when I was so ill, it almost made me laugh in spite of feeling so
+badly, to hear Mother with Miss Miller. 'You'd better get out of here,
+my dear,' I heard her say, 'this is no place for a girl like you----'"
+
+Norma's laugh rang out. But Rose noticed that her face sobered
+immediately almost into sadness, and that there was a bitter line about
+the lovely mouth, and a shadow of something like cynicism in her blue
+eyes.
+
+"Norma," she ventured, suddenly storming the fortress, "what is it,
+darling? Something's worrying you, Nono. Can't you tell me?"
+
+With the old nursery name Norma's gallant look of amusement and
+reassurance faltered. She looked suddenly down at the hand Rose was
+holding, and Rose saw the muscles of her throat contract, and that she
+was pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling.
+
+A tear fell on the locked hands. Norma kept her eyes averted, shook her
+head.
+
+"Is it a man, Nono?"
+
+Norma looked up, dashed away the tears, and managed a rueful smile.
+
+"Isn't it always a man?" she asked, bravely.
+
+Rose still looked at her anxiously, waiting for further light.
+
+"But, dearest, surely he likes you?"
+
+The other girl was silent, rubbing her thumb slowly to and fro across
+Rose's thin hand.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, after a pause.
+
+"But of course he does!" Rose said, confidently. "It'll all come right.
+There's no reason why it shouldn't!" And with all the interest of their
+old days of intimacy she asked eagerly: "Nono, is he handsome?"
+
+"Oh, yes--tremendously."
+
+"And the right age?"
+
+Norma laughed, half protestant.
+
+"Rose, aren't you a little demon for the third degree!" But she liked
+it, in spite of the reluctance in her manner, and presently added: "I
+don't think age matters, do you?"
+
+"Not in the least," Rose agreed. "Norma, does Mrs. Melrose know?"
+
+"Know what?" Norma parried.
+
+"Know that--well, that you like him?"
+
+Norma raised serious eyes, looked unsmilingly into Rose's smiling face.
+
+"Nobody knows. It--it isn't going right, Rose. I can't tell you about
+all of it----" She paused.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't know the people if you did," Rose said, sensibly. And
+suddenly she added, timidly, "Norma, there isn't another girl?"
+
+"Well, yes, there is, in a way," Norma conceded, after thought.
+
+"That he likes better?" Rose asked, quickly.
+
+"No, I don't think he likes her better!" Norma answered.
+
+"Well, then----?" Rose summarized, triumphantly.
+
+But there was no answering flash from Norma, who was looking down again,
+and who still wore a troubled expression, although, as Rose rejoiced to
+see, it was less bitter than it had been.
+
+"Rose," she said, gravely, "if he was already bound in honour; if he
+was--promised, to her?"
+
+Rose's eyes expressed quick sympathy.
+
+"Norma! You mean engaged? But then how did he ever come to care for
+you?" she followed it up anxiously.
+
+"I don't know!" Norma said, with a shrug.
+
+"But, Nono, why do you think he _does_ like you? Has he said so?"
+
+Norma had freed her hand, and pulled on her rough little cream-coloured
+gloves. Now she spread her five fingers, and looked at them with
+slightly raised brows and slightly compressed lips.
+
+"No," she said, briefly and quietly.
+
+Rose's face was full of distress. Again she reached for Norma's fingers.
+
+"Dearest--I'm so sorry! But--but it doesn't make you feel very badly,
+does it, Norma?"
+
+Norma did not answer.
+
+"Ah, it does!" Rose said, pitifully. "Are you so sure you care?"
+
+At this Norma laughed, glanced for a moment into far space, shook her
+head. And for a few minutes there was utter silence in the plain little
+bedroom. Then the baby began to fuss and grope, and to make little
+sneezing faces in his cocoon of blankets.
+
+"Just one more word, dear," Rose said, later, when Aunt Kate had come
+flying in, and carried off the new treasure, and when Norma was standing
+before the mirror adjusting her wide-brimmed summer hat. "If he cares
+for you, it's much, much better to make the change now, Norma, than to
+wait until it's too late! No matter how hard, or how unpleasant it
+is----"
+
+"I know," Norma agreed, quickly, painfully, stooping to kiss her. "We'll
+be down next month, Rose, and then I'll see you oftener!"
+
+"When do you go?" Rose said, clinging to her hand.
+
+"Go back to Newport? To-morrow. Or at least we get to Great Barrington
+to-morrow, and we may stay there with the Richies a few days. Aunt
+Marianna hates to make the trip in one day, so we stayed there last
+night. But she had to come down to sign some papers. Chris has been down
+all the week and he wired for her, so she and I drove down together."
+
+"And is the country lovely now?" Rose asked.
+
+"Well--dry. But it is beautiful, too; so hot and leafy and thunderous."
+
+"And where are you--at the old house?"
+
+"No; at a hotel, up near the Park. I wish you and little Peter Pan could
+get away somewhere, Rose, for we'll have another three weeks of the
+heat!"
+
+"Oh, my dear, Mother Redding and the baby and I are going to the
+Berkshires for at least two whole weeks," Rose announced, happily. "And
+I thought that my bad boy was coming in early August," she added, of
+the baby, "or I would have gone first. Try to come oftener, Norma," she
+pleaded, "for we all love you so!"
+
+And again, Norma's manner worried her. What was there in the sisterly
+little speech to bring the tears again to Norma's eyes?
+
+"I know you do, Rosy," Norma said, very low. "I wish I could go up to
+the Berkshires with you."
+
+"Well, then, why don't you, dear?"
+
+"Oh"--Norma flung back her head--"I don't know!" she said, with an
+attempt at lightness. And two minutes later she had kissed Aunt Kate,
+and greeted Wolf, in the kitchen, and Rose heard their laughter, and
+then the closing of the front door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Wolf walked with her to the omnibus. He had come in tired with the heat
+of the long day, but Norma thought him his sweetest self, brotherly,
+good, unsuspicious, and unaffected. He complimented her on her
+appearance; he had a kind word for Harry Redding, for the baby; he told
+Norma that he and his mother had gone to Portland by water a few weeks
+before and had a great spree. Norma, tired and excited, loved him for
+his very indifference to her affairs and her mood, for the simplicity
+with which he showed her the book he was reading, and the amusement he
+found all along the dry and dusty and dirty street. Everything was
+interesting to Wolf, and he made no apologies for the general wiltedness
+and disorder of the neighbourhood.
+
+Norma looked down at him, from the top of the omnibus, and thought that
+he was a friendly and likable big young man, with his rumpled bare head
+shining reddish-brown in the streaming, merciless sunlight. She had no
+idea that his last look at her was like some precious canvas that a
+collector adds to his treasures, that to the thousands of little-girl
+Normas, and bookshop Normas, and to the memorable picture of a débutante
+Norma at her first opera, Wolf carried away with him to-night one more
+Norma: a brown, self-possessed, prettier-than-ever Norma, in a wide
+English hat and a plain linen suit, and transparent green silk stockings
+that matched her green silk parasol.
+
+She got down from the omnibus, a few blocks farther away, and walked
+slowly along the shady side of the burning cross-streets, thinking,
+thinking, thinking. It was the hottest hour of the afternoon; there
+would be a storm to-night, but just now the air hung motionless, and the
+shadows were almost as dazzling, in their baking dimness, as the
+sunshine. Houses were closed and silent, show windows bare; the
+omnibuses creaked by loaded with passengers, trying to get cool. There
+was an odour of frying potatoes; other odours, stale and lifeless, crept
+through the stale and lifeless air.
+
+Norma was entirely familiar with this phase of city life, for, except
+for Sundays at Coney Island, or picnicking on some beach or in some
+meadow or wood of Connecticut, she and the Sheridans had weathered two
+successive hot seasons very comfortably within two hundred yards of
+Broadway. It held no particular horrors for her; she reflected that in
+another hour or two the sun would quite have died away, and then every
+flight of old brownstone steps would hold its chatting group, and every
+street its scores of screaming and running children.
+
+Wherever her thoughts carried her, they began and ended with
+Christopher. He had never kissed her again after the night of his return
+from Miami; he had hardly touched even her hand, and he had said no word
+of love. But, as the summer progressed, these two had grown steadily to
+live more and more for each other, for just the casual friendly looks
+and words of ordinary intercourse in the presence of other persons, and
+for the chance hours that Fate now and then permitted them alone.
+
+Norma, in every other relationship grown more whimsical and more
+restless, showing new phases of frivolity and shallowness to the world,
+had deepened and developed, under Chris's eyes, into her own highest
+possibility of womanhood. To him she was earnest, honest, only anxious
+to be good and to be true. He knew the viewpoint of that wiser self that
+was the real Norma; he knew how wide open those blue eyes were to what
+was false and worthless in the world around her.
+
+And Norma had seen him change, too, or perhaps more truly become
+himself. Still apparently the old Chris, handsome, poised, cynical, and
+only too ready to be bored, he went his usual course of golf and polo,
+gave his men's dinners, kissed Alice good-bye and departed for yachting
+or motoring trips. Even Alice, shut away from reality in her own world
+of music and sweet airs, flowers and friendship, saw no change.
+
+But Norma saw it. She knew that Chris was no longer ready to respond to
+every pretty woman's idle challenge to a flirtation; she knew that there
+was a Chris of high ideals, a Chris capable even of heroism, a Chris who
+loved simplicity, who loved even service, and who was not too spoiled
+and too proud to give his time as well as his money, to give himself
+gladly where he saw the need.
+
+Their hours alone together were hours of enchanting discovery. Memories
+of the little boy that had been Chris, the little girl that had been
+Norma, their hopes and ambitions and joys and sorrows, all were
+exchanged. And to them both every word seemed of thrilling and absorbing
+interest. To Norma life now was a different thing when Chris merely was
+in the room, however distant from her, however apparently interested in
+someone, or something, else. She knew that he was conscious of her,
+thinking of her, and that presently she would have just the passing
+word, or smile, or even quiet glance that would buoy her hungry soul
+like a fresh and powerful current.
+
+It was not strange to her that she should have come to feel him the most
+vital and most admirable of all the persons about her, for many of the
+men and women who loved Chris shared this view. Norma had not been in
+the Melrose house a month before she had heard him called "wonderful",
+"inimitable", "the only Chris", a hundred times. Even, she told herself
+sometimes, even the women that Chris quite openly disliked would not
+return coldness for coldness. And how much less could she, so much
+younger, resist the generous friendship he offered to her ignorance, and
+awkwardness, and strangeness?
+
+That he saw in her own companionship something to value she had at first
+been slow to believe. Sheer pride had driven her to reluctance, to
+shyness, to unbelief. But that was long ago, months ago. Norma knew now
+that he truly liked her, that the very freshness and unconventionality
+of her viewpoint delighted him, and that he gave her a frankness, a
+simpleness, and an ardour, in his confidences, that would have
+astonished Alice herself.
+
+Alice! Norma was thinking of Alice, now. Just where did Alice come in?
+Alice had always been the most generous of wives. But she could not be
+generous here; no human woman could. She liked Norma, in a sense she
+needed Norma, but Chris was all her world.
+
+"But, good heavens!" Norma mused, as she walked slowly along, "isn't
+there to be any friendship for a man but his men friends, or any for a
+woman except unmarried men? Isn't there friendship at all between the
+sexes? Must it always be sneaking and subterfuge, unless it's marriage?
+I don't want to marry Chris Liggett----"
+
+She stopped short, and the blood left her heart suddenly, and rushed
+back with a pounding that almost dizzied her.
+
+"_I don't want to marry Chris Liggett_," she whispered, aloud. And then
+she widened her eyes at space, and walked on blindly for a little way.
+"Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris!" she said. "Oh, what shall I do?"
+
+An agony almost physical in its violence seized her, and she began to
+move more rapidly, as if to wear it out, or escape it.
+
+"No, no, no; I can't care for him in that way," said Norma, feeling her
+throat dry and her head suddenly aching. "We can't--we cannot--like each
+other that way!"
+
+The rest of the walk was a blank as far as her consciousness was
+concerned. She was swept far away, on a rushing sea of memories,
+memories confused and troubled by a vague apprehension of the days to
+come. That was it; that was it; they loved each other. Not as
+kinspeople, not as friends, not as the Chris and Norma of Alice's and
+Leslie's and Annie's lives, but as man and woman, caught at last in the
+old, old snare that is the strongest in life.
+
+Bewildered and sick, she reached the cool, great colonnaded doorway of
+the hotel. And here she and Christopher came face to face.
+
+He was coming out, was indeed halfway down the stone steps. They stood
+still and looked at each other.
+
+Norma thought that he looked tired, that perhaps the hot week in
+streets and offices had been hard for him. He was pale, and the smile he
+gave her was strained and unnatural. They had not seen each other for
+ten days, and Norma, drinking in every expression of the firm mouth, the
+shrewd, kindly eyes, the finely set head, felt sudden confidence and
+happiness flood her being again. It was all nonsense, this imagining of
+hers, and she and Chris would always be the best friends in the world!
+
+"Alice is perfectly splendid," Norma said, in answer to his first
+questions, "and Leslie's baby is much less fat and solid looking, and
+getting to be so cunning. Where is Aunt Marianna?"
+
+"Upstairs," he answered with a slight backward inclination of his head.
+"We had a most satisfactory day, and you and she can get off to Great
+Barrington to-morrow without any trouble."
+
+"She and I?" Norma said, distressed by something cold and casual in his
+manner. "But aren't you coming, too? Alice depends upon your coming!"
+
+"I can't, I'm sorry to say. I may get up on Friday night," Chris said,
+with an almost weary air of politeness.
+
+"Friday! Why, then--then I'll persuade Aunt Marianna to wait," Norma
+decided, eagerly. "You must come with us, Chris; it's quite lovely up
+through Connecticut!"
+
+"I'm very sorry," the man repeated, glancing beyond her as if in a hurry
+to terminate the conversation. "But I may not get up at all this week.
+And I've arranged with Aunt Marianna that Poole drives you up to-morrow.
+You'll find her," he added, lightly, "enthusiastic over the baby's
+pictures. They're really excellent, and I think Leslie will be
+delighted. And now I have to go, Norma----"
+
+"But you're coming back to have dinner with us?" the girl interrupted,
+thoroughly uneasy at the change in him.
+
+"Not to-night. I have an engagement! Good-bye. I'll see you very soon.
+The hat's charming, Norma, I think you may safely order more of them by
+mail if you have to. Good-bye."
+
+And with another odd smile, and his usually courteous bow, he was gone,
+and Norma was left staring after him in a state almost of stupefaction.
+
+What was the matter with him? The question framed itself indignantly in
+Norma's mind as she automatically crossed the foyer of the hotel and
+went upstairs. Mechanically, blindly, she took off the big hat, flung
+aside the parasol, and went through the uniting bathroom into Mrs.
+Melrose's room. What on earth had been the matter with Chris? What right
+had he--how dared he--treat her so rudely?
+
+Mrs. Melrose was in a flowered chair near a wide-opened window. She had
+put on a lacy robe of thin silk, after the heat and burden of the day,
+and her feet were in slippers. Beside her was a tall glass, holding an
+iced drink, and before her, on a small table, Regina had ranged the
+beautiful photographs of Leslie's baby that were to be the young
+mother's birthday surprise next week.
+
+"Hello, dear!" she said, in the pleasant, almost cooing voice with which
+she almost always addressed the girls of the family, "isn't this just a
+dreadful, dreadful day? Oh, my, so hot! Look here, Norma, just see my
+little Patricia's pictures. Aren't they perfectly lovely? I'm _so_
+pleased with them. I was just----Regina, will you order Miss Norma
+something cool to drink, please. Tea, dear? Or lemonade, like your old
+aunty?--I was just showing them to Chris. Yes. And he thought they were
+just perfectly lovely; see the little fat hand, and how beautifully the
+lace took! There--that one's the best. You'll see, Leslie will like that
+one."
+
+The topic, fortunately for Norma's agitation, was apparently
+inexhaustible and all-absorbing. The girl could sink almost unnoticed
+into an opposite chair, and while her voice dutifully uttered
+sympathetic monosyllables, and her eyes went from the portraits of
+little Patricia idly about the big room, noting the handsome old maple
+furniture, and the costly old scrolled velvet carpet, and the aspect of
+flaming roofs beyond the window in the sunset, her thoughts could turn
+and twist agonizingly over this new mystery and this new pain. What had
+been the matter with Chris?
+
+Anger gave way to chill, and chill to utter heartsickness. The cause of
+the change was unimportant, after all; it was the change itself that was
+significant. Norma's head ached, her heart was like lead. She had been
+thinking, all the way down in the car--all to-day--that she would meet
+him to-night; that they would talk. Now what? Was this endless evening
+to drag away on his terms, and were they to return to Newport to-morrow,
+with only the memory of that cool farewell to feed Norma's starving,
+starving soul?
+
+"Chris couldn't stay and have dinner," Mrs. Melrose presently was
+regretting, "but, after all, perhaps it's cooler up here than anywhere,
+and I am so tired that I'm not going to change! You'll just have to
+stand me as I am."
+
+And the tired, heat-flushed, wrinkled old face, under its fringe of gray
+hair, smiled confidently at Norma. The girl smiled affectionately back.
+
+Five o'clock. Six o'clock. It was almost seven when Norma came forth
+from a cold bath, and supervised the serving of the little meal. She
+merely played with her own food, and the old lady was hardly more
+hungry.
+
+"Oh, no, Aunt Marianna! I think that Leslie was just terribly nervous,
+after Patricia was born. But I think now, especially when they're back
+in their own house, they'll be perfectly happy. No reason in the world
+why they shouldn't be," Norma heard herself saying. So they had been
+talking of Acton and Leslie, she thought. Leslie was spoiled, and Acton
+was extravagant, and the united families had been just a little worried
+about their attitudes toward each other. Mrs. Melrose was sure that
+Norma was right, and rambled along the same topic for some time. Then
+Norma realized that they had somehow gotten around to Theodore, Leslie's
+father. This subject was always good for half hours together, she could
+safely ramble a little herself. The deadly weight fell upon her spirit
+again. What had been the matter with Chris?
+
+At nine o'clock her tired old companion began preparations for bed, and
+Norma, catching up some magazines, went into her own room. She could
+hear Regina and Mrs. Melrose murmuring together, the running of water,
+the opening and shutting of bureau drawers.
+
+Norma went to her open window, leaned out into the warm and brilliant
+night. There was a hot moon, moving between clouds that promised, at
+last, a break in the binding heat. Down the Avenue below her omnibuses
+wheeled and rumbled, omnibuses whose upper seats were packed with thinly
+clad passengers, but otherwise there was little life and movement
+abroad. A searchlight fanned the sky, fell and wavered upward again. A
+hurdy-gurdy, in the side street, poured forth the notes of the
+"Marseillaise."
+
+Suddenly, and almost without volition, the girl snatched the telephone,
+and murmured a number. Thought and senses seemed suspended while she
+waited.
+
+"Is this the Metropolitan Club? Is Mr. Christopher Liggett there?... If
+you will, please. Thank you. Say that it is a lady," said Norma, in a
+hurried and feverish voice. The operator would announce presently, of
+course, that Mr. Liggett was not there. The chance that he was there was
+so remote----
+
+"Chris!" she breathed, all the tension and doubt dropping from her like
+a garment at the sound of his quiet tones. "Chris--this is Norma!"
+
+A pause. Her soul died within her.
+
+"What is it?" Chris asked presently, in a repressed voice.
+
+"Well--but were you playing cards?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You've had your dinner, Chris?"
+
+"No. Yes, I had dinner, of course. I dined with Aunt Marianna--no, that
+was lunch! I dined here."
+
+"Chris," Norma faltered, speaking quickly as her courage ebbed, "I
+didn't want to interrupt you, but you seemed so--so different, this
+afternoon. And I didn't want to have you cross at me; and I
+wondered--I've been wondering ever since--if I have done something that
+made you angry--that was stupid and--and----"
+
+She stopped. The forbidding silence on his part was like a wall that
+crossed her path, was like a veil that blinded and choked her.
+
+"Not at all," he said, quickly. "Where did you get that idea?...
+Hello--hello--are you there, Norma?" he added, when on her part in turn
+there was a blank silence.
+
+For Norma, strangled by an uprising of tears as sudden as it was
+unexpected and overwhelming, could make no audible answer. Why she
+should be crying she could not clearly think, but she was bathed in
+tears, and her heart was heavy with unspeakable desolation.
+
+"Norma!" she heard him say, urgently. "What is it? Norma----?"
+
+"Nothing!" she managed to utter, in a voice that stemmed the flood for
+only a second.
+
+"Norma," Chris said, simply, "I am coming out. Meet me downstairs in ten
+minutes. I want to see you!"
+
+Both telephones clicked, and Norma found herself sitting blankly in the
+sudden silence of the room, her brain filled with a confusion of shamed
+and doubting and fearful thoughts, and her heart flooded with joy.
+
+Five minutes later she stepped from the elevator into the lobby, and
+selected a big chair that faced obliquely on the entrance doors. The
+little stir in the wide, brightly lighted place always interested her
+and amused her; women drifting from the dining-room with their light
+wraps over their arms, messengers coming and going, the far strains of
+the orchestra mingling pleasantly with the nearer sounds of feet and
+voices.
+
+To-night her spirit was soaring. Nothing mattered, nothing of her
+doubts, nothing of his coldness, except that Chris was even now coming
+toward her! Her mind followed the progress of his motor-car, up through
+the hot, deserted streets.
+
+Suddenly it seemed to her that she could not bear the emotion of
+meeting. With every man's figure that came through the wide-open doors
+her heart thumped and pounded.
+
+His voice; she would hear it again. She would see the gray eyes, and
+watch the firm, quick movement of his jaw.
+
+Other men, meeting other women, or parting from other women, came and
+went. Norma liked the big, homely boy in olive drab, who kissed the
+little homely mother so affectionately.
+
+She glanced at her wrist watch, twisted about to confirm its unwelcome
+news by the big clock. Quarter to ten, and no Chris. Norma settled down
+again to waiting and watching.
+
+Ten o'clock. Quarter past ten. He was not coming! No, although her sick
+and weary spirit rose whenever there was the rush of a motor-car to the
+curb or the footstep of a man on the steps outside, she knew now that he
+was not coming. Hope deferred had exhausted her, but hope dead was far,
+far worse. He was not coming.
+
+It was almost half-past ten when a bell-boy approached. Was it Miss
+Sheridan? Mr. Christopher Liggett had been called out of town, and
+would try to see Mrs. Melrose in a day or two.
+
+Norma turned upon him a white face of fatigue.
+
+"Is Mr. Liggett on the telephone?"
+
+"No, Miss. He just telephoned a message."
+
+The boy retired, and Norma went slowly upstairs, and slowly made her
+preparations for sleep. But the blazing summer dawn, smiting the city at
+four o'clock, found her still sitting at the window, twirling a tassel
+of the old-fashioned shade in her cold fingers, and staring with haggard
+eyes into space.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+More than a week later Annie gave a luncheon to a dozen women, and
+telephoned Norma beforehand, with a request that the girl come early
+enough to help her with name cards.
+
+"These damnable engagement luncheons," said Aunt Annie, limping about
+the long table, and grumbling at everything as she went. Annie had
+wrenched her ankle in alighting from her car, and was cross with nagging
+pain. "Here, put Natalie next to Leslie, Norma; no, that puts the
+Gunnings together. I'll give you Miss Blanchard--but you don't speak
+French! Here, give me your pencil--and confound these things
+anyway----Fowler," she said to the butler, "I don't like to see a thing
+like that on the table--carry that away, please; and here, get somebody
+to help you change this, that won't do! That's all right--only I want
+this as you had it day before yesterday--and don't use those, get the
+glass ones----"
+
+And so fussing and changing and criticizing, Annie went away, and Norma
+followed her up to her bedroom.
+
+"I'm wondering when we're going to give _you_ an engagement luncheon,
+Norma," said the hostess, in a whirl of rapid dressing. "Who's ahead
+now?"
+
+"Oh--nobody!" Norma answered, with a mirthless laugh. She had been
+listless and pale for several days, and did not seem herself at all.
+
+"Forrest Duer, is it?"
+
+"Oh, good heavens--Aunt Annie! He's twenty-one!"
+
+"Is that all--he's such a big whale!----Don't touch my hair, Phoebe,
+it'll do very well!" said Annie to the maid. "Well, don't be in too much
+of a hurry, Norma," she went on kindly. "Nothing like being sure!
+That"--Annie glanced at the retiring maid--"that's what makes me nervous
+about Leslie," she confessed. "I'm afraid we hurried the child into it
+just a little bit. It was an understood thing since they were nothing
+but kiddies."
+
+"Leslie is outrageously spoiled," Norma said, not unkindly.
+
+"Leslie? Oh, horribly. Mama always spoils everyone and poor Theodore
+spoiled her, too," Annie conceded.
+
+"She told me herself yesterday," Norma went on, with a trace of her old
+animation, "that they've overdrawn again. Now, Aunt Annie, I do think
+that's outrageous! Chris straightened them all out last--when was
+it?--June, after the baby came, and they have an enormous
+income--thousands every month, and yet they are deep in again!"
+
+"The wretched thing is that they quarrel about that!" Annie agreed.
+
+"Well, exactly! That was what it was about day before yesterday, and
+Leslie told me she cried all night. And you know the other day she took
+Patricia and came home to Aunt Marianna, and it was terrible!"
+
+"How much do you suppose the servants know of that?" Annie asked,
+frowning.
+
+"Oh, they _must_ know!" Norma replied.
+
+"Foolish, foolish child! You know, Norma," Annie resumed, "Leslie comes
+by her temper naturally. She is half French; her mother was a
+Frenchwoman--Louison Courtot."
+
+"It's a pretty name," Norma commented. "Did you know her?"
+
+"Know her? She was my maid when I was about seventeen, a very superior
+girl. I used to practise my French with her. She was extremely pretty.
+After my father died my mother and I went to Florida, and when we came
+back the whole thing broke. I thought it would kill Mama! At first we
+thought Theodore had simply gotten her into 'trouble,' to use the dear
+old phrase. But _pas du tout_; she had 'ze _mar-ri-age_ certificate' all
+safe and sound. But he was no more in love with her than I was--a boy
+nineteen! Mama made her leave the house, and cut off Theodore's
+allowance entirely, and for a while they were together--but it couldn't
+last. Teddy got his divorce when he went with Mama to California, but he
+was ill then, though we didn't know it, poor boy! He lived five years
+after that."
+
+"But he saw Leslie?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes!" Annie said, buffing her twinkling finger-nails, idly.
+"Didn't Mama ever tell you about that?"
+
+"No, she never mentions it."
+
+"Well, that was awful, too--for poor Mama. About four years after the
+divorce, one night when we were all at home--it was just after Mama and
+I came back from Europe, and the year before Hendrick and I were
+married--suddenly there was a rush in the hall, and in came Theodore's
+wife--Louison Courtot! It seems Mama had been in touch with her ever
+since we returned, but none of us knew that. And she had Leslie with
+her, a little thing about four years old--Leslie just faintly remembers
+it. She had fought Mama off, at first, about giving her baby up, but now
+she was going to be married, and she had finally consented to do as Mama
+wanted. Leslie came over to me, and got into my lap, and went to sleep,
+I remember. Theodore was terribly ill, and I remember that Louison was
+quite gentle with him--surprised us all, in fact, she was so mild. She
+had been a wild thing, but always most self-respecting; a prude, in
+fact. She even stooped over Theodore, and kissed him good-bye, and then
+she knelt down and kissed Leslie, and went away. Mama had intended that
+she should always see the child, if she wanted to, but she never came
+again. She was married, I know, a few weeks later, and long afterward
+Mama told me that she was dead. Ted came to adore the baby, and of
+course she's been the greatest comfort to Mama, so it all turns out
+right, after all. But we're a sweet family!" finished Annie, rising to
+go downstairs. "And now," she added, on the stairs, "if there were to be
+serious trouble between Acton and Leslie----Well, it isn't thinkable!"
+
+Leslie herself, charming in a flowered silky dress, with a wide flowery
+hat on her yellow hair, was waiting for them in the big, shaded hallway.
+The little matron was extremely attractive in her new dignities, and her
+babyish face looked more ridiculously youthful than ever as she talked
+of "my husband," "my little girl," "my house," and "my attorney."
+
+Leslie, like Annie and Alice, was habitually wrapped in her own affairs,
+more absorbed in the question of her own minute troubles than in the
+most widespread abuses of the world. When Leslie saw a coat, the
+identity of the wearer interested her far less than the primary
+considerations of the coat's cut and material, and the secondary
+decision whether or not she herself would like such a garment.
+Consequently, she glanced but apathetically at Norma; she had seen the
+dotted blue swiss before, and the cornflower hat; she had seen Aunt
+Annie's French organdie; there was nothing there either to envy or
+admire.
+
+"How's the baby, dear; and how's Acton?" Annie asked, perfunctorily.
+Leslie sighed.
+
+"Oh, they're both fine," she answered, indifferently. "I've been all
+upset because my cook got married--just walked out. I told Acton not to
+pay her, but of course he did; it's nothing to him if my whole house is
+upset by the selfishness of somebody else. He and Chris are going off
+this afternoon with Joe and Denny Page, for the Thousand Islands----"
+
+"I didn't know Chris was here!" Annie said, in surprise.
+
+"I didn't, myself. He came up with Acton, late last night. They'd
+motored all the way; I was asleep when they got in. I didn't know it
+until I found him at breakfast this morning----"
+
+Norma's heart stood still. The name alone was enough to shake her to the
+very soul, but the thought that he was here--in Newport--this minute,
+and that she might not see him, probably indeed would not see him, made
+her feel almost faint.
+
+She had not seen him since the meeting on the hotel steps nearly two
+weeks ago. It had been the longest and the saddest two weeks in Norma's
+life. It was in vain that she reminded herself that her love for him
+was weakness and madness, and that by no possible shift of
+circumstances could it come to happy consummation. It was in vain that
+she pondered Alice's claims, and all the family claims, and the general
+claim of society as an institution. Deep and strong and unconquerable
+above them all rose the tide of love and passion, the gnawing and
+burning hunger for the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the touch
+of his hand.
+
+Life had become for her a vague and changing dream, with his name for
+its only reality. Somewhere in the fog of days was Chris, and she would
+not live again until she saw him. He must forgive her; he must explain
+his coldness, explain the change in him, and then she would be content
+just with the old friendliness, just the old nearness and the occasional
+word together.
+
+Every letter that Joseph brought her, every call to the telephone, meant
+to her only the poignant possibility of a message from him. She sickened
+daily with fresh despair, and fed herself daily with new hopes.
+
+To-day she was scarcely conscious of the hilarious progress of the
+luncheon; she looked at the prospective bride, in whose honour Aunt
+Annie entertained, only with a pang of wonder. What was it like, the
+knowledge that one was openly beloved, the miraculous right to plan an
+unclouded future together? The mere thought of being free to love Chris,
+of having him free to claim her, almost dizzied Norma with its vista of
+utter felicity. She had to drive it resolutely from her mind. Not
+that--never that! But there must at least be peace and friendship
+between them.
+
+At three o'clock the luncheon was over; it was half-past three when
+Leslie and she drove to the Melrose "cottage"--as the fourteen-room,
+three-story frame house was called. Norma had searched the drive with
+her eyes as they approached. The gray roadster was not there. There was
+no sign of Christopher's hat or coat in the hallway. Alice was alone, in
+her downstairs sitting-room. Norma's heart sank like a lump of ice.
+
+"Did you see Chris?" the invalid began, happily. "We had the nicest
+lunch together--just we two. And look at the books the angel brought
+me--just a feast. You saw him, Leslie, didn't you, dear? He said he
+caught you and Acton at breakfast. I was perfectly amazed. Miss Slater
+moved me out here about eleven o'clock, and I heard someone walking
+in----! He's off now, with the Pages; he told you that, of course!"
+
+"He looks rotten, I think," Leslie offered. "I told him he was working
+too hard."
+
+"Well, Judge Lee is sick, and he hasn't been in to the office since
+June," Alice said, "and that makes it very hard for Chris. But he says
+his room at the club is cool, and now he'll have two or three lovely
+days with the Page boys----"
+
+Norma, who had subsided quietly into a chair, was looking at the yellow
+covers of the new French and Italian novels.
+
+"And then does he come back here Monday, for the tennis?" she asked,
+clearing her throat.
+
+"He says not!" Alice answered, regretfully. "He's going straight on down
+to the city. Then next week-end is the cruise with the Dwights; and
+after that, I suppose we'll all be home!"
+
+She went on into a conversation with Leslie, relative to the move. After
+a few moments Norma went out through the opened French window onto the
+wide porch. It was rather a dark, old-fashioned side porch, with an
+elaborate wooden railing, and potted hydrangeas under a striped awning.
+The house had neither the magnificence of Annie's gray-stone mansion or
+the beauty of Leslie's colonial white and green at Glen Cove; it had
+been built in the late eighties, and was inflexibly ornate.
+
+Norma went down slowly through the garden, and walked vaguely toward the
+hot glitter and roll of the blue sea. Her misery was almost unbearable.
+Weeks--it would be weeks before she would see him! He had been here
+to-day--here in the garden--in Alice's room, and she had not had a word
+or a sign.
+
+Children and nurses were on the beach, grouped in the warm shade. The
+season was over, there were yellow leaves in the hedges, Norma's feet
+rustled among the dropped glory of the old trees. The world seemed hot,
+dry, lifeless before her.
+
+"I wish I were dead!" she cried, passionately, for the first time in her
+life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Suddenly and smoothly they were all transported to town again, and the
+vigour and sparkle of the autumn was exhilarating to Norma in spite of
+herself. The Park was a glory of red and gold leaves; morning came late,
+and the dew shone until ten o'clock; bright mists rose smoking into the
+sunlight, and when Norma walked home from a luncheon, or from an hour of
+furious squash or tennis at the club, the early winter dusk would be
+closing softly in, the mists returning, and the lights of the long Mall
+in the park blooming round and blue in the twilight.
+
+She was with Mrs. Melrose this winter, an arrangement extremely welcome
+to the old lady, who was lonely and liked the stir of young life in the
+house. Alice had quite charmingly and naturally suggested the change,
+and Norma's belongings had been moved away from the little white room
+next to Miss Slater's.
+
+One reason for it was that Alice had had two nurses all summer long, and
+found the increased service a great advantage. Then Mama was all alone
+and not so well as she had been; getting old, and reluctant to take even
+the necessary exercise.
+
+"And then you're too young to be shut up with stupid home-loving folk
+like Chris and me," Alice had told Norma, lightly.
+
+"Your stupidity is proverbial, Aunt Alice," Norma had laughed. She did
+not care where she went any more. Chris had greeted her casually, upon
+their meeting in October, and had studiously, if inconspicuously,
+ignored her. But even to see him at all was so great a relief to her
+over-charged heart that for weeks this was enough. She must meet him
+occasionally, she heard his name every day, and she knew where he was
+and what he was doing almost at every moment. She treasured every look,
+every phrase of his, and she glowed and grew beautiful in the conviction
+that, even though he was still mysteriously angry with her, he had that
+old consciousness of her presence, too; he might hate her, but he could
+not ignore her.
+
+And then, in December, the whole matter reached a sudden crisis, and
+Norma came to feel that she would have been glad to have the matter go
+back to this state of doubt and indecision again.
+
+Mrs. von Behrens was on the directorate of a working girls' club that
+needed special funds every winter, and this year the money was to be
+raised by an immense entertainment, at which generous professional
+singers were to be alternated on a brilliant programme with society
+girls and men, in tableaux and choruses. Norma, who had a charming if
+not particularly strong voice, was early impressed into service, because
+she was so good-natured, so dependable, and pretty and young enough to
+carry off a delectable costume. The song she sang had been specially
+written for the affair, and in the quaint dance that accompanied it she
+was drilled by the dance authority of the hour. A chorus of eight girls
+and eight men was added to complete the number, and the gaiety of the
+rehearsals, and the general excitement and interest, carried the matter
+along to the last and dress rehearsal with a most encouraging rush.
+
+Annie had originally selected Chris for Norma's companion in the song,
+for Chris had a pleasant, presentable voice, and Chris in costume was
+always adequate to any rôle. Theatricals had been his delight, all his
+life long, and among the flattering things that were commonly said of
+Chris was that he had robbed the stage of a great character actor.
+
+But Chris had begged off, to take a minor part in another _ensemble_,
+and Norma had a youth named Roy Gillespie for her partner. Roy was a
+big, fat, blond boy, good-natured and stupid and rather in love with
+Norma, and as the girl was entirely unconscious of Annie's original
+plan, she was quite satisfied with him.
+
+The dress rehearsal was on a dark Thursday afternoon before the Saturday
+of the performance. It took place in the big empty auditorium, where it
+was to drag along from twelve o'clock noon, until the preparations for
+the regular evening performance drove the amateurs, protesting, away.
+Snow was fluttering down over the city when Annie, with Norma, and a
+limousine full of properties, reached the place at noon; motor-cars were
+wheeling and crowding in the side street, and it seemed to Norma
+thrilling to enter so confidently at the big, dirty, sheet-iron door
+lettered:
+
+    "STAGE DOOR. NO ADMITTANCE."
+
+As always to the outsider, the wings, the shabby dressing-rooms, the
+novel feeling of sauntering across the big, dim stage, the gloom of the
+great rising arch of the house, were full of charm. Voices and hammers
+were sounding in the gloom; somebody was talking hard while he fitfully
+played the piano; girls were giggling and fluttering about; footlights
+flashed up and down, in the front rows of seats a few mothers and maids
+had gathered. There was the sweet, strong smell of some spicy
+disinfectant, and obscure figures, up the aisles, were constantly
+sweeping and stooping.
+
+Annie had a chair in a wing. Her small fur hat and trim suit had been
+selected for comfort; her knees were crossed, and she had a sheaf of
+songs, a pencil, and various note-books in her hands. She was alert,
+serious, authoritative; her manner expressed an anxious certainty that
+everything that could possibly go wrong was about to do so. Men
+protested jovially to Annie, girls whimpered and complained, maids
+delivered staggering messages into her ear. Annie frowningly yet
+sympathetically sent them all away, one by one; persisted that the
+rehearsal proceed. Never mind the hat, we could get along without the
+hat; never mind Dixie Jadwin, someone could read her part; never mind
+this, never mind that; go on, go on--we must get on!
+
+At five o'clock she was very tired, and Norma, fully arrayed, was tired,
+too. The girl had been sitting on a barrel for almost an hour, patiently
+waiting for the tardy Mr. Roy Gillespie to arrive, and permit their
+particular song to be rehearsed. Everything that could be done in the
+way of telephoning had been done: Mr. Gillespie had left his office, he
+was expected momentarily at his home, he should be given the message
+immediately. Nothing to do but wait.
+
+Suddenly Norma's heart jumped to her throat, began to hammer wildly. A
+man had come quietly in between her and Annie, and she heard the voice
+that echoed in her heart all day and all night. It was Chris.
+
+He did not see her, perhaps did not recognize her in a casual glance,
+and began to talk to his sister-in-law in low, quick tones. Almost
+immediately Annie exclaimed in consternation, and called Norma.
+
+"Norma! Chris tells me that poor old Mr. Gillespie died this afternoon.
+_That's_ what's been the matter. What on earth are we to do now? I
+declare it's _too_ much!"
+
+Norma got off her barrel. The great lighted stage seemed to be moving
+about her as she went to join them.
+
+What Chris saw strained his tried soul to its utmost of endurance. He
+had not permitted himself to look at her squarely for weeks. Now there
+was a new look, a look a little sad, a little wistfully expectant, in
+the lovely face. Her eyes burned deeply blue above the touch of rouge
+and the crimson lips. Her dark, soft hair fell in loose ringlets on her
+shoulders from under the absurd little tipped and veiled hat of the late
+seventies. Her gown, a flowered muslin, moved and tilted with a gentle,
+shaking majesty over hoop skirts, and was crossed on the low shoulders
+by a thin silk shawl whose long fringes were tangled in her mitted
+fingers. The white lace stockings began where the loose lace pantalettes
+stopped, and disappeared into flat-heeled kid slippers. Norma carried a
+bright nosegay in lace paper, and on her breast a thin gold locket hung
+on a velvet ribbon.
+
+She herself had been completely captivated by the costume when Madame
+Modiste had first suggested it, and when the first fittings began. But
+that was weeks ago, and she was accustomed to it now, and conscious in
+this instant of nothing but Chris, conscious of nothing but the
+possibility that he would have a word or a smile, at last, for her.
+
+"Stay right here, both of you--don't move a step--while I telephone
+Lucia Street!" said the harassed Annie, her eyes glittering with some
+desperate hope. She hurried away; they were alone.
+
+"Poor old Roy--he adored his father!" Chris said, with dry lips, and in
+a rather unnatural voice. Norma, for one second, simulated mere
+sympathy. Then with a rush the pride and hurt that had sustained her
+ever since that weary September evening in the hotel lobby vanished, and
+she came close to Chris, so that the fragrance and sweetness of her
+enveloped him, and caught his coat with both her mitted hands, and
+raised her face imploringly, commandingly to his.
+
+"Chris--for God's sake--what have I done? Don't you know--don't you know
+that you're killing me?"
+
+He looked down at her, wretchedly. And suddenly Norma knew. Not that he
+liked her, not that she fascinated and interested him, not that they
+were friends. But that he loved her with every fibre of his being, even
+as she loved him.
+
+The revelation carried her senses away with it upon a raging sea of
+emotion and ecstasy. He drew her into a dim corner of the wings, and put
+his arms about her, and her whole slender body, in its tilting hoops,
+strained backward under the passion and fury of his first embrace. Again
+and again his lips met hers, and she heard the incoherent outpouring of
+murmured words, and felt the storm that shook him as it was shaking her.
+Norma, after the first kiss, grew limp, let herself rest almost without
+movement in his arms, shut her eyes.
+
+Reason came back to them slowly; the girl almost rocking upon her feet
+as the vertigo and bewilderment passed, and the man sustaining her with
+an arm about her shoulders, neither looking at the other. So several
+seconds, perhaps a full minute, went by, while the world settled into
+place about them; the dingy, unpainted wood of the wings, the near-by
+stage where absorbed groups of people were still coming and going, the
+distant gloom of the house.
+
+"So now you know!" Chris said, breathlessly, panting, and looking away
+from her, with his hands hanging at his sides. "Now you know! I've tried
+to keep it from you! But now--now you know!"
+
+Norma, also breathing hard, did not answer for a little space.
+
+"I've known since that time we were in town, in September!" she said,
+almost defiantly. Chris looked toward her, surprised, and their eyes
+met. "I've known what was the matter with _me_," she added,
+thoughtfully, even frowning a little in her anxiety to make it all
+clear, "but I couldn't imagine what it was with _you_!"
+
+But this brought him to face her, so close that she felt the same sense
+of drowning, of losing her footing, again.
+
+"Chris--please!" she whispered, in terror.
+
+"But, Norma--say it! Say that you love me--that's all that matters now!
+I've been losing my mind, I think. I've been losing my mind. Just
+that--that you do care!"
+
+"I have----" Tears came to her lifted blue eyes, and she brushed them
+away without moving her gaze from him. "I think I have always loved you,
+Chris--from the very first," she whispered.
+
+Instantly she saw his expression change. It was as if, with that
+revelation, a new responsibility began for him.
+
+"Here, dear, you mustn't cry!" he said, composedly. He gave her his
+handkerchief, helped her set the tipped hat and lace veil straight,
+smiled reassurance and courage into her eyes. "I'll see you,
+Norma--we'll talk," he said. "Oh, my God, to talk to you again! Come,
+now, we'll have to be here when Annie comes back--that's right. I--I
+love the little gown--terribly sweet. I haven't seen it before, you
+know; my crowd has done all its rehearsing at Mrs. Hitchcock's. Here's
+Annie now----"
+
+"Christopher," said Annie, in deadly, almost angry earnest, as she came
+up desperate and weary, "you'll have to sing this thing with Norma.
+Burgess Street absolutely refuses. He's in the chorus, and he sings, but
+he simply won't do a solo! His mother says he has a cold, and so on, and
+I swear I'll throw the whole thing up; I will, indeed!--rather than have
+this number ruined. There's no earthly reason why you can't do both--of
+course the poor old man couldn't help dying--but if you knew----"
+
+"My dear girl, of course I'll do it!" All the youth and buoyancy that
+had been missing from his voice for weeks had come back. Christopher
+laughed his old delightful laugh. "I'll have to have Roy's costume cut
+down, but Smithers will do it for me. I'll do my very best----"
+
+"Oh, Chris, God bless you," Annie said. "You'll do it better than he
+ever did. Take my car and stop for his suit, and express whatever's
+decent--the funeral will be Saturday morning and we'll all have to go,
+but there's no help for it. And come to my house for dinner, and you and
+Norma can go over it afterward; you poor girl, you're tired out, but
+it's such a Godsend to have Chris fill in. And it will be the prettiest
+number of all."
+
+Tired out? The radiant girl who was tripping away to change to street
+attire was hardly conscious that her feet touched the ground. The stage,
+the theatre, the fur coat into which she buttoned herself, the fragrance
+of the violets she wore, were all touched with beauty and enchantment.
+
+Snow was still falling softly, when she and Annie went out to the car.
+Annie was so exhausted that she could hardly move, but Norma floated
+above things mortal. The dark sidewalk was powdered with what scrunched
+under their shoes like dry sugar, and up against the lighted sky the
+flakes were twirling and falling. The air was sweet and cold and pure
+after the hot theatre. Chris put them in the motor-car. He would see his
+tailor, have a bite of dinner at home, and be at Annie's at eight
+o'clock for the rehearsal.
+
+"I'll do something for you, for this, Norma!" her aunt assured the girl,
+gratefully. Norma protested in a voice that was almost singing. It was
+nothing at all!
+
+She felt suddenly happy and light. It was all right; there was to be no
+more agony and doubt. Alice should lose nothing, the world should know
+nothing, but Chris loved her! She could take his friendship fearlessly,
+there would be nothing but what was good and beautiful and true between
+them. But what a changed world!
+
+What a changed room it was into which she danced, to brush her hair for
+dinner, and laugh into her mirror, where the happy girl with starry eyes
+and blazing cheeks laughed back. What a changed dinner table, at which
+the old lady drowsed and cooed! Norma's blood was dancing, her head was
+in a whirl, she was hardly conscious that this soaring and singing soul
+of hers had a body.
+
+At eight she and Mrs. Melrose went to Mrs. von Behrens's, and Norma and
+Chris went through the song again and again and again, for the benefit
+of a small circle of onlookers. Hendrick, who had sworn that wild horses
+would not drag him to the entertainment, sat with a small son in his
+lap, and applauded tirelessly. Annie criticized and praised alternately.
+Mrs. Melrose went to sleep, and Annie's new secretary, a small, lean,
+dark girl of perhaps twenty-two, passionately played the music. Norma
+knew exactly how this girl felt, how proud she was of her position, how
+anxious to hold it, and how infinitely removed from her humble struggle
+the beautiful Miss Sheridan seemed! Yet she herself had been much the
+same less than two years ago!
+
+Norma could have laughed aloud. She envied no one to-night. The mystery
+and miracle of Chris's love for her was like an ermine mantle about her
+shoulders, and like a diadem upon her brows. Annie was delighted with
+her, and presently told her she had never before sung so well.
+
+"I suppose practice makes perfect!" the girl answered, innocently. She
+was conscious of no hypocrisy. No actress enjoying a long-coveted part
+could have rejoiced in every word and gesture more than she. Just to
+move, under his eyes, to laugh or to be serious, to listen dutifully to
+Annie and the old lady, to flirt with Baby Piet, was ecstasy enough.
+
+They had small opportunity for asides. But that was of no consequence.
+All the future was their own. They would see each other to-morrow--or
+next day; it did not matter. Norma's hungry heart had something to
+remember, now--a very flood-tide of memories. She could have lived for
+weeks upon this one day's memories.
+
+Norma and Chris were placed toward the centre of the first half of the
+programme on the triumphant Saturday night, and could escape from the
+theatre before eleven o'clock to go home to tell Alice all about it.
+Chris played the song, on his own piano, and Norma modestly and
+charmingly went through it again, to the invalid's great satisfaction.
+Alice, when Norma and her mother were gone, tried to strike a spark of
+enthusiasm from her husband as to the girl's beauty and talent, but
+Chris was pleasantly unresponsive.
+
+"She got through it very nicely; they all did!" Chris admitted,
+indifferently.
+
+"When you think of the upbringing she had, Chris, a little nameless
+nobody," Alice pursued. "When you think that until last year she had
+actually never seen a finger-bowl, or spoken to a servant!"
+
+"Exactly!" Chris said, briefly. Alice, who was facing the fire, did not
+see him wince. She was far from suspecting that he had at that moment a
+luncheon engagement for the next day with Norma, and that during the
+weeks that followed they met by appointment almost every day, and
+frequently by chance more often than that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+In the beginning, these were times brimful of happiness for Norma. She
+would meet Chris far down town, among the big, cold, snowbound
+office-buildings, and they would loiter for two hours at some
+inconspicuous table in a restaurant, and come wandering out into the
+cold streets still talking, absorbed and content. Or she would rise
+before him from a chair in one of the foyers of the big hotels, at tea
+time, and they would find an unobserved corner for the murmur that rose
+and fell, rose and fell inexhaustibly. Tea and toast unobserved before
+them, music drifting unheard about them, furred and fragrant women
+coming and going; all this was but the vague setting for their own
+thrilling drama of love and confidence. They would come out into the
+darkness, Norma tucking herself beside him in the roadster, last
+promises and last arrangements made, until to-morrow.
+
+Sometimes the girl even accompanied him to Alice's room, to sit at the
+invalid's knee, and chatter with a tact and responsiveness that Alice
+found an improvement upon her old amusing manner. So free was Norma in
+these days from any sense of guilt that she felt herself nothing but
+generous toward Alice, in sparing the older woman some of the excess of
+joy and companionship in which she was so rich.
+
+But very swiftly the first complete satisfaction in the discovery of
+their mutual love began to wane, or rather to be overset with the
+difficulties by which Norma, and many another more brilliant and older
+woman, must inevitably be worsted. Her meetings with Chris, innocent and
+open as they seemed, were immediately threatened by the sordid danger of
+scandal. To meet him once, twice, half-a-dozen times, even, was safe
+enough. But when each day of separation became for them both only an
+agony of waiting until the next day that should unite them, and when all
+Norma's self-control was not enough to keep her from the telephone
+summons that at least gave her the sound of his voice, then the world
+began to be cognizant that something was in the air.
+
+The very maids at Mrs. Melrose's house knew that Miss Sheridan was never
+available any more, never to be traced to the club, to young Mrs.
+Liggett's, or to Mrs. von Behrens's house, with a telephone message or
+an urgent letter. Leslie knew that Norma hated girls' luncheons; Annie
+asked Hendrick idly why he supposed the child was always taking long
+walks--or saying that she took long walks--and Hendrick, later
+speculating himself as to the inaccessibility of Chris, was perhaps the
+first in the group to suspect the truth.
+
+A quite accidental and innocent hint from Annie overwhelmed Norma with
+shame and terror, and she and Chris, in earnest consultation, decided
+that they must be more discreet. But this was slow and difficult work,
+after the radiant first plunge into danger. Despite their utmost
+resolution, Chris would find her out, Norma would meet him halfway, and
+even under Leslie's very eyes, or in old Mrs. Melrose's actual presence,
+the telephone message, or the quicker signals of eyes and smile, would
+forge the bond afresh.
+
+Even when Norma really did start off heroically upon a bracing winter
+walk, determined to shake off, in solitude and exercise, the constant
+hunger for his presence, torturing possibilities would swarm into her
+mind, and weaken her almost while she thought them banished. She could
+catch him at his club; she might have just five minutes of him did she
+choose to telephone.
+
+Perhaps she would resist the temptation, and go home nervous,
+high-strung, excitable--the evening stretching endlessly before
+her--without him. Aunt Annie and Hendrick coming, Leslie and Acton
+coming, the prospect of the decorous family dinner would drive her
+almost to madness. She would dress in a feverish dream, answer old Mrs.
+Melrose absently or impatiently, speculating all the time about him.
+Where was he? When would they meet again?
+
+And then perhaps Leslie would casually remark that Chris had said he
+would join them for coffee, or Joseph would summon her gravely to the
+telephone. Then Norma began to live again, the effect of the lonely walk
+and the heroic resolutions swept away, nothing--nothing was in the world
+but the sound of that reassuring voice, or the prospect of that ring at
+the bell, and that step in the hall.
+
+So matters went on for several weeks, but they were weeks of increasing
+uneasiness and pain for Norma, and she knew that Chris found them even
+less endurable than she. The happy hours of confidence and happiness
+grew fewer and fewer, and as their passion strengthened, and the
+insuperable obstacles to its natural development impressed them more and
+more forcibly, miserable and anxious times took their place. Their love
+was no sooner acknowledged than both came to realize how mad and
+hopeless it was, and that no reiteration of its intensity and no
+argument could ever give them a gleam of hope.
+
+If Norma had drifted cheerfully and recklessly into this situation, she
+paid for it now, when petty restrictions and conventions stung her like
+so many bees, and when she could turn nowhere for relief from constant
+heartache and the sickening monotony of her thoughts. She could not have
+Chris; she could not give him up. Hours with him were only a degree more
+bearable than hours without him.
+
+When he spoke hopefully of a possible change, of "something" making
+their happiness possible, she would turn on him like a little virago.
+Yet if he despaired, tears would come to Norma's eyes, and she would beg
+him almost angrily to change his tone, or she would disgrace them both
+by beginning to cry.
+
+Norma grew thin and fidgety, able to concentrate her mind on
+nothing, and openly indifferent to the society she had courted so
+enthusiastically a year ago. It was a part of her suffering that she
+grew actually to dislike Alice, always so suave and cheerful, always so
+serenely sure of Chris's devotion. What right had this woman, who had
+been rich and spoiled and guarded all her life, to hold him away from
+the woman he loved? Chris had been chained to this couch for years,
+reading, playing his piano, infinitely solicitous and sympathetic. But
+was he to spend all his life thus? Was there to be no glorious
+companionship, no adventure, no deep and satisfying love for Chris, ever
+in this world? Norma wished no ill to Alice, but she hated a world that
+could hold Alice's claim legitimate.
+
+"Why should it be so?" she said to Chris one day, bitterly. "Why, when
+all my life was going so happily, did I have to fall in love with you, I
+wonder? It could so easily have been somebody else!"
+
+"I don't know!" Chris answered, soberly, flinging away his half-finished
+cigarette, and folding his arms over his chest, as he stared through a
+screen of bare trees at the river. It was a March day of warm airs and
+bursting buds; the roads were running water, and every bank and meadow
+oozed the thawing streams, but there was no green yet. Chris had come
+for the girl at three o'clock, just as she was starting out for one of
+her aimless, unhappy tramps, and had carried her off for a
+twenty-five-mile run to the quiet corner of the tavern's porch in
+Tarrytown where they were having tea. "I suppose that's just life.
+Things go so rottenly, sometimes!"
+
+Norma's eyes watered as she pushed the untasted toast away from her,
+cupped her chin in her hands, and stared at the river in her turn.
+
+"Chris, if I could go back, I think I'd never speak to you!" she said,
+wretchedly.
+
+"You mustn't say that," he reproached her. "My darling; surely it's
+brought you some happiness?"
+
+"I suppose so," Norma conceded, lifelessly, after a silence. "But I
+can't go on!" she protested, suddenly. "I can't keep this up! I suppose
+I've done something very wicked, to be punished this way. But, Chris, I
+loved you from the very first day I ever saw you, in Biretta's
+Bookstore, I think. I can't sleep," she stammered, piteously, "and I am
+so afraid all the time!"
+
+"Afraid of what?" the man asked, very low.
+
+She faced him, honestly.
+
+"You know what! Of you--of me. It can't go on. You know that. And
+yet----" And Norma looked far away, her beautiful weary eyes burning in
+her white face. "And yet, I can't stop it!" she whispered.
+
+"Oh, Chris, don't let's fool ourselves!" she interrupted his protest
+impatiently. "Weeks ago, _weeks_ ago!--we said that we would see each
+other less, that it would taper off. We tried. It's no use! If we were
+in different cities--in different families, even! I tell myself that it
+will grow less and less," she added presently, as the man watched her in
+silence, "but oh, my God!--how long the years ahead look!"
+
+And Norma put her head down on the table, pressed her white fingers
+suddenly against her eyes with a gesture infinitely desolate and
+despairing, and he knew that she was in tears. Then there was a long
+silence.
+
+"Look here, Norma," said Chris, suddenly, in a quiet, reasonable tone.
+"I am thirty-eight. I've had affairs several times in my life, two or
+three before I married Alice, two or three since. They've never been
+very serious, never gone very deep. When we were married I was
+twenty-four. I know women like to pretend that I'm an awful killer when
+I get going," he interrupted himself to say boyishly, "but there was
+really never anything of that sort in my life. I liked Alice, I remember
+my mother talking to me a long time, and telling me how pleased everyone
+would be if we came to care for each other, and--upon my honour!--I was
+more surprised than anything else, to think that any one so pretty and
+sweet would marry me! I don't think there's a woman in the world that I
+admire more. But, Norma, I've lived her life for ten years. I want my
+own now! I want my companion--my chum--my wife. I've played with women
+since I was seventeen. But I never loved any woman before. Norma,
+there's no life ahead for me, without you. And there's no place so
+far--so lonely--so strange--but what it would be heaven for me if you
+were there, looking at me as you are now, and with this little hand
+where it belongs! My dear, the city is a blank--the men I meet might
+just as well be wooden Indians; I can't breathe and I can't eat or
+sleep. Get better? It gets worse! It can't go on!"
+
+She was crying again. They were almost alone now. A red spring sun was
+sinking, far down the river, and all the world--the opposite shores, the
+running waters of the Hudson--was bathed in the exquisite glow. Norma
+fumbled with her left hand for her little handkerchief, her right hand
+clinging tight to Chris's hand.
+
+"Now, Norma, I've been thinking," the man said, in a matter-of-fact
+tone, after a pause. "The first consideration is, that this sort of
+thing can't go on!"
+
+"No; this can't go on!" she agreed, quickly. "Every day makes it more
+dangerous, and less satisfying! I never"--her eyes watered again--"I
+never have a happy second!" she said.
+
+Chris looked at her, looked thoughtfully away.
+
+"The great trouble with the way I feel to you, Norma," he said, quietly,
+"is that it seems to blot every other earthly consideration from view. I
+see nothing, I think nothing, I hear nothing--but you!"
+
+"And is that so terrible?" Norma asked, touched, and smiling through
+tears.
+
+"No, it is so wonderful," he answered, gravely, "that it blinds me. It
+blinds me to your youth, my dear, your inexperience--your faith in me!
+It makes me only remember that I need you--and want you--and that I
+believe I could make you the happiest woman in the world!"
+
+The faint shadow of a frown crossed her forehead, and she slowly shook
+her head.
+
+"Not divorce!" she said, lightly, but inflexibly. They had been over
+this ground before. "No, there's no use in thinking of that! Even if it
+were not for Aunt Alice, and Aunt Marianna, other things make it
+impossible. You see that, Chris? Yes, I know!"--she interrupted herself
+quickly, as Chris protested, "I know what plenty of good people, and the
+law, and society generally think. But of course it would mean that we
+could not live here for awhile, anyway! No--that's not thinkable!"
+
+"No, that's not thinkable," he agreed, slowly; "I am bound hand and
+foot. It isn't only what Alice--as a wife--claims from me. But there are
+Acton and Leslie; there is hardly a month that my brother doesn't
+propose some plan that would utterly wreck their affairs if I didn't put
+my foot down. They're both absolute children in money matters; Judge Lee
+is getting old--there's no one to take my place. Your Aunt Marianna,
+too; I've always managed everything for her. No; I'm tied."
+
+His voice fell. For awhile they sat silent, in the lingering, cool
+spring twilight, while the red glow faded slowly from the river, and
+from the opposite banks where houses and roofs showed between the bare
+trees.
+
+"But what can we do, Norma? I've tried--I've tried a thousand times, to
+see the future, without you. But I simply can't go on living on those
+terms. There's nothing--nothing--nothing! I go to the piano, and before
+I touch a note, the utter blank futility of it comes over me and sickens
+me! It's the same in the office, and at the club; I seem to be only half
+alive. If it could be even five years ahead--or ten years ahead--I would
+wait. But it's never--never. No hope--nothing to live for! Life is
+simply over--only one doesn't die."
+
+The girl had never heard quite this note of despair from him before, and
+her heart sank.
+
+"You are young," he said, after a minute, and in a lighter tone, "and
+perhaps--some day----"
+
+"No, don't believe that, Chris," Norma said, quietly. And with a gesture
+full of pain she leaned her elbow on the table, and pressed her hand
+across her eyes. "There will never be anybody else!" she said. "How
+could there be? You are the only person--like yourself!--that I have
+ever known!"
+
+The simplicity of her words, almost their childishness, made Chris's
+eyes smart. He bit his lips, trying to smile.
+
+"It's too bad, isn't it?" he said, whimsically.
+
+Norma flung back her head, swallowing tears. She gathered gloves and
+hand-bag, got to her feet. He followed her as she walked across the
+darkening porch. They went down to the curving sweep of driveway where
+the car waited, the big lighted eyes of other cars picking it out in the
+gloom. The saturated ground gave under Norma's feet, the air was soft
+and full of the odorous promise of blossom and leaf. A great star was
+trembling in the opal sky, which still palpitated, toward the horizon,
+with the pale pink and blue of the sunset. Dry branches clicked above
+their heads, in a sudden soft puff of breeze.
+
+Norma, as she tucked herself in beside Chris, felt emotionally
+exhausted, felt a sudden desperate need for solitude and silence. The
+world seemed a lonely and cruel place.
+
+Almost without a word he drove her home, to the old Melrose house, and
+came in with her to the long, dim drawing-room for a brief good-night.
+He had not kissed her more than two or three times since the memorable
+night of the dress rehearsal, but he kissed her to-night, and Norma felt
+something solemn, something renunciatory, in the kiss.
+
+They had but an unsatisfactory two or three minutes together; Mrs.
+Melrose might descend upon them at any second, was indeed audible in the
+hall when Chris said suddenly:
+
+"You are not as brave--as your mother, Norma!"
+
+She met his eyes with something like terror in her own; standing still,
+a few feet away from him, with her breath coming and going stormily.
+
+"No," she said in a sharp whisper. "Not _that_!"
+
+A moment later she was flying upstairs, her blue eyes still dilated with
+fright, her face pale, and her senses rocking. Unseeing, unhearing, she
+reached her own room, paced it distractedly, moving between desk and
+dressing-table, window and bed, like some bewildered animal. Sometimes
+she put her two hands over her face, the spread fingers pressed against
+her forehead. Sometimes she stood perfectly still, arms hanging at her
+sides, eyes blankly staring ahead. Once she dropped on her knees beside
+the bed, and buried her burning cheeks against the delicate linen and
+embroideries.
+
+Regina came in; Norma made a desperate attempt to control herself. She
+saw a gown laid on the bed, heard bath water running, faced her own
+haggard self in the mirror, as she began dressing. But when the maid was
+gone, and Norma, somewhat pale, but quite self-possessed again, was
+dressed for dinner, she lifted from its place on her book-shelf a little
+picture of Chris and herself, taken the summer before, and studied it
+with sorrowful eyes.
+
+He had been teaching her to ride, and Norma was radiant and sun-browned
+in her riding-trousers and skirted coat, her cloud of hair loosened, and
+her smart little hat in one hand. Chris, like all well-built men, was
+always at his best in sports clothes; the head of his favourite mare
+looked mildly over his shoulder. Behind the group stretched the
+exquisite reaches of bridle-path, the great trees heavy with summer
+foliage and heat.
+
+Norma touched her lips to the glass.
+
+"Chris--Chris--Chris!" she said, half aloud. "I love you so--and I have
+brought you, of all men, to this! To the point when you would throw it
+all aside--everything your wonderful and generous life has stood
+for--for me! God," said Norma, softly, putting the picture down, and
+covering her face with her hands, "don't let me do anything that will
+hurt him and shame him; help me! Help us both!"
+
+A few minutes later she went down to dinner, which commenced
+auspiciously, with the old lady in a gracious and expansive mood, and
+her guests, old Judge Lee and his wife, and old Doctor and Mrs. Turner,
+sufficiently intimate, and sufficiently reminiscent, to absolve Norma
+from any conversational duty. The girl could follow her own line of
+heroic and resolute thought uninterruptedly.
+
+But with the salad came utter rout again, and Norma's colour, and heart,
+and breath, began to fluctuate in a renewed agony of hope and fear. It
+was only Joseph, leaning deferentially over Judge Lee's shoulder, who
+said softly:
+
+"Mr. Christopher Liggett, Judge. He has telephoned that he would like to
+see you for a moment after dinner, and will be here at about nine
+o'clock."
+
+The dinner went on, for Norma, in a daze. At a quarter to nine she went
+upstairs; she was standing in the dark upper hallway at the window when
+Chris came, saw him leave his car, and come quickly across the sidewalk
+under the bare, moving boughs of the old maples. She was trembling with
+the longing just to speak to him again, just to hear his voice.
+
+She went to her room, rang for Regina, meditating a message of
+good-night that should include a headache as excuse. But before the maid
+came she went quickly downstairs, and into his presence, as
+instinctively as a drowning man might cling to anything that meant
+air--just the essential air. They could not exchange a word alone, but
+that was not important. The one necessity was to be together.
+
+Before ten o'clock Norma went back to her room. She undressed, and put
+on a loose warm robe, and seated herself before the old-fashioned
+fireplace. When Regina came, she asked the girl to put out all the
+lights.
+
+Voices floated up from the front hall: the great entrance door closed,
+the motors wheeled away. The guests were gone--Chris was gone. Norma
+heard old Mrs. Melrose come upstairs, heard her door shut, then there
+was silence.
+
+Silence. Eleven struck from Madison Tower; midnight struck. Even the
+streets were quieter now. The squares of moonlight shifted on Norma's
+floor, went away. The fire died down, the big room was warm, and dim,
+and very still.
+
+Hugged in her warm wrap, curled into her big chair, the girl sat like
+some tranced creature, thinking--thinking--thinking.
+
+At first her thoughts were of terror and shame. In what fool's paradise
+had she been drifting, she asked herself contemptuously, that she and
+Chris, reasonable, right-thinking man and woman, could be reduced to
+this fearful and wretched position, could even consider--even name--what
+their sane senses must shrink from in utter horror! Norma was but
+twenty-two, but she knew that there was only one end to that road.
+
+So that way was closed, even to the brimming tide that rose up in her
+when she thought of it, and flooded her whole being with the ecstatic
+realization of her love for Chris, and of what surrender to him would
+mean.
+
+That way was closed. She must tell herself over and over. For her own
+sake, for the sake of Aunt Kate and Aunt Marianna, for Rose even, she
+must not think of that. Above all, for his sake--for Chris, the fine,
+good, self-sacrificing Chris of her first friendship, she must be
+strong.
+
+And Norma, at this point in her circling and confused thoughts, would
+drop her face in the crook of her bent arm, and the tears would brim
+over again and again. She was not strong. She could not be strong. And
+she was afraid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Regina, coming through the hallway at seven o'clock, was amazed to
+encounter Miss Sheridan, evidently fresh from a bath, a black hat tipped
+over her smiling eyes, and her big fur coat belted about her. Norma's
+vigil had lasted until after two o'clock, but then she had had four
+hours of restful sleep, for she knew that she had found the way.
+
+She left a message with Regina for Mrs. Melrose; she was going to Mrs.
+Sheridan's, and would telephone in a day or two. Smiling, she slipped
+out into the quiet street, where the autumn sunlight was just beginning
+to strike across the damp pavements, and smilingly she disappeared into
+the great currents of men and women who were already pouring to and fro
+along the main thoroughfares.
+
+But she did not go quite as far as her aunt's, after all. For perhaps
+fifteen minutes she waited on the corner of the block, walking slowly to
+and fro, watching the house closely.
+
+Then Wolf Sheridan came out, and set off at his usual brisk walk toward
+the subway. Norma stepped before him, trembling and smiling.
+
+"Nono--for the Lord's sake! Where did you come from?"
+
+He took her suit-case from her as she caught his arm, drew him aside,
+and looked up at him with her old childish air of coaxing.
+
+"Wolf----! I've been waiting for you. Wolf, I'm in trouble!" She laughed
+at his concern. "Not real trouble!" she reassured him, quickly.
+"But--but----"
+
+And suddenly tears came, and she found she could not go on.
+
+"Is it a man?" Wolf asked, looking down at her with everything that was
+brotherly and kind in his young face.
+
+"Yes," Norma answered, not raising her eyes from the overcoat button
+that she was pushing in and out of its hold. "Wolf," she added, quickly,
+"I'm afraid of him, and afraid of myself! You--you told me months
+ago----" She looked up, suffocating.
+
+"I know what I told you!" Wolf said, clearing his throat.
+
+"And--do you still feel--that way?"
+
+"You know I do, Norma," Wolf said, more concerned for her emotion than
+his own. "Do you--do you want me to send this--this fellow about his
+business?"
+
+"Oh, no!" she said, laughing nervously. "I don't want any one to know
+it; nobody must dream it! I can't marry him, I shall never marry him.
+But--he won't let me alone. Wolf----" She seemed to herself to be
+getting no nearer her point, and now she seized her courage in both
+hands, and looked up at him bravely. "Will you--take care of me?" she
+faltered. "I mean--I mean as your wife?"
+
+"Do you mean----" Wolf began. Then his expression changed, and his
+colour rose. "Norma--you don't mean that!"
+
+"Yes, but I do!" she said, exquisite and flushed and laughing, in the
+sweet early sunlight.
+
+"You mean that you will marry me?" Wolf asked, dazedly.
+
+"To-day!" she answered, fired by his look of awe and amazement and
+rapture all combined. "I want to be safe," she added, quickly. "I trust
+you more than any other man I know--I've loved you like a little sister
+all my life."
+
+"Ah--Norma, you darling--you darling!" he said. "But are you sure?"
+
+"Oh, quite sure!" Norma turned him toward Broadway, her little arm
+linked wife-fashion in his. "Don't we go along together nicely?" she
+asked, gaily.
+
+"Norma--my God! If you knew how I love you--how I've longed for you! But
+I can't believe it; I never will believe it! What made you do it?"
+
+Her face sobered for a second.
+
+"Just needing you, I suppose! Wolf"--her colour rose--"I want you to
+know who it is; it's Chris."
+
+"Who--the man who annoys you?" Wolf asked in healthy distaste.
+
+"The man I'm afraid of," she answered, honestly.
+
+"But--Lord!" Wolf exclaimed, simply, "he has a wife!"
+
+"I know it!" the girl said, quickly. "But I wanted you to know. I want
+you to know why I'm running away from them all." Relief rang in her
+voice as his delighted eyes showed no cloud. "That's all!" she said.
+
+"Norma, I can't--my God!--I can't tell whether I'm awake or dreaming!"
+Wolf was all joy again. "We'll--wait a minute!--we'll get a taxi; I'll
+telephone the factory later----" He paused suddenly. "Mother's in East
+Orange with Rose. Shall we go there first?"
+
+"No; you're to do as I say from now on, Wolf!"
+
+"Ah, you darling!"
+
+"And I say let's be married first, and then go and see Rose."
+
+"Norma----" He stopped in the street, and put his two hands on her
+shoulders. "I'll be a good husband to you. You'll never be sorry you
+trusted me. Dearest, it's--well, it's the most wonderful thing that ever
+happened in my whole life! Here's our taxi--wait a minute; what day is
+this?"
+
+"Whatever else it is," she said, half-laughing and half-crying, "I know
+it is my wedding day!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+To Rose and her mother, Wolf's and Norma's marriage remained one of the
+beautiful surprises of life; one of the things that, as sane mortals,
+they had dared neither to dream nor hope. Life had been full enough for
+mother and daughter, and sweet enough, that March morning, even without
+the miracle. The baby had been bathed, in a flood of dancing sunshine,
+and had had his breakfast out under the budding bare network of the
+grape arbour. The little house had been put into spotless order while he
+slept, and Rose had pinned on her winter hat, and gone gaily to market,
+with exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents in her purse. And she had
+come back to find her mother standing beside the shabby baby-coach, in
+the tiny backyard, looking down thoughtfully at the sleeping child, and
+evidently under the impression that she was peeling the apples, in the
+yellow bowl that rested on her broad hip. Rose had also studied her son
+for a few awed seconds, and then, reminding her mother that it was past
+twelve o'clock, had led the way toward tea-making, and the general
+heating and toasting and mincing of odds and ends for luncheon. And they
+had been in the kitchen, talking over the last scraps of this meal,
+when----
+
+When there had been laughter and voices at the open front doorway, and
+when Mrs. Sheridan's startled "Wolf!" had been followed by Rose's
+surprised "Norma!" Then they had come in, Wolf and Norma, laughing and
+excited and bubbling with their great news. And in joy and tears,
+confused interruptions and exclamations, explanations that got nowhere,
+and a plentiful distribution of kisses, somehow it got itself told. They
+had been married an hour ago--Norma was Wolf's wife!
+
+The girl was radiant. Never in her life had these three who loved her
+seen her so beautiful, so enchantingly confident and gay. Rose and her
+mother had some little trouble, later on, in patching the sequence of
+events together for the delighted but bewildered Harry, Rose's husband.
+But there could be no doubt, even to the shrewd eyes of her Aunt Kate,
+that Norma was ecstatically happy. Her mad kisses for Rose, the laughter
+with which she described the expedition to bank and jeweller, the
+license bureau and the church in Jersey City--for in order to have the
+ceremony performed immediately it had been necessary to be married in
+New Jersey--her delicious boldness toward the awed and rapturous and
+almost stupefied Wolf, were all proof that she entertained not even the
+usual girlish misgivings of the wedding day.
+
+"You see, I've not been all tired out with trousseau and engagement
+affairs and photographers and milliners and all that," she explained,
+gaily. "I've only got what's in my bag there, but I've wired Aunt
+Marianna, and told her to tell them all. And we'll be back on
+Monday--wait until I ask my husband; Wolftone, dear, shall we be back on
+Monday?"
+
+She had the baby in her lap; they were all in the dining-room. Rose had
+been assured that the bride and groom were not hungry; they had had
+sandwiches somewhere--some time--oh, down near the City Hall in Jersey
+City. But Rose had made more tea, and more toast, and she had opened her
+own best plum jam, and they were all eating with the heartiness of
+children. Presently Norma went to get in Aunt Kate's lap, and asked her
+if she was glad, and made herself so generally engaging and endearing,
+with her slender little body clasped in the big motherly arms and her
+soft face resting against the older, weather-beaten face, that Wolf did
+not dare to look at her.
+
+They were going to Atlantic City; neither had ever been there, and if
+this warm weather lasted it would be lovely, even in early spring. It
+was almost four o'clock when the younger women went upstairs for the
+freshening touches that Norma declared she needed, and then Wolf and his
+mother were left alone.
+
+He knelt down beside the big rocker in which she was ensconced with the
+baby, and she put one arm about him, and kissed the big thick crest of
+his brown hair.
+
+"You're glad, aren't you, Mother?"
+
+"Glad! I've prayed for it ever since she came to me, years ago," Mrs.
+Sheridan answered. But after a moment she added, gravely: "She's pure
+gold, our Norma. They've sickened her, just as I knew they would! But,
+Wolf, she may swing back for a little while. She's like that; she always
+has been. She was no more than a baby when she'd be as naughty as she
+could be, and then so good that I was afraid I was going to lose her. Go
+gently with her, Wolf; be patient with her, dear. She's going to make a
+magnificent woman, some day."
+
+"She's a magnificent woman, now," the man said, simply. "She's too good
+for me, I know that. She's--you can't think how cunning she is--how
+wonderful she's been, all day!"
+
+"Go slowly," his mother said again. "She's only a baby, Wolf; she's
+excited and romantic and generous because she's such a baby! Don't make
+her sorry that she's given herself to you so--so trusting----"
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"I'll take care of her!" Wolf asserted, a little gruffly.
+
+There was time for no more; they heard her step on the stairs, and she
+came dancing back with Rose. Her cheeks were burning with excitement;
+she gave her aunt and cousin quick good-bye kisses, and caught the
+baby's soft little cheek to her own velvety one. She and Wolf would be
+back on Sunday night, they promised; as they ran down the path the sun
+slipped behind a leaden cloud, and all the world darkened suddenly. A
+brisk whirl of springtime wind shook the rose bushes in Rose's little
+garden, and there was a cool rushing in the air that promised rain.
+
+But Norma was still carried along on the high tide of supreme emotion,
+and to Wolf the day was radiant with unearthly sunshine, and perfumed
+with all the flowers of spring. The girl had flung herself so
+wholeheartedly into her rôle that it was not enough to bewilder and
+please Wolf, she must make him utterly happy. Dear old Wolf--always
+ready to protect her, always good and big and affectionate, and ready to
+laugh at her silliest jokes, and ready to meet any of her problems
+sympathetically and generously. Her beauty, her irresistible charm as
+she hung on his arm and chattered of what they would do when they
+started housekeeping, almost dizzied him.
+
+She liked everything: their wheeling deep upholstered seats in the
+train; the seaside hotel, with the sea rolling so near in the soft
+twilight; the dinner for which they found themselves so hungry.
+Afterward they climbed laughing into a big chair, and were pushed along
+between the moving lines of other chairs, far up the long boardwalk. And
+Norma, with her soft loose glove in Wolf's big hand, leaned back against
+the curved wicker seat, and looked at the little lighted shops, and
+listened to the scrape of feet and chatter of tongues and the solemn
+roll and crash of the waves, and stared up childishly at the arch of
+stars that looked so far and calm above this petty noise and glare. She
+was very tired, every muscle in her body ached, but she was content.
+Wolf was taking care of her and there would be no more lonely vigils and
+agonies of indecision and pain. She thought of Christopher with a sort
+of childish quiet triumph; she had solved the whole matter for them
+both, superbly.
+
+Wolf was a silent man with persons he did not know. But he never was
+silent with Norma; he always had a thousand things to discuss with her.
+The lights and the stir on the boardwalk inspired him to all sorts of
+good-natured criticism and speculation, and they estimated just the
+expense and waste that went on there day by day.
+
+"Really to have the ocean, Wolf, it would be so much nicer to be even in
+the wildest place--just rocks and coves. This is like having a lion in
+your front parlour!"
+
+"Lord, Norma--when I got up this morning, if somebody had told me that I
+would be married, and down at Atlantic City to-night----!"
+
+"I know; it's like a dream!"
+
+"But you're not sorry, Norma; you're sure that I'm going to make you
+happy?" the man asked, in sudden anxiety.
+
+"You always _have_, Wolf!" she answered, very simply.
+
+He never really doubted it; it was a part of Wolf's healthy normal
+nature to believe what was good and loving. He was not exacting, not
+envious; he had no real understanding of her giddy old desires for
+wealth and social power. Wolf at twenty-five was working so hard and so
+interestedly, sleeping so deeply, eating his meals with such appetite,
+and enjoying his rare idle time so heartily, that he had neither time
+nor inclination for vagaries. He had always been older than his years,
+schooled to feel that just good meals and a sure roof above him marked
+him as one of the fortunate ones of the earth, and of late his work in
+the big factory had been responsible enough, absorbing enough, and more
+than gratifying enough to satisfy him with his prospects. He was liked
+for himself, and he knew it, and he was already known for that strange
+one-sightedness, that odd little twist of mechanical vision, that sure
+knowledge of himself and his medium, that is genius. The joy of finding
+himself, and that the world needed him, had been strong upon Wolf during
+the last few months, and that Norma had come back to him seemed only a
+reason for fresh dedication to his work, an augury that life was going
+to be kind to him.
+
+She was gone when he wakened the next morning, but he knew that the sea
+had an irresistible fascination for her, and followed her quite as
+surely as if she had left footprints on the clear and empty sands. He
+found her with her back propped against a low wooden bulkhead, her
+slender ankles crossed before her, her blue eyes fixed far out at sea.
+
+She turned, and looked up at him from under the brim of her hat, and the
+man's heart turned almost sick with the depth of sudden adoration that
+shook him; so young, so friendly and simple and trusting was the ready
+smile, so infinitely endearing the touch of the warm fingers she slipped
+into his! He sat down beside her, and they dug their heels into the
+sand, and talked in low tones. The sun shone down on them kindly, and
+the waves curved and broke, and came rushing and slithering to their
+feet, and slid churning and foaming noisily under the pier near by.
+Norma buried her husband's big hand in sand, and sifted sand through her
+slender fingers; sometimes she looked with her far-away look far out
+across the gently rocking ocean, and sometimes she brought her blue eyes
+gravely to his. And the new seriousness in them, the grave and noble
+sweetness that he read there, made Wolf suddenly feel himself no longer
+a boy, no longer free, but bound for ever to this exquisite and
+bewildering child who was a woman, or woman who was a child, sacredly
+bound to give her the best that there was in him of love and service and
+protection.
+
+She showed him a new Norma, here on the sunshiny sands, one that he was
+to know better as the days went by. She had always deferred to his
+wisdom and his understanding, but she seemed to him mysteriously wise
+this morning--no longer the old little sister Norma, but a new, sage,
+keen-eyed woman, toward whom his whole being was flooded with humility
+and awe and utter, speechless adoration.
+
+At nine o'clock, when nurses and children began to come down to the
+shore, they got to their feet, and wandered in to breakfast. And here,
+to his delight, she was suddenly the old mad-cap Norma again, healthily
+eager for ham and eggs and hot coffee, interested in everything, and
+bewitchingly pretty in whatever position she took.
+
+"I wish we had the old 'bus, Nono," Wolf said. He usually spoke of his
+motor-car by this name. "They've been overhauling her in that Newark
+place. She was to be ready--by George, she was ready yesterday!"
+
+"We'll go over--I'll come over and meet you next Saturday," his young
+wife promised, busy with rolls and marmalade, "and you'll take me to
+lunch, and then we'll get the car, and go and take Rose and the baby for
+a ride!"
+
+"Norma," the man exclaimed, suddenly struck with a sense of utter
+felicity, and leaning across the table to stop, for the minute, her
+moving fingers with the pressure of his own, "you haven't any idea how
+much I love you--I didn't know myself what it was going to mean! To have
+you come over to the factory, and to have somebody say that Mrs.
+Sheridan is there, and to go to lunch--Dearest, do you realize how
+wonderful and how--well, how _wonderful_ it's going to be? Norma, I
+can't believe it. I can't believe that this is what love means to
+everybody. I can't believe that every man who marries his--his----"
+
+"Girl," she supplied, laughing.
+
+"Girl--but I didn't mean girl. I meant his ideal--the loveliest person
+he ever knew," Wolf said, with a new quickness of tongue that she knew
+was born of happiness. "I can't believe that just going to Childs'
+restaurants, or taking the car out on Sunday, or any other fool thing
+we do, means to any man what it's going to mean to me! I just--well, I
+told you that. I just can't believe it!"
+
+Two days later they came home for Sunday supper, and there was much
+simple joy and laughter in the little city apartment. Aunt Kate of
+course had fried chicken and coffee ice-cream for her four big children.
+Harry Junior, awakening, was brought dewy and blinking to the table,
+where his Aunt Norma kissed the tears from his warm, round little
+cheeks, and gave him crumbs of sponge cake. Rose and Harry left at ten
+o'clock for their country home, leaving the precious baby for his
+grandmother and aunt to bring back the next day, but the other three sat
+talking and planning until almost midnight, and Kate could feast her
+eyes to her heart's content upon the picture of Wolf in his father's old
+leather chair, with Norma perched on the wide arm, one of her own arms
+about her husband's neck and their fingers locked together.
+
+It was settled that they were to find a little house in East Orange,
+near Rose, and furnish it from top to bottom, and go to housekeeping
+immediately. Meanwhile, Norma must see the Melroses, and get her wedding
+announcements engraved, and order some new calling cards, and do a
+thousand things. She and Wolf must spend their evenings writing
+notes--and presents would be arriving----!
+
+She made infinitesimal lists, and put them into her shopping bag, or
+stuck them in her mirror, but Wolf laughed at them all. And instead of
+disposing of them, they developed a demoralizing habit of wandering out
+into Broadway, in their old fashion, after dinner, looking into shop
+windows, drifting into little theatres, talking to beggars and taxi-cab
+men and policemen and strangers generally, mingling with the bubbling
+young life of the city that overflowed the sidewalks, and surged in and
+out of candy and drug stores, and sat talking on park benches deep into
+the soft young summer nights.
+
+Sometimes they went down to the shrill and crowded streets of the lower
+east side, and philosophized youthfully over what they saw there; and,
+as the nights grew heavier and warmer, they often took the car, and
+skimmed out into the heavenly green open spaces of the park, or, on
+Saturday afternoon, packed their supper, and carried it fifty miles away
+to the woods or the shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Before she had been married ten days Norma dutifully went to call upon
+old Mrs. Melrose, being fortunate enough to find Leslie there. The old
+lady came toward Norma with her soft old wavering footsteps, and gave
+the girl a warm kiss even with her initial rebuke:
+
+"Well, I don't know whether I am speaking to this bad runaway or not!"
+she quavered, releasing Norma from her bejewelled and lace-draped
+embrace, and shaking her fluffed and scanty gray hair.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are, Aunt Marianna," the girl said, confidently, with her
+happy laugh. Leslie, coming more slowly forward, laughed and kissed her,
+too.
+
+"But why didn't you tell us, Norma, and have a regular wedding, like
+mine?" she protested. "I didn't know that you and your cousin were even
+engaged!"
+
+"We've worked it out that we were engaged for exactly three hours and
+ten minutes," Norma said, as they all settled down in the magnificent,
+ugly, comfortable old sitting-room for tea. She could see that both
+Leslie and her grandmother were far from displeased. As a matter of
+fact, the old lady was secretly delighted. The girl was most suitably
+and happily and satisfactorily married; justice had been done her, and
+she had solved her own problem splendidly.
+
+"But you knew he liked you," Leslie ventured, diverted and curious.
+
+"Oh, well----" Norma's lips puckered mischievously and she looked down.
+
+"Oh, you _were_ engaged!" Leslie said, incredulously. "He's handsome,
+isn't he, Norma?"
+
+"Yes," the wife admitted, as if casually. "He really is--at least I
+think so. And I think everyone else thinks so. At least, when I compare
+him to the other men--for instance----"
+
+"Oh, Norma, I'll bet you're crazy about him," Leslie said, derisively.
+
+Norma looked appealingly at the old lady, her eyes dancing with fun.
+
+"Well, of _course_ she loves her husband," Mrs. Melrose protested, with
+a little cushiony pat of her hand for the visitor.
+
+"I don't see that it's 'of course'," Leslie argued, airily, with a
+little bitterness in her tone. Her grandmother looked at her in quick
+reproof and anxiety. "The latest," she said, drily, to Norma, "is that
+my delightful husband is living at his club."
+
+"Now, Leslie, that is very naughty," the old lady said, warmly. "You
+shouldn't talk so of Acton."
+
+"Well," Leslie countered, with elaborate innocence, turning to Norma,
+"all I can say is that he walked out one night, and didn't come back
+until the next! Of course," she added, with a suppressed yawn that
+poorly concealed her sudden inclination to tears, "of course _I_ don't
+care. Patsy and I are going up to Glen Cove next week--and he can live
+at his club, for all me!"
+
+"Money?" Norma asked. For Leslie's extravagance was usually the cause of
+the young Liggetts' domestic strife.
+
+Leslie, who had lighted a cigarette, made an affirmative grimace.
+
+"Now, it's all been settled, and Grandma has straightened it all out,"
+old Mrs. Melrose said, soothingly. "Acton was making out their income
+tax," she explained, "and some money was mentioned--how was that,
+dear?--Leslie had sold something--and he hadn't known of it, that was
+all! Of course he was a little cross, poor boy; he had worked it all out
+one way, and he had no idea that this extra--sixteen thousand, was
+it?--had come in at all, and been spent----"
+
+"Most of it for bills!" Leslie interpolated, bitterly. Norma laughed.
+
+"Sixteen thou----! Oh, heavens, my husband's salary is sixty dollars a
+week!" she confessed, gaily.
+
+"But you have your own money," the old lady reminded her, kindly, "and a
+very nice thing for a wife, too! I've talked to Judge Lee about it,
+dear, and it's all arranged. You must let me do this, Norma----"
+
+"I think you're awfully good to me, Aunt Marianna," Norma said,
+thoughtfully. "I told Wolf about it, and he thinks so, too. But
+honestly----"
+
+Even with her secret knowledge of her own parentage, Norma was surprised
+at the fluttered anxiety of the old lady, and Leslie was frankly
+puzzled.
+
+"No, Norma--no, Norma," Mrs. Melrose said, nervously and imploringly. "I
+don't want you to discuss that at all--it's _settled_. The check is to
+be deposited every month, or quarter, or whatever it was----"
+
+"Don't be a fool, Norma, you'll need it, one way or another," Leslie
+assured her. But in her own heart Leslie wondered at her grandmother's
+generosity.
+
+"Everybody needs more money. I'll bet you the King of England----"
+
+"Oh, kings!" Norma laughed. "They're the worst of all. I don't know
+about this one, but they're always appealing for special funds--all of
+them. And that's one thing that makes Wolf so mad--the fact that all
+they have to do, for ridiculous extravagances, is clap on a tax."
+
+But Leslie and her grandmother were not interested in the young
+engineer's economic theories. The old lady followed Norma's spirited
+summary merely with an uneasy: "You mustn't let your husband get any
+socialistic ideas, Norma; there's too much of that now!" and Leslie,
+after a close study of Norma's glowing face, remarked suddenly:
+
+"Norma, I'll bet you a _dollar_ you're rouged!"
+
+Before she left, the visitor managed a casual inquiry about Aunt Alice.
+
+Aunt Alice was fine, Leslie answered carelessly, adding immediately that
+no, Aunt Alice really wasn't extremely well. Doctor Garrett didn't want
+her to go away this summer, thought that move was an unnecessary waste
+of energy, since Aunt Alice's house was so cool, and she felt the heat
+so little. And Chris said that Alice had always really wanted to stay in
+town, in her own comfortable suite. She liked her second nurse
+immensely, and Miss Slater was really running the house now, the third
+nurse coming only at night.
+
+"But Aunt Alice never had a nurse at night," Norma was going to say. But
+she caught the stricken and apprehensive look on the old lady's face,
+and substituted generously: "Well, I remember Aunt Alice told me she had
+one of these wretched times several years ago."
+
+"Yes, indeed she did--frightened us almost to death," Mrs. Melrose
+agreed, thankfully.
+
+"And how is--how is Chris?" Norma felt proud of the natural tone in
+which she could ask the question.
+
+"Chris is fine," Leslie answered. She rarely varied the phrase in this
+relation. "He's hunting in Canada. He had a wire from some man there,
+and he went off about a week ago. They're going after moose, I believe;
+Chris didn't expect to get back for a month. Aunt Alice was delighted,
+because she hates to keep him in town all summer, but Acton told me that
+he thought Chris was sick--that he and Judge Lee just made him go."
+
+Well, her heart would flutter, she could not stop it or ignore it. Norma
+found no answer ready, and though she lifted her cup to her lips, to
+hide her confusion, she could not taste it. The strangeness of Chris's
+sudden departure was no mystery to her; he had been shocked and stunned
+by her marriage, and he had run away from the eyes that might have
+pierced his discomfiture.
+
+Still, her hands were trembling, and she felt oddly shaken and confused.
+Leslie carried the conversation away to safer fields, and shortly
+afterward Norma could say her good-byes. Everybody, Leslie said, walking
+with her to the corner, wanted to know what the bride wanted for a
+wedding-present. Norma told Wolf, over their candle-lighted supper
+table, an hour or two later, that he and she would be bankrupted for
+life returning them.
+
+Yet she loved the excitement of receiving the gifts; naturally enough,
+loved Rose's ecstasies over the rugs and silver and mahogany that made
+the little New Jersey house a jewel among its kind. It was what Norma
+had unhesitatingly pronounced an "adorable" house, a copy of the true
+colonial green-and-white, quaint and prim enough to please even Leslie,
+when Leslie duly came to call. It stood at the end of a tree-shaded
+street, with the rising woods behind it, and Norma recklessly invested
+in brick walks and a latticed green fence, hydrangeas in wooden tubs and
+sunflowers and hollyhocks, until her stretch of side garden looked like
+a picture by Kate Greenaway.
+
+When it was all done, midsummer was upon them, but she and Wolf thought
+that there had never been anything so complete and so charming in all
+the world. The striped awnings that threw clean shadows upon the clipped
+grass; the tea table under the blue-green leaves of an old apple tree;
+the glass doors that opened upon orderly, white-wainscoted rooms full of
+shining dark surfaces and flowered chintzes and gleaming glass bowls of
+real flowers; the smallness and completeness and prettiness of
+everything filled them both with utter satisfaction.
+
+Norma played at housekeeping like a little girl in a doll's house. She
+had a rosy little Finnish maid who enjoyed it all almost as much as she
+did, and their adventures in hospitality were a constant amusement and
+delight. On Saturdays, when Rose and Harry and Aunt Kate usually
+arrived, Wolf could hardly believe that all this ideal beauty and
+pleasure was his to share.
+
+The girls would pose and photograph the baby tirelessly, laughing as he
+toppled and protested, and kissing the fat legs that showed between his
+pink romper and his pink socks. They would pack picnic lunches, rushing
+to and fro breathlessly with thermos bottles and extra wraps for Miggs,
+as Harry Junior was usually called. Once or twice they cleaned the car,
+with tremendous splashing and spattering, assuming Wolf's old overalls
+for the operation, and retreating with shrieks into the kitchen whenever
+the sound of an approaching motor-car penetrated into their quiet road.
+Mrs. Sheridan characterized them variously as "Wild Indians", "Ay-rabs",
+and "poor innocents" but her heart was so filled with joy and gratitude
+for the turn of events that had brought all these miracles about, that
+no nonsense and no noise seemed to her really extravagant.
+
+It was an exceptionally pleasant community into which the young
+Sheridans had chanced to move, and they might have had much more
+neighbourly life than they chose to take. There were about them
+beginners of all sorts: writers and artists and newspaper men, whose
+little cars, and little maids, and great ambitions would have formed a
+strong bond of sympathy in time. But Wolf and Norma saw them only
+occasionally, when a Sunday supper at the country club or a
+Saturday-night dance supplied them with a pleasant stimulating sense of
+being liked and welcomed, or when general greetings on the eight-o'clock
+train in the morning were mingled with comments on the thunderstorm or
+the epidemic of nursery chicken-pox.
+
+When Rose and Harry were gone, on Sunday evenings, Wolf and Norma might
+sit on the side steps of the side porch, looking off across the gradual
+drop descent of tree-tops and shingled roofs, into a distant world
+silvering under the summer moon. These were their happiest times, when
+solitude and quiet spread about them, after the hospitable excitements
+of the day, and they could talk and dream and plan for the years ahead.
+
+She was an older Norma now, even though marriage had not touched her
+with any real responsibility, and even though she was more full of
+delicious childish absurdities than ever. The first months of their
+marriage had curiously reversed their relationship, and it was Norma now
+who gave, and Wolf who humbly and gratefully accepted. It was Norma who
+poured comfort and beauty and companionship into his life, who smiled at
+him over his morning fruit, and who waited for him under the old maple
+at the turn of the road, every night. And as her wonderful and touching
+generosity enveloped him, and her strange wisdom and new sweetness
+impressed him more and more, Wolf marvelled and adored her more utterly.
+He had always loved her as a big brother, had even experienced a
+definite heartache when she grew up and went away, a lovely and
+unattainable girl in the place where their old giddy dear little Norma
+had been.
+
+But now his passion for his young wife was becoming a devouring fire in
+Wolf's heart; she absorbed him and possessed him like a madness. A dozen
+times a day he would take from his pocket-book the thin leather case she
+had given him, holding on one side a photograph of the three heads of
+Rose, his mother, and the baby, and on the other an enchanting shadow of
+the loosened soft hair and the serious profile that was Norma.
+
+And as he stood looking at it, with the machinery roaring about him, and
+the sunlight beating in through steel-barred windows sixty feet high, in
+all the confusion of shavings and oil-soaked wood, polished sliding
+shafts streaked with thick blue grease, stifling odours of creosote and
+oily "wipes", Wolf's eyes would fill with tears and he would shake his
+head at his own emotion, and try to laugh it away.
+
+After awhile he took another little picture of her, this one taken under
+a taut parasol in bright sunlight, and fitted it over the opposite
+faces; and then when he had studied one picture he could turn to the
+other, and perhaps go back to the first before his eyes were satisfied.
+
+And if during the day some thought brought her suddenly to mind, he
+would stop short in whatever he was doing, and remember her little timid
+upglancing look as she hazarded, at breakfast, some question about his
+work, or remember her enthusiasm, on a country tramp, for the chance
+meal at some wayside restaurant, and sheer love of her would overwhelm
+him, and he would find his eyes brimming again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+So the summer fled, and before she fairly realized it Norma saw the
+leaves colouring behind the little house like a wall of fire, and
+rustled them with her feet when she tramped with Wolf's big collie into
+the woods. The air grew clearer and thinner, sunset came too soon, and a
+delicate beading of dew loitered on the shady side of the house until
+almost noon.
+
+One October day, when she had been six months a wife, Norma made her
+first call upon Annie von Behrens. Alice she had seen several times,
+when she had stopped in, late in the summer mornings, to entertain the
+invalid with her first adventures in housekeeping, and chat with Miss
+Slater. But Chris she had quite deliberately avoided. He had written her
+from Canada a brief and charming note, which she had shown Wolf, and he
+and Alice had had their share in the general family gift of silver, the
+crates and bags and boxes of spoons and bowls and teapots that had
+anticipated every possible table need of the Sheridans for generations
+to come. But that was all; she had not seen Chris, and did not want to
+see him.
+
+"The whole thing is rather like a sickness, in my mind," she told Wolf,
+"and I don't want to see him any more than you would a doctor or a nurse
+that was associated with illness. I don't know what we--what I was
+thinking about!"
+
+"But you think he really--loved you--Nono?"
+
+"Well--or he thought he did!"
+
+"And did you like him terribly?"
+
+"I think I thought I did, too. It was--of course it was something we
+couldn't very well discuss----."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry for him." Wolf had dismissed him easily. On her part,
+Norma was conscious of no particular emotion when she thought of Chris.
+The suddenness and violence with which she had broken that association
+and made its resumption for ever impossible, had carried her safely into
+a totally different life. Her marriage, her new husband and new home,
+her new title indeed, made her seem another woman, and if she thought of
+Chris at all it was to imagine what he would think of these changes, and
+to fancy what he would say of them, when they met. No purely visionary
+meeting can hold the element of passion, and so it was a remote and
+spiritualized Chris of whom Norma came to think, far removed from the
+actual man of flesh and blood.
+
+Her call upon Annie she made with a mental reserve of cheerful
+explanation and apology ready for Annie's first reproach. Norma never
+could quite forget the extraordinary relationship in which she stood to
+Annie; and, perhaps half consciously, was influenced by the belief that
+some day the brilliant and wonderful Mrs. von Behrens would come to know
+of it, too.
+
+But Annie, who happened to be at home, and had other callers, rapidly
+dashed Norma's vague and romantic anticipations by showing her only the
+brisk and aloof cordiality with which she held at bay nine tenths of her
+acquaintance. Annie's old butler showed Norma impassively to the little
+drawing-room that was tucked in beyond the big one; two or three
+strangers eyed the newcomer cautiously, and Annie merely accorded her a
+perfunctory welcome. They were having tea.
+
+"Well, how do you do? How very nice of you, Norma. Do you know Mrs.
+Theodore Thayer, and Mrs. Thayer, and Miss Bishop? Katrina, this is--the
+name is still Sheridan, isn't it, Norma?--this is Mrs. Sheridan, who was
+with Mama and Leslie last summer. You have lots of sugar and cream,
+Norma, of course--all youngsters do. And you're near the toast----" And
+Annie, dismissing her, leaned back in her chair, and dropped her voice
+to the undertone that Norma had evidently interrupted. "Do go on,
+Leila," she said, to the older of the three women, "that's quite
+delicious! I heard something of it, but I knew of course that there was
+more----"
+
+A highly flavoured little scandal was in process of construction. Norma
+knew the principals slightly; the divorced woman, and the second husband
+from whom she had borrowed money to loan the first. She could join in
+the laughter that broke out presently, while she tried to identify her
+companions. The younger Mrs. Thayer had been the Miss Katrina Davenport
+of last month's brilliant wedding. Pictures of her had filled the
+illustrated weeklies, and all the world knew that she and her husband
+were preparing to leave for a wonderful home in Hawaii, where the family
+sugar interests were based. They were to cross the continent, Norma
+knew, in the Davenport private car, to be elaborately entertained in San
+Francisco, and to be prominent, naturally, in the island set. Little
+Miss Bishop had just announced her engagement to Lord Donnyfare, a
+splendid, big, clumsy, and impecunious young Briton who had made himself
+very popular with the younger group this winter. They were to be
+married in January and her ladyship would shortly afterward be
+transferred to London society, presented at court, and placed as
+mistress over the old family acres in Devonshire.
+
+They were both nice girls, pretty, beautifully groomed and dressed, and
+far from unintelligent as they discussed their plans; how their
+favourite horses and dogs would be moved, and what instructions had been
+given the maids who had preceded them to their respective homes. Katrina
+Thayer was just twenty, Mary Bishop a year younger; Norma knew that the
+former was perhaps the richest girl in America, and the latter was also
+an heiress, the society papers having already hinted that among the
+wedding gifts shortly to be displayed would be an uncle's casual check
+for one million dollars.
+
+"And of course it'll be charming for Chris, Mary," Annie presently said,
+"if he's really sent to Saint James's."
+
+Norma felt her throat thicken.
+
+"Chris--to England--as Ambassador?" she said.
+
+"Well, there's just a possibility--no, there's more than that!" Annie
+told her. "I believe he'll take it, if it is offered. Of course, he's
+supremely well fitted for it. There's even"--Annie threw out to the
+company at large, with that air of being specially informed in which she
+delighted--"there's even very good reason to suppose that influence has
+been brought to bear by----But I don't dare go into that. However, we
+feel that it will be offered. And the one serious drawback is naturally
+my sister. Alice--poor child! And yet, of us all, Alice is most
+desperately eager for Chris to take it."
+
+"I should think," Norma said, "that Aunt Alice could almost be
+moved----?"
+
+"Oh, she would be!" Annie agreed, with her quick, superior definiteness.
+"That's the very question. Whether the north Atlantic passage, say in
+May, when it oughtn't to be so hard, would be too much for her. Of
+course it would tire her and shake her cruelly, no doubt of that. But
+Hendrick even talks of some sort of balanced bed--on the hammock
+idea--and Miss Slater would see that everything that was humanly
+possible was done. I believe it could be managed. Then she would be met
+by one of those big, comfortable English ambulances, at Southampton, and
+taken right to her apartment, or hotel, or whatever Chris arranges."
+
+"Not so much harder," Norma ventured, "than the trip to Newport, after
+all."
+
+"Well, she didn't go to Newport last summer," Annie said, "but she is
+certainly better now than she was then, and I believe it could be done;
+I really do. We're not talking a great deal about it, because nothing is
+settled, but if it becomes definite, I shall certainly advise it."
+
+Norma drank her tea, and listened, and threw in an occasional word. When
+the other women rose to go, she rose, too, perhaps half-hoping that
+Annie would hold her for a more intimate word. But Annie quite suavely
+and indifferently included her in her general farewells, and Norma had
+cordial good-byes from the two young women, and even a vague invitation
+from the older Mrs. Thayer to come and see her, when Katrina was gone.
+
+Then she was walking down the Avenue, with her head and heart in a
+confused whirl of bitterness and disappointment. The three quarters of
+an hour in Aunt Annie's big, dim, luxurious palace had been like a dose
+of some insidious poison.
+
+The very atmosphere of richness and service and idleness, the beauty of
+wide spaces and rich tones, the massed blossoms and dimmed lights,
+struck sharply upon senses attuned to Aunt Kate's quick voice, Rose's
+little house with its poverty and utility, and Wolf's frank enjoyment of
+his late and simple dinner. The conversation, with its pleasant
+assumption of untold wealth of power and travel and regal luxuriousness,
+burned its memory across Norma's mind like a corroding acid. They were
+not contemptible, they were not robbers or brutes or hideous old
+plutocrats who had grown wealthy upon the wrongs of the poor. No, they
+were normal pleasant girls whose code it was to be generous to maids and
+underlings, to speak well of their neighbours, to pay their bills and
+keep their promises.
+
+"They make me _tired_!" she tried to tell herself, walking briskly, and
+filling her lungs with the sweet fresh air. It was twilight, and the
+north-bound tide of traffic was halting and rushing, halting and
+rushing, up the Avenue; now held motionless at a crossing, now flowing
+on in mad haste, the lumbering omnibuses passing each other, little
+hansoms threading the mass, and foot passengers scampering and
+withdrawing, and risking all sorts of passages between. The distance was
+luminous and blue, and lights pricked against it as against a scarf of
+gauze.
+
+Oh, it was sickening--it was sickening--to think that life was so grim
+and hard for the thousands, and so unnecessarily, so superlatively
+beautiful for the few! What had Mary Bishop and Katrina ever done, that
+they should travel in private cars, fling aside furs that had cost as
+much as many a man's yearly salary, chatter of the plantation near the
+beach at Hawaii, or of reaching Saint James's for the January
+Drawing-Room!
+
+Norma stopped to give twenty-five cents to an old Italian organ grinder,
+and worked him into her theme as she went on. Why _should_ he look so
+grateful for her casual charity, he, seventy years old, Katrina and Mary
+averaging less than twenty!
+
+She reached Aunt Kate's flat in a thorough temper, angry, headachy,
+almost feverish after the rich scones and the rich tea, and the even
+less wholesome talk. The apartment house seemed, as indeed it was, grimy
+and odorous almost to squalor, and Aunt Kate almost hateful in her
+cheerfulness and energy. This was Wednesday, and on Wednesday evenings
+she was always happy, for then Wolf and Norma came to dinner with her.
+To-night, busily manipulating pans and pots, she told Norma that she had
+rented the two extra bedrooms of the apartment to three young trained
+nurses, ideal tenants in every way.
+
+"They'll get their breakfasts here, and--if I'm away--there's no reason
+why they shouldn't cook themselves a little dinner now and then," said
+Aunt Kate, in her rich, motherly voice. "They were tickled to death to
+get the two rooms for twenty dollars, and that makes my own rent only
+seventeen more. I asked them if that was too much, and they said, no,
+they'd expected to pay at least ten apiece."
+
+Norma listened, unsympathetic and gloomy. It was all so petty and so
+poor--trained nurses, and apple pie, and Aunt Kate renting rooms, and
+Wolf eager to be promoted to factory manager.
+
+She wanted to go back--back to the life in which Annie really noticed
+her, gave her luncheons, included her. She wanted to count for something
+with Mary and Katrina and Leslie; she wanted to talk to Chris about his
+possible ambassadorship; she wanted them all to agree that Norma's wit
+and charm more than made up for Norma's lack of fortune. While she
+brushed her hair, in the room that would shortly accommodate two of the
+three little nurses, she indulged in an unsatisfying dream in which she
+went to London with Alice--and that autocratic little Lady Donnyfare.
+
+Lady Donnyfare! She would be "your ladyship!" Nineteen years old, and
+welcomed to the ancestral mansion as her little ladyship!
+
+Norma set the dinner table for three, with jerks and slams that slightly
+relieved her boiling heart. She got the napkins from the sideboard
+drawer, and reached for the hand-painted china sugar bowl that was part
+of a set that Aunt Kate had won at a fair. She set the blue tile that
+she had given Aunt Kate on a long-ago Christmas where the brown Rebecca
+teapot would stand, and cut a square slice of butter from the end of the
+new pound for the blue glass dish. And all the time her heart was
+bursting with grief and discontent, and she was beginning to realize for
+the first time the irrevocable quality of the step she had taken, and
+just how completely it had shut her off from the life for which she
+thirsted.
+
+Wolf came in, hungry, dirty, radiantly happy, with a quick kiss for his
+mother and an embrace for his wife into which her slender figure and
+cloudy brown head almost disappeared. Lord, he was starving; and Lord,
+he was dead; and Lord, it was good to get home, said Wolf, his
+satisfaction with life too great to leave room for any suspicion of his
+wife's entire sympathy.
+
+She told them, over the meal, of Mary and Katrina, in whom their
+interest was of a simple and amazed quality that Norma resented, and of
+Chris's prospect, which did awaken some comment from Mrs. Sheridan.
+They were a clever family, she said.
+
+But now Wolf, bursting with long suppression, suddenly took the floor
+with his own great news. Voorhies, the fifty-year-old manager of the
+California plant, had been drifting about the Newark factory for several
+days, and Wolf had talked with him respectfully, as a man of
+twenty-five, whose income is three thousand a year, may talk to a
+six-thousand-dollar manager, and to-day Voorhies, and Jim Palmer, the
+Newark manager, and Paul Stromberg, the vice-president, had taken Wolf
+to lunch with them, apparently casually, apparently from mere
+friendliness. But Voorhies had asked him if he had ever seen the West;
+and Stromberg had said that he understood Sheridan's family consisted
+merely of a young wife, and Palmer had chanced to drop carelessly the
+fact that Mr. Voorhies was not going back to California----!
+
+That was all. But it was enough to send Wolf back to his work with his
+head spinning. California--and a managership of a mine--and six
+thousand! It must be--it must be--that he had been mentioned for it,
+that they had him in mind! He wasn't going even to think of it--and
+Norma mustn't--but Lord, it meant being picked out of the ranks; it
+meant being handed a commission on a silver platter!
+
+Norma tried not to be cold, tried to rise to the little he asked of her,
+as audience. And she had the satisfaction of knowing that he noticed
+nothing amiss in her manner, and of seeing him go off to sleep, when
+they had made the long trip home, with his head in a whirl of glorious
+hopes. But Norma, for the first time since her marriage, cried herself
+to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+The bitterness stayed with her, and gradually robbed her life of
+everything that was happy and content. Her little household round, that
+had been so absorbing and so important, became tedious and stupid. Rose,
+who was expecting her second confinement, had her husband's mother with
+her, and in care of the old baby, and making preparations for the new,
+was busy, and had small time for the old companionship; the evenings
+were too cold for motoring now, even if Wolf had not been completely
+buried in engineering journals and papers of all sorts.
+
+Norma did not call on Annie again, but a fretted and outraged sense of
+Annie's coolness and aloofness, and a somewhat similar impression from
+Leslie's manner, when they met in Fifth Avenue one day, was always in
+her mind. They could drop her as easily as they had picked her up, these
+high-and-mighty Melroses! She consoled herself, for a few days, with
+spectacular fancies of Annie's consternation should Norma's real
+identity be suddenly revealed to her, but even that poor solace was
+taken away from her at last.
+
+It was Aunt Kate's unconscious hand that struck the blow, on a wild
+afternoon, All Hallow E'en, as it happened, when the older woman made
+the long trip to see Rose, and came on to Norma with a report that
+everything was going well, and Miggs more fascinating than ever.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan found Norma at the close of the short afternoon, moping in
+her unlighted house. She had been to the theatre with Wolf and a young
+couple from the house next door, last night, and had fallen asleep after
+an afternoon walk, and felt headachy, prickly with heat and cold, and
+stupid. Yawning and chilly, she kissed her aunt, and suggested that they
+move to the kitchen. It was Inga's free night and Norma was cook.
+
+"You'll stay and surprise Wolf, he'd love it," Norma said, as the
+visitor's approving eyes noted the general order and warmth, the
+blue-checked towels and blue bowls, the white table and white walls. The
+little harum-scarum baby of the family was proceeding to get her husband
+a most satisfactory and delicious little dinner, and Aunt Kate was proud
+of her.
+
+"Did you make that cake, darling?"
+
+"Indeed I did; she can't make cake!"
+
+"And the ham?"
+
+"Well"--Norma eyed the cut ham fondly--"we did that together, out of the
+book! And I wish you'd taste it, Aunt Kate, it is perfectly delicious. I
+give it to Wolf every other night, but I think he'd eat it three times a
+day and be delighted. And last week we made bread--awfully good,
+too--not hard like that bread we made last summer. Rolls, we
+made--cinnamon rolls and plain. Harry and Rose were here. And
+Thanksgiving I'm going to try mincemeat."
+
+"You're a born cook," Aunt Kate said, paying one of her highest
+compliments with due gravity. But Norma did not respond with her usual
+buoyancy. She sighed impatiently, and her face fell into lines of
+discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs.
+Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding,
+one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar.
+Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have
+an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some
+trouble hideously like infantile paralysis.
+
+Norma knew that Aunt Kate would have liked to have her offer to take at
+least one of the small and troublesome children for two or three days,
+if not to stay with the unfortunate Kitty Barry outright. She knew that
+there was almost no money, that all the household details of washing and
+cooking were piling up like a mountain about the ailing woman, but her
+heart was filled with sudden rebellion and impatience with the whole
+miserable scheme.
+
+"My goodness, Aunt Kate, if it isn't one thing with those people it's
+another!" she said, impatiently. "I suppose you were there, and up with
+that baby all night!"
+
+"Indeed I got some fine sleep," Mrs. Sheridan answered, innocently.
+"Poor things, they're very brave!"
+
+Norma said nothing, but her expression was not sympathetic. She had been
+thinking of herself as to be pitied, and this ruthless introduction of
+the Barry question entirely upset the argument. If Mary Bishop and
+Katrina Thayer were the standard, then Norma Sheridan's life was too
+utterly obscure and insignificant to be worth living. But of course if
+incompetent strugglers like the Barrys were to be brought into the
+question, then Norma might begin to feel the solid ground melting from
+beneath her feet.
+
+She did not offer the cake or the ham to Aunt Kate, as contributions
+toward the small Barrys' lunch next day, nor did she invite any one of
+them to visit her. Her aunt, if she noted these omissions, made no
+comment upon them.
+
+"I declare you are getting to be a real woman, Norma," she said.
+
+"I suppose everyone grows up," Norma assented, cheerlessly.
+
+"Yes, there's a time when a child stops being a baby and you see that
+it's beginning to be a little girl," Mrs. Sheridan mused; "but it's some
+time later before you know _what sort_ of a little girl it is. And then
+at--say fifteen or sixteen--you see the change again, the little girl
+growing into a grown girl--a young lady. And for awhile you sort of lose
+track of her again, until all of a sudden you say: 'Well, Norma's going
+to be sociable--and like people!' or: 'Rose is going to be a gentle, shy
+girl----'"
+
+Norma knew the mildly moralizing tone, and that she was getting a
+sermon.
+
+"You never knew that I was going to be a good housekeeper!" she
+asserted, inclined toward contrariety.
+
+"I think you're going through another change now, Baby," her aunt said.
+"You've become a woman too fast. You don't quite know where you are!"
+
+This was so unexpectedly acute that Norma was inwardly surprised, and a
+little impressed. She sat down at one end of the clean little kitchen
+table, and rested her face in her hands, and looked resentfully at the
+older woman.
+
+"Then you _don't_ think I'm a good housekeeper," she said, looking hurt.
+
+"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma, it'll all be in
+your hands now," Mrs. Sheridan answered, seriously. "You're a woman,
+now; you're Wolf's wife; you've reached an age when you can choose and
+decide for yourself. You can be--you always could be--the best child the
+Lord ever made, or you can fret and brood over what you haven't got."
+
+The shrewd kindly eye seemed looking into Norma's very soul. The girl
+dropped her hard bright stare, and looked sulky.
+
+"I don't see what _I'm_ doing!" she muttered. "I can't help
+wanting--what other people that are no better than I, have!"
+
+"Yes, but haven't you enough, Norma? Think of women like poor Kitty
+Barry----"
+
+"Oh, Kitty Barry--Kitty Barry!" Norma burst out, angrily. "It isn't my
+fault that Kitty Barry has trouble; _I_ had nothing to do with it! Look
+at people like Leslie--what she wastes on one new fur coat would keep
+the Barrys for a year! Eighty-two hundred dollars she paid for her
+birthday coat! And that's _nothing_! Katrina Thayer----"
+
+"Norma--Norma--Norma!" her aunt interrupted, reproachfully. "What have
+you to do with girls like the Thayer girl? Why, there aren't twenty
+girls in the country as rich as that. That doesn't affect _you_, if
+there's something you can do for the poor and unfortunate----"
+
+"It _does_ affect me! I can't"--Norma dropped her tone, and glanced at
+her aunt. She knew that she was misbehaving--"I can't help inheriting a
+love for money," she said, breathing hard. "I know perfectly well who I
+am--who my mother is," she ended, with a half-defiant and half-fearful
+sob in her voice.
+
+"How do you mean that you know about your mother, Norma?" Mrs. Sheridan
+demanded, sharply.
+
+"Well"--Norma had calmed a little, and she was a trifle nervous--"Chris
+told me; and Aunt Alice knows, too--that Aunt Annie is my mother," she
+said.
+
+"Chris Liggett told you that?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, with a note of
+incredulity in her voice.
+
+"Yes. Aunt Alice guessed it almost as soon as I went to live there! And
+I've known it for over a year," Norma said.
+
+"And who told Chris?"
+
+"Well--Aunt Marianna, I suppose!"
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"Norma," said Mrs. Sheridan, in a quiet, convincing tone that cooled the
+girl's hot blood instantly, "Chris is entirely wrong; your mother is
+dead. I've never lied to you, and I give you my word! I don't know where
+Miss Alice got that idea, but it's like her romantic way of fancying
+things! No, dear," she went on, sympathetically, as Norma sat silent,
+half-stunned by painful surprise, "you have no claim on Miss Annie. Both
+your father and mother are dead, Norma; I knew them both. There was a
+reason," Mrs. Sheridan added, thoughtfully, "why I felt that Mrs.
+Melrose might want to be kind to you--want to undo an injustice she did
+years ago. But I've told myself a thousand times that I did you a cruel
+wrong when I first let you go among them--you who were always so
+sensible, and so cheerful, and who would always take things as they
+came, and make no fuss!"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Kate," Norma stammered, bitterly, her lip trembling, and her
+voice fighting tears, "you don't have to tell me that in your opinion
+I've changed for the worse--I see it in the way you look at me! You've
+always thought Rose was an angel--too good to live!--and that I was
+spoiled and lazy and good-for-nothing; you were glad enough to get rid
+of me, and now I hope you're satisfied! They've told me one thing, and
+you've told me another--and I guess the truth is that I don't belong to
+anybody; and I wish I was dead, where my f-f-father and m-m-mother
+are----!"
+
+And stumbling into incoherence and tears, Norma dropped her head on her
+arm, and sobbed bitterly. Mrs. Sheridan's face was full of pain, but she
+did not soften.
+
+"You belong to your husband, Norma!" she said, mildly.
+
+Norma sat up, and wiped her eyes on a little handkerchief that she took
+from the pocket of her housewifely blue apron. She did not meet her
+aunt's eye, and still looked angry and hurt.
+
+"Well--who _am_ I then? Haven't I got some right to know who my mother
+and father were?" she demanded.
+
+"That you will never hear from me," Mrs. Sheridan replied, firmly.
+
+"But, Aunt Kate----"
+
+"I gave my solemn promise, Norma, and I've kept my word all these years;
+I'm not likely to break it now."
+
+"But--won't I _ever_ know?"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan shrugged her broad shoulders and frowned slightly.
+
+"That I can't say, my dear," she said, gently. "Some day I may be
+released from my bond, and then I'll be glad to tell you everything."
+
+"Perhaps Wolf will tell me he's nothing to me, now!" the girl continued,
+with childish temper.
+
+"Wolf--and all of us--think that there's nobody like you," the older
+woman said, tenderly. But Norma did not brighten. She went in a
+businesslike way to the stove, and glanced at the various bowls and
+saucepans in which dinner was baking and boiling, then sliced some stale
+bread neatly, put the shaved crusts in a special jar, and began to toast
+the slices with a charming precision.
+
+"Change your mind and stay with us, Aunt Kate?" she said, lifelessly.
+
+"No, dear, I'm going!" And Aunt Kate really did bundle herself into coat
+and rubber overshoes and woolly scarf again. "November's coming in with
+a storm," she predicted, glancing out at the darkness, where the wind
+was rushing and howling drearily.
+
+Norma did not answer. No mere rushing of clouds and whirl of dry and
+colourless leaves could match the storm of disappointment that was
+beginning to rage in her own heart.
+
+Yet she felt a pang of repentance, when cheerful Aunt Kate had tramped
+off in the dark, to Rose's house, which was five blocks away, and
+perhaps afterward to the desolate Barrys', and wished that she had put
+her arms about the big square shoulders, and her cheek against her
+aunt's cheek, and said that she was sorry to be unreasonable.
+
+Rushing to another extreme of unreason, she decided that she and Wolf
+must go see Rose to-night--and perhaps the Barrys, too--and cheer and
+solace them all. And Norma indulged in a little dream of herself nursing
+and cooking in the Barrys' six little cluttered rooms, and earning
+golden opinions from all the group. There was money, too; she had not
+used all of October's allowance, and to-morrow would find another big
+check at the bank.
+
+Wolf interrupted by coming in so tired he could hardly move. He ate his
+dinner, yawned amiably in the kitchen while she cleared it away, and was
+so sound asleep at nine o'clock that Norma's bedside light and the
+rustling of the pages of her book, three feet away from his face, had no
+more effect upon him than if the three feet had been three hundred.
+
+And then the bitter mood came back to her again; the bored, restless,
+impatient feeling that her life was a stupid affair. And deep in her
+heart the sense of hurt and humiliation grew and spread; the thought
+that she was not of the charmed circle of the Melroses, not secretly and
+romantically akin to them, she was merely the casual object of the old
+lady's fantastic sense of obligation. Aunt Kate, who had never said what
+was untrue--who, Norma and her children firmly believed, could not say
+what was untrue--had taken away, once and for all, the veil of mystery
+and romance that had wrapped Norma for three exciting years.
+
+For Leslie, and Katrina, and Mary Bishop, perhaps, travel and the thrill
+of foreign shores or European courts. But for Wolf Sheridan's wife, this
+small, orderly, charming house on the edge of the New Jersey woods, and
+the laundry to think of every Monday, and the two-days' ordering to
+remember every Saturday, as long as the world went round!
+
+For a few days Norma really suffered in spirit, then the natural healthy
+current of her life reëstablished itself, and she philosophically
+determined to make the best of the matter. If she was not Aunt Annie's
+daughter and Leslie's cousin, she was at least their friend. They--even
+unsuspecting of any strange relationship--had always been kind to her.
+And Aunt Marianna and Aunt Alice had been definitely affectionate, to
+say nothing of Chris!
+
+So one day, when she happened to be shopping in the winter briskness of
+the packed and brilliant Avenue, she telephoned Leslie at about the
+luncheon hour. Leslie when last they met had said that she would
+confidently expect Norma to run out and lunch with her some day--any
+day.
+
+"Who is it?" Leslie's voice asked, irritably, when at last the telephone
+connection was established. "Oh, _Norma_! Oh----? What is it?"
+
+"Just wondering how you all were, and what the family news is," Norma
+said, with an uncomfortable inclination to falter.
+
+"I don't _hear_ you!" Leslie protested, impatiently. The insignificant
+inquiry did not seem to gain much by repetition, and Norma's cheeks
+burned in shame when Leslie followed it by a blank little pause.
+"Oh--everyone's fine. The baby wasn't well, but she's all right now."
+
+Another slight pause, then Norma said:
+
+"She must be adorable--I'd like to see her."
+
+"She's not here now," Leslie answered, quickly.
+
+"I've been shopping," Norma said. "Any chance that you could come down
+town and lunch with me?"
+
+"No, I really couldn't, to-day!" Leslie answered, lightly and promptly.
+
+A moment later Norma said good-bye. She walked away from the telephone
+booth with her face burning, and her heart beating quickly with anger
+and resentment.
+
+"Snob--snob--snob!" she said to herself, furiously, of Leslie. And of
+herself she presently added honestly, "And I wasn't much better, for I
+don't really like her any more than she does me!" And she stopped for
+flowers, and a little box of pastry, and went out to delight her Aunt
+Kate's heart with an unexpected visit.
+
+But a sting remained, and Norma brooded over the injustice of life, as
+she went about her little house in the wintry sunlight, and listened to
+Wolf, and made much of Rose and the new baby girl. By Thanksgiving it
+seemed to her that she had only dreamed of "Aïda" and of Newport, and
+that the Norma of the wonderful frocks and the wonderful dreams had been
+only a dream herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+And then suddenly she was delighted to have a friendly little note from
+Alice, asking her to come to luncheon on a certain December Friday, as
+there was "a tiny bit of business" that she would like to discuss; Chris
+was away, she would be alone. Norma accepted with no more than ordinary
+politeness, and showed neither Wolf nor his mother any elation, but she
+felt a deep satisfaction in the renewed relationship.
+
+On the appointed Friday, at one o'clock, she mounted the familiar steps
+of the Christopher Liggetts' house, and greeted the butler with a
+delighted sense of returning to her own. Alice was in the front room,
+before a wood fire; she greeted Norma with her old smile, and with an
+outstretched hand, but Norma was shocked to see how drawn and strangely
+aged the smile was, and how thin the hand!
+
+The room had its old scent of violets, and its old ordered beauty and
+richness, but Norma was vaguely conscious, for the first time, of some
+new invalid quality of fussiness, of a pretty and superfluous cluttering
+that had not been characteristic of Alice's belongings a year ago.
+Alice, too, wore newly a certain stamp of frailty, her always pure high
+forehead had a faint transparency and shine that Norma did not remember,
+and the increasing accumulation of pillows and little bookcases and
+handsome stands about her suggested that her horizon was closing in,
+that her world was diminishing to this room, and this room alone.
+
+The strange nurse who smilingly and noiselessly slipped away as Norma
+came in, was another vaguely disquieting hint of helplessness, but Norma
+knew better than to make any comment upon her impressions, and merely
+asked the usual casual questions, as she sat down near the couch.
+
+"How are you, Aunt Alice? But you look splendidly!"
+
+"I'm so _well_," said Alice, emphatically, with a sort of solemn
+thankfulness, "that I don't know myself! Whether it was saving myself
+the strain of moving to Newport last summer, or what, I don't know. But
+I haven't been so well for _years_!"
+
+Norma's heart contracted with sudden pity. Alice had never employed
+these gallant falsehoods before. She had always been quite obviously
+happy and busy and even enviable, in her limited sphere. The girl
+chatted away with her naturally enough while the luncheon table was
+arranged between them and the fire, but she noticed that two nurses
+shifted the invalid into an upright position before the meal, and that
+Alice's face was white with exhaustion as she began to sip her bouillon.
+
+They were alone, an hour later, playing with little boxed ices, when
+Alice suddenly revealed the object of the meeting. Norma had asked for
+Chris, who was, it appeared, absent on some matter of business for a few
+days, and it was in connection with the introduction of his name that
+Alice spoke.
+
+"Chris--that reminds me! I wanted to speak to you about something,
+Norma; I've wanted to for months, really. It's not really important,
+because of course you never would mention it any more than I would, and
+yet it's just as well to have this sort of thing straightened out!
+Chris told me"--said Alice, looking straight at Norma, who had grown a
+trifle pale, and was watching her fixedly--"Chris told me that some
+months before you were married, he told you of some--some ridiculous
+suspicions we had--it seems absurd now!--about Annie."
+
+So that was it! Norma could breathe again.
+
+"Yes--we talked about it one morning walking home from church," she
+admitted.
+
+"I don't know whether you know now," Alice said, quickly, flushing
+nervously, "that there wasn't one shred of foundation for that--that
+crazy suspicion of mine! But I give you my word--and my mother told
+me!--that it wasn't so. I don't know how I ever came to think of it, or
+why I thought Mama admitted it. But I've realized," said Alice,
+nervously, "that it was a terrible injustice to Annie, and as soon as
+Chris told me that you knew it--and of course he had _no business_ to
+let it get any further!--I wanted to set it straight. Poor Annie; she
+would be perfectly frantic if she knew how calmly I was saddling her
+with a--a terrible past!" said Alice, laughing. "But I have always been
+too sensitive where the people I love are concerned, and I blundered
+into this--this outrageous----"
+
+"My aunt had told me that it was not so," Norma said, coolly and
+superbly interrupting the somewhat incoherent story. "If I ever really
+believed it----!" she added, scornfully.
+
+For her heart was hot with rage, and the first impulse was to vent it
+upon this nearest of the supercilious Melroses. This was all Alice had
+wanted then, in sending that little overture of friendship: to tell the
+little nobody that she was nothing to the great family, after all, to
+prevent her from ever boasting even an illicit relationship! It was for
+a formal snub, a definite casting-off, that Norma had been brought all
+the way from the little green-and-white house in New Jersey! Her eyes
+grew very bright, and her lips very firm, as she and Alice finished the
+topic, and she told herself that she would never, never enter the house
+of Liggett again!
+
+Alice, this load off her mind, and the family honour secure, became much
+more friendly, and she and Norma were talking animatedly when Leslie and
+Annie came unexpectedly in. They had been to a débutante luncheon, and
+were going to a débutante tea, and meanwhile wanted a few minutes with
+dear Alice, and the latest news of Mrs. Melrose, who was in Florida.
+
+Aunt and niece were magnificently furred and jewelled, magnificently
+unaware of the existence of little Mrs. Sheridan of East Orange. Norma
+knew in a second that the social ripples had closed over her head; she
+was of no further possible significance in the life of either. Leslie
+was pretty, bored, ill-tempered; Annie her usual stunning and radiantly
+satisfied self. The conversation speedily left Norma stranded, the
+chatter of engagements, of scandals, of new names, was all strange to
+her, and she sat through some ten minutes of it uncomfortably, longing
+to go, and not quite knowing how to start. She said to herself that she
+was done with the Melroses; never--never--never again would even their
+most fervently extended favour win from her so much as a civil
+acknowledgment!
+
+There was a step in the hall, and a voice that drove the blood from
+Norma's face, and made her heart begin the old frantic fluttering and
+thumping. Before she could attempt to collect her thoughts, the door
+opened, and Chris came in. He came straight to Alice, and kissed her,
+holding her hand as he greeted Annie and Leslie. Then he came across the
+hearthrug, and Norma got to her feet, and felt that his hand was as cold
+as hers, and that the room was rocking about her.
+
+"Hello, Norma!" he said, quietly. "I didn't expect to find you here!"
+
+"You haven't seen her since she was married, Chris," Alice said, and
+Chris agreed with a pleasant "That's so!"
+
+He sat down, and Norma, incapable of any effort, at least until she
+could control the emotion that was shaking her like a vertigo, sank back
+into her own chair, unseeing and unhearing. The gold clock on the mantel
+ticked and tocked, the other three women chatted and laughed, and Chris
+contributed his share to the general conversation. But Norma's one
+desperate need was for escape.
+
+He made no protest when she said hasty farewells, but when she had gone
+rapidly and almost blindly down the stairway, and was at the front door,
+she found him beside her. He got into his fur-collared coat, picked up
+his hat, and they descended to the sidewalk together, in the colourless,
+airless, sunless light of the winter afternoon.
+
+"Get in my car!" Chris said, indicating the roadster at the curb.
+
+The girl without a word obeyed. His voice, the motion of his clean-cut
+mouth, the searching glance of his quick, keen eyes, acted upon her like
+a charm. Alice--Wolf--every thing else in the world vanished from her
+thoughts, or rather had never been there. She was drinking again the
+forbidden waters for which she had thirsted, perhaps without quite
+knowing it, so long. The strangeness, the strain, the artifice of the
+last eight months fell from her like a spell; she was herself again,
+comfortable again, poised again, thrilling from head to heels with
+delicious and bubbling life--ready for anything!
+
+Now that they were alone she felt no more nervousness; he would speak to
+her when he was ready, he could not leave her without speaking. Norma
+settled back comfortably in the deep, low seat, and glanced sidewise at
+the stern profile that showed between his high fur collar and the fur
+cap he had pulled well down over his ears. The world seemed changed to
+her; she had wakened from a long dream.
+
+"No--not the old house!" she presently broke the silence to tell him. "I
+go to New Jersey."
+
+He had been driving slowly out Fifth Avenue, now he obediently turned,
+and threaded his way through the cross-street traffic until they were
+within perhaps a hundred feet of the entrance to the New Jersey subways.
+Then he ran the car close to the curb, and stopped, and for the first
+time looked fully at Norma, and she saw his old, pleasant smile.
+
+"Well, and how goes it?" he asked. "How is Wolf? Tell me where you are
+living, and all about it!"
+
+Norma in answer gave him a report upon her own affairs, and spoke of
+Aunt Kate and Rose and Rose's children. She did not realize that a tone
+almost pleading, almost apologetic, crept into her eager voice while she
+spoke, and told its own story. Chris watched her closely, his eyes never
+leaving her face. All around them moved the confusion and congestion of
+Sixth Avenue; overhead the elevated road roared and crashed, but
+neither man nor woman was more than vaguely conscious of surroundings.
+
+"And are you happy, Norma?" Chris asked.
+
+"Oh, yes!" she answered, quickly.
+
+"You are a very game little liar," he said, dispassionately. "No--no,
+I'm not blaming you!" he added, hastily, as she would have spoken. "You
+took the very best way out, and I respect and honour you for it! I was
+not surprised--although the possibility had never occurred to me."
+
+Something in his cool, almost lifeless tone, chilled her, and she did
+not speak.
+
+"When I heard of it," Chris said, "I went to Canada. I don't remember
+the details exactly, but I remember one day sitting up there--in the
+woods somewhere, and looking at my hunting knife, and looking at my
+wrist----"
+
+He looked at his wrist now, and her eyes followed his.
+
+"--and if I had thought," Chris presently continued, "that a slash there
+might have carried me to some region of peace--where there was no hunger
+for Norma--I would not have hesitated! But one isn't sure--more's the
+pity!" he finished, smiling with eyes full of pain.
+
+Norma could not speak. The work of long months had been undone in a
+short hour, and she was conscious of a world that crashed and tumbled in
+utter ruin about her.
+
+"Well, no use now," Chris said. He folded his arms on his chest, and
+looked sternly away into space for a minute, and Norma felt his
+self-control, his repression, as she would have felt no passionate
+outburst of reproach. "But there is one thing that I've wanted for a
+long time to tell you, Norma. If you hadn't been such a little girl, if
+you had known what life is, you could not have done what you did!"
+
+"I suppose not," she half-whispered, with a dry throat, as he waited for
+some sign from her.
+
+"No, you couldn't have given yourself to any one else--if you had
+known," Chris went on, as if musing aloud. "And that brings me to what I
+want to say. Marriage lasts a long, long time, Norma, and even you--with
+all your courage!--may find that you've promised more than you can
+perform! The time may come----
+
+"Norma, I hope it won't!" he interrupted himself to say, bitterly. "I
+try to hope it won't! I try to hope that you will come to love him, my
+dear, and forget me! But if that time does come, what I want you to
+remember is this afternoon, and sitting here with me in the car, and
+Chris telling you that whenever--or wherever--or however he can serve
+you, you are to remember that he is living just for that hour! There
+will never be any change in me, Norma, never anything but longing and
+longing just for the sight of you, just for one word from you! I love
+you, my dear--I can't help it. God knows I've _tried_ to help it. I love
+you as I don't believe any other woman in the world was ever loved! So
+much that I want life to be good to you, even if I never see you, and I
+want you to be happy, even without me!"
+
+He had squared about to face her, and as the passionate rush of words
+swept about her, Norma laid her little gloved hand gently upon his big
+one, and her blue eyes, drowned in sudden tears, fixed themselves in
+exquisite desolation and despair upon his face.
+
+Once or twice she had whispered "I know--I know!" as if to herself, but
+she did not interrupt him, and when he paused he saw that she was choked
+with tears, and could not speak.
+
+"The mad and wonderful sacrifice you made I can't talk about, Norma," he
+said. "Only an ignorant, noble-hearted little girl like you could have
+done that! But that's all over, now. You must try to make your life what
+they think it is--those good people that love you! And I'll try, too!--I
+do try. And you mustn't cry, my little sweetheart," Chris added, with a
+tenderness so new, and so poignantly sweet, that Norma was almost faint
+with the sheer joy of it, "you mustn't blame me for just saying this,
+this once, because it's for the last time! We mustn't meet----" His
+voice dropped. "I think we mustn't meet," he repeated, painfully and
+slowly.
+
+"No!" she agreed, quickly.
+
+"But you are to remember that," Chris reiterated, "that I am living, and
+moving about, and going to the office, and back to my home, only because
+you are alive in the world, and the day may come when I can serve you!
+Life has been only that to me, for a long, long time!"
+
+For a long minute Norma sat silent, her dark lashes fallen on her cheek,
+her eyes on the hand that she had grasped in her own.
+
+"I'll remember, Chris! Thank you, Chris!" she said, simply. Then she
+raised her eyes and looked straight at him, with a childish little
+frown, puzzled and bewildered, on her forehead, and they exchanged a
+long look of good-bye. Chris raised her hand to his lips, and Norma very
+quietly slipped from her seat, and turned once to smile bravely at him
+before she was lost in the swiftly moving whirlpool of the subway
+entrance. She was trembling as she seated herself in the train, and
+moved upon her way scarcely conscious of what she was doing.
+
+But Chris did not move from his seat for more than an hour.
+
+Norma went home, and quickly and deftly began her preparations for
+dinner. Inga had been married a few weeks before, and so Norma had no
+maid. She put her new hat into its tissue paper, and tied a fresh
+checked apron over her filmy best waist, and stepped to and fro between
+stove and dining table, as efficient a little housekeeper as all New
+Jersey could show.
+
+Wolf came home hungry and good-natured, and kissed her, and sat at the
+end of her little kitchen table while she put the last touches to the
+meal, appreciative and amusing, a new magazine for her in the pocket of
+his overcoat, an invitation from his mother for dinner to-morrow night,
+and a pleasant suggestion that he and she wander up Broadway again and
+look in windows, after his mother's dinner.
+
+They talked, while they dined, of the possibility of the California
+move, and Wolf afterward went down to the furnace. When the fire was
+banked for the night, he watched the last of the dinner clearance, and
+they went across the cold dark strip of land between their house and a
+neighbour's, to play three exciting rubbers of bridge.
+
+And at eleven Wolf was asleep, and Norma reading again, or trying to
+read. But her blood was racing, and her head was spinning, and before
+she slept she brought out all her memories of the afternoon. Chris's
+words rang in her heart again, and the glances that had accompanied
+them unrolled before her eyes like some long pageant that was infinitely
+wonderful and thrilling. Leslie and Annie and Alice might snub her, but
+Chris--their idol, the cleverest and most charming man in all their
+circle!--Chris loved her. Chris loved her. And--from those old dreamy
+days in Biretta's Bookstore, had she not loved Chris?
+
+Another morning came, another night, and life went its usual way. But
+Norma was wrapped in a dream that was truly a pillar of cloud by day,
+and of flame by night. She was hardly aware of the people about her,
+except that her inner consciousness of happiness and of elation gave her
+an even added sweetness and charm, made her readier to please them, and
+more anxious for their love.
+
+Wolf almost immediately saw the change, but she did not see the shadow
+that came to be habitual in his young face, nor read aright his grave
+eyes. She supposed him perhaps unusually busy, if indeed she thought of
+him at all. Like her aunt, and Rose, and the rest of her world, he was
+no more now than a kindly and dependable shadow, something to be quickly
+put aside for the reality of her absorbing friendship for Chris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Despite their resolve not to see each other in the two weeks that
+followed Alice's luncheon, Norma had seen Chris three times. He had
+written her on the third day, and she had met the postman at the corner,
+sure that the big square envelope would be there. They had had luncheon,
+far down town, and walked up through the snowy streets together, parting
+with an engagement for the fourth day ahead, a matinée and tea
+engagement. The third meeting had been for luncheon again, and after
+lunch they had wandered through an Avenue gallery, looking at the
+pictures, and talking about themselves.
+
+Chris had loaned her books, little slim books of dramas or essays, and
+Chris had talked to her of plays and music. One night, when Wolf was in
+Philadelphia, Chris took her to the opera again, duly returning her to
+Aunt Kate at half-past eleven, and politely disclaiming Aunt Kate's
+gratitude for his goodness to little Norma.
+
+He never attempted to touch her, to kiss her; he never permitted himself
+an affectionate term, or a hint of the passion that enveloped him; they
+were friends, that was all, and surely, surely, they told themselves, a
+self-respecting man and woman may be friends--may talk and walk and
+lunch together, and harm no one? Norma knew that it was the one vital
+element in Chris's life, as in her own, and that the hours that he did
+not spend with her were filled with plans and anticipations for their
+times together.
+
+One evening, just before Christmas, when the young Sheridans were
+staying through a heavy storm with their mother, Wolf came home with the
+news that he must spend some weeks in Philadelphia, studying a new
+method of refining iron ore. It was tacitly understood that this
+transfer was but a preliminary to the long-anticipated promotion to the
+California managership, but Wolf took it very quietly, with none of the
+exultation that the compliment once would have caused him.
+
+"I'll go with you to Philadelphia," Norma said, not quite naturally. She
+had been made vaguely uneasy by his repressed manner, and by the fact
+that her kiss of greeting had been almost put aside by him, at the door,
+a few minutes earlier. Dear old Wolf; she had always loved him--she
+would not have him unhappy for all the world!
+
+In answer he looked at her unsmilingly, wearily narrowing his eyes as if
+to concentrate his thoughts.
+
+"You can't, very well, but thank you just the same, Norma," he said,
+formally. "I shall be with Voorhies and Palmer and Bender all the time;
+they put me up at a club, and there'll be plenty of evening work--nearly
+every evening----"
+
+"Norma'll stay here with me!" Aunt Kate said, hospitably.
+
+"Well"--Wolf agreed, indifferently--"I can run up from Philadelphia and
+be home every Saturday, Mother," he added. Norma felt vaguely alarmed by
+his manner, and devoted her best efforts to amusing and interesting him
+for the rest of the meal. After dinner she came in from the kitchen to
+find him in a big chair in the little front parlour, and she seated
+herself upon an arm of it, and put her own arm loosely about his neck.
+
+"What are you reading, Wolf? Shall we go out and burn up Broadway?
+There's a wonderful picture at The Favourite."
+
+He tossed his paper aside, and moved from under her, so that Norma found
+herself ensconced in the chair, and her husband facing her from the rug
+that was before the little gas log.
+
+"Where's Mother?"
+
+"Gone downstairs to see how the Noon baby is."
+
+"Norma," said Wolf, without preamble, "did you see Chris Liggett
+to-day?"
+
+Her colour flamed high, but her eyes did not waver.
+
+"Yes. We met at Sherry's. We had lunch together."
+
+"You didn't meet by accident?" There was desperate hope in Wolf's voice.
+But Norma would not lie. With her simple negative her head drooped, and
+she looked at her locked fingers in silence.
+
+Wolf was silent, too, for a long minute. Then he cleared his throat, and
+spoke quietly and sensibly.
+
+"I've been a long time waking up, Nono," he said. "I'm sorry! Of course
+I knew that there was a difference; I knew that you--felt differently.
+And I guessed that it was Chris. Norma, do you--do you still like him?"
+
+She looked up wretchedly, nodding her head.
+
+"More"--he began, and stopped--"more than you do me?" he asked. And in
+the silence he added suddenly: "Norma, I thought we were so happy!"
+
+Then the tears came.
+
+"Wolf, I'll never love any one more than I do you!" the girl said,
+passionately. "You've always been an angel to me--always the best friend
+I ever had. I know you--I know what you are to Rose, Aunt Kate, and what
+the men at the factory think of you. I'm not fit to tie your shoes! I'm
+wicked, and selfish, and--and everything I oughtn't to be! But I can't
+help it. I've wanted you to know--all there was to know. I've met him,
+and we've talked and walked together; that's all. And that's all we
+want--just to be friends. I'm sorry----" Her voice trailed off on a sob.
+"I'm awfully sorry!" she said.
+
+"Yes," Wolf said, slowly, after a pause, "I'm sorry, too!"
+
+He sat down, rumpling his hair, frowning. Norma, watching him fearfully,
+noticed that he was very pale.
+
+"I thought we were so happy," he said again, simply.
+
+"Ah, Wolf, don't think I've been fooling all this summer!" his wife
+pleaded, her eyes filling afresh. "I've loved it all--the peach
+ice-cream, and the picnics, and everything. But--but people can't help
+this sort of thing, can they? It does happen, and--and they just simply
+have to make the best of it, don't they? If--if we go to California next
+month--you know that I'll do everything I can----!"
+
+He was not listening to her.
+
+"Norma," he interrupted, sharply, "if Liggett's wife was out of the
+way--would you want to marry him?"
+
+"Wolf!--what's the use of asking that? You only--you only excite us
+both. Aunt Alice _isn't_ out of the way, and even if she were, I am your
+wife. I'm sorry. I'll never meet him again--I haven't been a bit happy
+about it. I'll promise you that I will not see him again."
+
+"I don't ask you for that promise," Wolf said. "I don't know what we can
+do! I never should have let you--I shouldn't have been such a fool as
+to--but somehow, I'd always dreamed that you and I would marry.
+Well!"--he interrupted his musing with resolute cheerfulness--"I've got
+to get over to the library to-night," he said, "for I may have to start
+for Phily to-morrow afternoon. Will you tell Mother----"
+
+Norma immediately protested that she was going with him, but he
+patiently declined, kissing her in a matter-of-fact sort of way as he
+pulled on the old overcoat and the new gloves, and slamming the hall
+door behind him when he went.
+
+For a minute she stood looking after him, with a great heartache almost
+blinding her. Then she flashed to her room, and before Wolf had reached
+the corner his wife had slipped her hand into his arm, and her little
+double step was keeping pace with his long stride in the way they both
+loved.
+
+She talked to him in her usual manner, and presently he could answer
+normally, and they bought peppermints to soften their literary labours.
+In the big library Wolf was instantly absorbed, but for awhile Norma sat
+watching the shabby, interested, intelligent men and women who came and
+went, the shabby books that crossed the counters, the pretty, efficient
+desk-clerks under their green droplights. The radiators clanked and
+hissed softly in the intervals of silence, sometimes there was
+whispering at the shelves, or one of the attendants spoke in a low tone.
+
+Norma loved the atmosphere, so typical a phase of the great city's
+life. After awhile she idly dragged toward her three books, from a
+table, and idly dipped into them: "The Life of the Grimkés"; "The Life
+of Elizabeth Prentiss"; "The Letters of Charles Dickens."
+
+Nine struck; ten; eleven. Wolf had some six or seven large books about
+him, and alternated his plunges into them with animated whispered
+conversations with a silver-headed old man, two hours ago an utter
+stranger, but always henceforth to be affectionately quoted by Wolf as a
+friend.
+
+They indulged in the extravagance of a taxi-cab for the home trip. Norma
+left Wolf still reading, after winning from him a kiss and a promise not
+to "worry", and went to bed and to sleep. When she wakened, after some
+nine delicious hours, he was gone; gone to Philadelphia, as it proved.
+
+Breakfasting at ten o'clock, in a flood of sweet winter sunshine, she
+put a brave face on the matter. She told herself that it was better that
+Wolf should know, and only the part of true kindness not to deny what,
+for good or ill, was true. The memory of his grave and troubled face
+distressed her, but she reminded herself that he would be back on
+Saturday, and then he would have forgiven her. She would see Chris
+to-day, to-morrow, and the day after, and by that time they would have
+said everything that there was to say, and they would never see each
+other again.
+
+For it was a favourite hallucination of theirs that every meeting was to
+be the last. Not, said Chris, that there was any harm in it, but it was
+wiser not to see each other. And when Norma, glowing under his eyes,
+would echo this feeling, he praised her for her courage as if they had
+resisted the temptation already.
+
+"I've thought it all over, Chris," she would say, "and I know that the
+wisest way is to stop. And you must help me." And when Chris answered,
+"Norma, I don't see where you get that marvellous courage of yours," it
+did not occur to Norma to question in what way she was showing courage
+at all. She lived upon his praise, and could not have enough of it. He
+never tired of telling her that she was beautiful, good, brave, a
+constant inspiration, and far above the ordinary type of woman; and
+Norma believed him.
+
+On the day before Wolf's first week-end return from Philadelphia, Chris
+was very grave. When he and Norma were halfway through their luncheon,
+in the quiet angle of an old-fashioned restaurant, he told her why.
+Alice was failing. Specialists had told him that England was out of the
+question. She might live a year, but the probability was against it.
+They--he and Norma--Chris said, must consider this, now.
+
+Norma considered it with a paling face. It--it couldn't make any
+difference, she said, quickly and nervously.
+
+And then, for the first time, he talked to her of her responsibility in
+the matter, of what their love meant to them both. Wolf had his claim,
+true; but what was truly the generous thing for a woman to do toward a
+man she did not love? Wasn't a year or two of hurt feelings, even anger
+and resentment, better than a loveless marriage that might last fifty
+years?
+
+This was a terrible problem, and Norma did not know what to think. On
+the one hand was the certainty of that higher life from which she had
+been exiled since her marriage: the music, the art, the letters, the
+cultivated voices and fragrant rooms, the wealth and luxury, the
+devotion of this remarkable and charming man, whose simple friendship
+had been beyond her dreams a few years ago. On the other side was the
+painful and indeed shameful desertion of Wolf, the rupture with Aunt
+Kate and Rose, and the undying sense in her own soul of an unworthy
+action.
+
+But Rose was absorbed in Harry and the children, and Aunt Kate would
+surely go with Wolf to California, three thousand miles away----
+
+"I am not brave enough!" she whispered.
+
+"You _are_ brave enough," Chris answered, quickly. "Tell him the
+truth--as you did on your wedding day. Tell him you acted on a mad
+impulse, and that you are sorry. A few days' discomfort, and you are
+free, and one week of happiness will blot out the whole wretched memory
+for ever."
+
+"It is not wretchedness, Chris," she corrected, with a rueful smile. But
+she did not contradict him, and before they parted she promised him that
+she would not go to California without at least telling Wolf how she
+felt about it.
+
+Rose and Harry joined them for the Saturday night reunion. Norma thought
+that Wolf seemed moody, and was unresponsive to her generous welcome,
+and she was conscious of watching him somewhat apprehensively as the
+evening wore on. But it was Sunday afternoon before the storm broke.
+
+Wolf was at church when Norma wakened, and as she dressed she meditated
+a trifle uneasily over this departure from their usual comfortable
+Sunday morning habit. She breakfasted alone, Wolf and his mother coming
+in for their belated coffee just as Norma, prettily coated and hatted
+and furred, was leaving the house for the ten-o'clock Mass. They did
+not meet again until luncheon, and as Wolf had explained that he must
+leave at four o'clock for Philadelphia, Norma began to think that this
+particular visit would end without any definite unpleasantness.
+
+However, at about three o'clock, he invited her to walk with him to the
+station, and join his mother later, at Rose's house, in New Jersey, and
+Norma dared not refuse. They locked the apartment, and walked slowly
+down Broadway, as they had walked so many thousand times before, in the
+streaming Sunday crowds. Before they had gone a block Wolf opened
+hostilities by asking abruptly:
+
+"Where did you go to church this morning?"
+
+Norma flushed, and laughed a little.
+
+"I went down to the Cathedral; I'm fond of it, you know. Why?"
+
+"Did you meet Chris Liggett?" Wolf asked.
+
+"Yes--I did, Wolf. He goes to the church near there, now and then."
+
+"When you telephone him to," Wolf said, grimly.
+
+Norma began to feel frightened. She had never heard this tone from Wolf
+before.
+
+"I did telephone him, as a matter of fact--or rather he happened to
+telephone me, and I said I was going there. Is there anything so
+horrifying in that?" she asked.
+
+"Just after you went out, the telephone operator asked me if the Murray
+Hill number had gotten us," Wolf answered; "that's how I happen to
+know."
+
+Norma was angry, ashamed, and afraid, all at once. For twenty feet they
+walked in silence. She stole more than one anxious look at her
+companion; Wolf's face was set like flint. He was buttoned into the
+familiar old overcoat, a tall, brown, clean-shaven, and just now
+scowling young man of the accepted American type, firm of jaw, keen of
+eye, and with a somewhat homely bluntness of feature preventing him from
+being describable as handsome, or with at best a rough, hard, open-eyed
+sort of handsomeness that was as unconscious of itself as the beauty of
+a young animal.
+
+"Wolf, don't be cross," his wife pleaded, in illogical coaxing.
+
+"I'm not cross," he said, with an annoyed glance that humiliated and
+angered her. "But I don't like this sort of thing, Norma, and I should
+think you'd know why."
+
+"What sort of thing?" Norma countered, quickly.
+
+"The sort of thing that evidently Mr. Christopher Liggett thinks is fair
+play!" Wolf said, with youthful bitterness. "Harry saw you both walking
+up Fifth Avenue yesterday, and Joe Anderson happened to mention that you
+and a man were lunching together on Thursday, down at the Lafayette.
+There may be no harm in it----"
+
+"There _may_ be!" Norma echoed, firing. "You know very well there
+_isn't_!"
+
+"You see him every day," Wolf said.
+
+"I _don't_ see him every day! But if I did, it wouldn't be Harry
+Redding's and Joe Anderson's business!"
+
+"No," Wolf said, more mildly, "but it might be mine!"
+
+Norma realized that he was softening under her distress, and she changed
+her tone.
+
+"Wolf, you know that you can trust me!" she said.
+
+"But I don't know anything about him!" Wolf reminded her. "I know that
+he's twice your age----"
+
+"He's thirty-eight!"
+
+"Thirty-eight, then--and I know that he's a loafer--a rich man who has
+nothing else to do but run around with women----"
+
+"I want to ask you to stop talking about something of which you are
+entirely ignorant!" Norma interrupted, hotly.
+
+"You're the one that's ignorant, Norma," Wolf said, stubbornly, not
+looking at her. "You are only a little girl; you think it's great fun to
+be married to one man, and flirting with another! What makes me sick is
+that a man like Liggett thinks he can get away with it, and you
+women----"
+
+"If you say that again, I'll not walk with you!" Norma burst in
+furiously.
+
+"Does it ever occur to you," Wolf asked, equally roused, "that you are
+my wife?"
+
+"Yes!" Norma answered, breathlessly. "Yes--it does! And why? Because I
+was afraid I was beginning to care too much for Chris Liggett--because I
+knew he loved me, he had told me so!--and I went to you because I wanted
+to be safe--and I told you so, too, Wolf Sheridan, the very day that we
+were married! I never lied to you! I told you I loved Chris, that I
+always had! And if you'd been _civil_ to me," rushed on Norma, beginning
+to feel tears mastering her, "if you'd been _decent_ to me, I would have
+gotten over it. I would never have seen him again anyway, after this
+week, for I told him this morning that I didn't want to go on meeting
+him--that it wasn't fair to you! But no, you don't trust me and you
+don't believe me, and consequently--consequently, I don't care what I
+do, and I'll make you sorry----"
+
+"Don't talk so wildly, Norma," Wolf warned her, in a tone suddenly quiet
+and sad. "Please don't--people will notice you!"
+
+"I don't care if they do!" Norma said. But she glanced about deserted
+Eighth Avenue uneasily none the less, and furtively dried her eyes upon
+a flimsy little transparent handkerchief that somehow tore at her
+husband's heart. "If you had been a little patient, Wolf----" she
+pleaded, reproachfully.
+
+"There are times when a man hasn't much use for patience, Norma," Wolf
+said, still with strange gentleness. "You _did_ tell me of liking
+Liggett--but I thought--I hoped, I guess----!" He paused, and then went
+on with sudden fierceness: "He's married, Norma, and you're married--I
+wish there was some way of letting you out of it, as far as I am
+concerned! Of course you don't have to go to California with me--if that
+helps. You can get your freedom, easily enough, after awhile. But as
+long as he's tied, it doesn't seem to me that he has any business----"
+
+His gentle tone disarmed her, and she took up Chris's defence eagerly.
+
+"Wolf, don't you believe there is such a thing as love? Just that two
+people find out that they belong to each other--whether it's right or
+wrong, or possible or impossible--and that it may last for ever?"
+
+"No," said Wolf, harshly, "I don't believe it! He's married--doesn't he
+love his wife?"
+
+"Well, of course he loves her! But this is the first time in all his
+life that he has--cared--this way!" Norma said.
+
+Wolf made no answer, and she felt that she had scored. They were in the
+station now, and weaving their way down toward the big concourse. Norma
+took her husband's arm.
+
+"Please--please--don't make scenes, Wolf! If you will just believe me
+that I wouldn't--truly I wouldn't!--hurt you and Aunt Kate for all the
+world----"
+
+"Ah, Norma," he said, quickly, "I can't take my wife on those terms!"
+And turning from the ticket window he added, sensibly: "Liggett is tied,
+of course. But would you like me to leave you here when I go West? Until
+you are surer of yourself--one way or another? You only have to say so!"
+
+She only had to say so. He had reached, of his own accord, the very
+point to which she long had hoped to bring him. But perversely, Norma
+did not quite like to have Wolf go off to Philadelphia with this
+unpalatable affirmative ringing in his ears. She looked down. A moment's
+courage now, and she would win everything--and more than everything!--to
+which Chris had ever urged her. But she felt oddly sad and even hurt by
+his willingness to give her her way.
+
+"All right!" he said, hastily. "That's understood. I'll tell Mother I
+don't want you to follow, for awhile. Good-bye, Norma! You're taking the
+next tube? Wait a minute--I want a _Post_----"
+
+Was he trying to show her how mean he could be? she thought, as with a
+heartache, and a confused sense of wrong and distress, she slowly went
+upon her way. Of course that parting was just bravado, of course he felt
+more than that! She resented it--she thought he had been unnecessarily
+unkind----
+
+But her spirits slowly settled themselves. Wolf knew what she felt, now,
+and they had really parted without bitterness. A pleasant sense of being
+her own mistress crept over her, her cheeks cooled, her fluttering
+heart came back to its normal beat. She began to hear herself telling
+Chris how courageous she had been.
+
+It was too bad--it was one of the sad things of life. But after all,
+love was love, in spite of Wolf's scepticism, and if it soothed Wolf to
+be rude, let him have that consolation! What did a little pain more or
+less signify now? There was no going back. Years from now Wolf would
+forgive her, recognizing that great love was its own excuse for being.
+"And if this sort of thing exists only to be crushed and killed," Norma
+wrote Chris a few days later, "then half the great pictures, the great
+novels, the great poems and dramas, the great operas, are lies. But you
+and I know that they are not lies!"
+
+She was unhappy at home, for Aunt Kate was grave and silent, Rose
+wrapped in the all-absorbing question of the tiny Catherine's meals, and
+Wolf neither came nor wrote on Saturday night. But in Chris's devotion
+she was feverishly and breathlessly happy, their meetings--always in
+public places, and without a visible evidence of their emotion--were
+hours of the most stimulating delight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+So matters went on for another ten days. Then suddenly, on a mid-week
+afternoon, Norma, walking home from a luncheon in a wild and stormy
+wind, was amazed to see the familiar, low-slung roadster waiting outside
+her aunt's door when she reached the steps. Chris jumped out and came to
+meet her as she looked bewilderedly toward it, a Chris curiously
+different in manner from the man she had left only an hour ago.
+
+"Norma!" he said, quickly, "I found a message when I got to the office.
+I was to call up Aunt Marianna's house at once. She's ill--_very_ ill.
+They want me, and they want you!"
+
+"Me?" she echoed, blankly. "What for?"
+
+"She's had a stroke," he said, still with that urgent and hurried air,
+"and Joseph--poor old fellow, he was completely broken up--said that she
+had been begging them to get hold of you!"
+
+Norma had gotten into the familiar front seat, but now she stayed him
+with a quick hand.
+
+"Wait a minute, Chris, I'll run up and tell Aunt Kate where I am going!"
+she said.
+
+"She's gone out. There's nobody there!" he assured her, glancing up at
+the apartment windows. "I knew you would be coming in, so I waited."
+
+"Then I'll telephone!" the girl said, settling herself again. "But what
+do you suppose she wants me for?" she asked, returning to the subject of
+the summons. "Have they--will they--send for Aunt Annie and Leslie, do
+you suppose?"
+
+"Leslie is in Florida with the Binneys, most unfortunately. Annie was in
+Baltimore yesterday, but I believe she was expected home to-day. Joseph
+said he had gotten hold of Hendrick von Behrens, and I told my clerk to
+get Acton, and to warn Miss Slater that Alice isn't to be frightened."
+
+"But, Chris--do you suppose she is dying?"
+
+"I don't know--one never does, of course, with paralysis."
+
+"Poor Aunt Alice--it will almost kill her!"
+
+"Yes, it will be terribly hard for her, harder than for any one," he
+answered. And Norma loved him for the grave sympathy that filled his
+voice, and for the poise that could make such a speech possible, under
+the circumstances, without ever a side glance for her.
+
+Then they reached the old house, ran up the steps, and were in the great
+dark hallway that already seemed to be filled with the shadow of change.
+
+Whispering, solemn-faced maids went to and fro; Joseph was red-eyed; the
+heavy fur coats of two doctors were flung upon chairs. Norma slipped
+from her own coat.
+
+"How is she, Joseph?"
+
+"I hardly know, Miss. You're to go up, please, and Regina was to tell
+one of the nurses at once that you had come, Miss." He delivered his
+message impassively enough, but then the human note must break through.
+"I've been with her since she was married, Miss--nigh forty years," the
+old man faltered, "and I'm afraid she is very bad--very bad, indeed!"
+
+"Oh, I _hope_ not!" Norma went noiselessly upstairs, Chris close behind
+her. Did she hope not? She hardly knew. But she knew that all this was
+strangely thrilling--this rush through the tossing windy afternoon to
+the old house, this sense of being a part of the emergency, this utter
+departure from the tedious routine of life.
+
+A serious-faced nurse took charge of them, and she and Chris followed
+her noiselessly into the familiar bedroom that yet looked so altered in
+its new lifeless order and emptiness. The clutter of personal
+possessions was already gone, chairs had been straightened and pushed
+back, and on the bed that had lately been frilled and embroidered in
+white and pink, and piled with foolish little transparent baby pillows,
+a fresh, flawless linen sheet was spread. Silence reigned in the wide
+chamber; but two doctors were standing by the window, and looked at the
+newcomers with interest, and a second nurse passed them on her way out.
+Norma vaguely noted the fire, burning clear and bright, the shaded light
+that showed a chart, on a cleared table, the absence of flowers and
+plants that made the place seem bare. But after one general impression
+her attention was riveted upon the sick woman, and with her heart
+beating quickly with fright she went to stand at the foot of the great
+walnut bed.
+
+Mrs. Melrose was lying with her head tipped back in pillows; her usually
+gentle, soft old face looked hard and lined, and was a dark red, and the
+scanty gray hair, brushed back mercilessly from the temples, and devoid
+of the usual puffs and transformations, made her look her full sixty
+years. Her eyes were half-open, but she did not move them, her lips
+seemed very dry, and occasionally she muttered restlessly, and a third
+nurse, bending above her, leaned anxiously near, to catch what she
+said, and perhaps murmur a soothing response.
+
+This nurse looked sharply at Norma, and breathed rather than whispered:
+"Mrs. Sheridan?" and when Norma answered with a nod, nodded herself in
+satisfaction.
+
+"She's been asking and asking for you," she said, in a low clear tone
+that oddly broke the unnatural silence of the room. Norma, hearing a
+stir behind her, looked back to see that both doctors had come over to
+the bed, and were looking down at their patient with a profound concern
+that their gray heads and their big spectacles oddly emphasized.
+
+"Mrs. Sheridan?" one of them questioned. Norma dared not use her voice,
+and nodded again. Immediately the doctor leaned over Mrs. Melrose, and
+said in a clear and encouraging tone: "Here is Mrs. Sheridan now!"
+
+Mrs. Melrose merely moaned heavily in answer, and Norma said softly, to
+the doctor who had spoken:
+
+"I think perhaps she was asking for my aunt--who is also Mrs. Sheridan!"
+
+Before the doctor, gravely considering, could answer, the sick woman
+startled them all by saying, almost fretfully, in a surprisingly clear
+and quiet voice:
+
+"No--no--no, I want you, Norma!"
+
+She groped blindly about with her hand, as she spoke, and Norma kneeled
+down, and covered it with both her own. Mrs. Melrose immediately began
+to breathe more easily, and sank at once into the stupor from which she
+had only momentarily roused.
+
+Norma looked for instruction to the doctor, who presently decided that
+there was nothing more to be gained for a time; she joined them
+presently, with Chris, in the adjoining room. This was the same old room
+of her first visit to the house, with the same rich old brocaded paper
+and fringed rep draperies, with the same pictures, and a few new ones,
+lined on the mantel.
+
+"Where are Mrs. von Behrens and Leslie?" Doctor Murray, who had known
+all the family intimately for years, asked Chris.
+
+"Is it so serious, Doctor?" Christopher asked in turn, when he had
+answered. The doctor, glancing toward the closed door, nodded gravely.
+
+"A matter of a day or two," he said, looking at the other old doctor for
+confirmation. "She was apparently perfectly normal last night, went to
+bed at her usual hour," he said, "this morning she complained of her
+head, when the maid went in at ten, said that she must have hurt
+it--struck it against something. The maid, a sensible young woman, was
+uneasy, and telephoned for me. Unfortunately, I was in Westchester this
+morning, but I got here at about one o'clock and found her as she is
+now. She has had a stroke--probably several slight shocks."
+
+"Why, but she was perfectly well day before yesterday!" Norma said, in
+amazement. "And only ten days ago she came back from Florida, and said
+that she never felt better!"
+
+"That is frequently the history of the disease," the second doctor said,
+sagely. And, glancing at his watch, he added, "I don't think you will
+need me again, Doctor Murray?"
+
+"What are the chances of her--knowing anybody?" Chris asked.
+
+"She may very probably have another lucid interval," Doctor Murray said.
+"If Mrs. Sheridan could arrange to stay, it would be advisable. She
+asked for her daughters, but she seemed even more anxious that we should
+send for--_you_." He glanced at Norma, with a little old-fashioned bow.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan could stay, of course. She would telephone home, and
+advise Aunt Kate, at once. Indeed, so keen was Norma's sense almost of
+enjoyment in this thrilling hour that she would have been extremely
+sorry to leave the house. It was sad, it was dreadful, of course, to
+think that poor old Aunt Marianna was so ill, but at the same time it
+was most dramatic. She and Chris settled themselves before the fire in
+the upstairs sitting-room with Doctor Murray, who entertained them with
+mild reminiscences of the Civil War. The storm was upon the city now,
+rain slashed at the windows and the wind howled bitterly.
+
+There was whispering in the old house, quiet footsteps, muffled voices
+at the door and telephone. At about six o'clock Chris went home, to tell
+Alice, with what tenderness he might, of the impending sorrow. Regina,
+who had been weeping bitterly, and would speak to no one, brought Norma
+and the doctor two smoking hot cups of bouillon on a tray.
+
+"And you mustn't get tired, Mrs. Sheridan," one of the nurses, herself
+healthily odorous of a beef and apple-pie dinner, said kindly to Norma,
+at about seven o'clock. "There'll be coffee and sandwiches all night.
+This is a part of our lives, you know, and we get used to it, but it's
+hard for those not accustomed to it."
+
+At about nine o'clock in the evening Chris came back. Alice had received
+the news bravely, he said; there had been no hysteria and she kept
+admirable control of herself, and he had left her ready for sleep. But
+it had hit her very hard. Miss Slater had promised him that she would
+put a sleeping powder into Alice's regular ten o'clock glass of hot
+milk, and let him know when she was safely off.
+
+"She is very thankful that you are here, she was uneasy every instant
+that I stayed away!" he said softly to Norma, and Norma nodded her
+approval. Long before eleven o'clock they had the report that Alice was
+sleeping soundly under the combined effect of the powder and Miss
+Slater's repeated and earnest assurance that there was no immediate
+danger as regarded her mother.
+
+Chris and Norma and the doctor and two of the nurses went down to the
+dining-room, and had sandwiches and coffee, and talked long and sadly of
+the briefness and mutability of mortal life. When they went upstairs
+again the doctor stretched out for some rest, on the sitting-room couch,
+and Norma went to her own old room, and got into her comfortable, thick
+padded wrapper and warm slippers. The night was still wet and stormy,
+and had turned cold. Hail rattled on the window sills.
+
+Then she crept into the sick-room, and joined the nurses in their
+unrelenting vigil. Mrs. Melrose was still lying back, her eyes
+half-open, her face darkly flushed, her lips moving in an incoherent
+mutter. Now and then they caught the syllables of Norma's name, and once
+she said "Kate!" so sharply that everyone in the sick chamber started.
+
+Norma, leaning back in a great chair by the bed, mused and pondered as
+the slow hours went by. The softened lights touched the nurses' crisp
+aprons, the fire was out now, and only the two softly palpitating disks
+from the shaded lamps dimly illumined the room.
+
+Annie and Theodore and Alice had all been born in this very room, Norma
+thought. She imagined Aunt Marianna, a handsome, stout, radiant young
+woman, in the bustles and pleats of the early eighties, with the flowing
+ruffles of Theodore's christening robe spreading over her lap. How
+wonderful life must have seemed to her then, rich and young, and adored
+by her husband, and with her first-born child receiving all the homage
+due the heir of the great name and fortune! Then came Annie, and some
+years later Alice, and how busy and happy their mother must have been
+with plenty of money for schools and frocks, trips to the country with
+her handsome, imperious children; trips to Europe when no desire need be
+denied them, all the world the playground for the fortunate Melroses!
+
+How short the perspective must look now, thought Norma, to that troubled
+brain that was struggling among closing shadows, nearer and nearer every
+slow clocktick to the end. How loathsome it must be to the prisoned
+spirit, this handsome, stifling room, this army of maids and nurses and
+doctors so decorously resigned to facing the last scene of all. Why, the
+poorest child in the city to-night, healthily asleep in some unspeakable
+makeshift for a bed, possessed what all the Melrose money could not buy
+for this moaning, suffocating old autocrat.
+
+"I should like to die out on a hillside, under the stars," thought
+Norma, "with no one to watch me. This is--somehow--so horrible!"
+
+And she crept toward the bed and slipped to her knees again, forcing
+herself against her inclination--for somehow prayers seemed to have
+nothing to do with this scene--to pray for the departing soul.
+
+"Norma," the old lady said, suddenly, opening her eyes. She looked
+quietly and intelligently at the girl.
+
+"Yes, dear!" Norma stammered, with a frightened glance toward the
+nurses.
+
+These were instantly intent, at the bedside. But Mrs. Melrose paid no
+attention to them. She patted Norma's hand.
+
+"Late for you, dear!" she whispered. "Night!" Obediently she drank
+something the nurse put to her lips, and when she spoke it was more
+clearly. A moment later Doctor Murray had her pulse between his
+nerveless fingers. She moved her eyes lazily to smile at him. "Tide
+running out, old friend!" she said, in a deep, rich voice. The doctor
+smiled, shaking his head, but Norma saw his eyes glisten behind his
+glasses.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Melrose frowned, and began to show excitement.
+
+"Norma!" she said, quickly. "I want Chris!"
+
+"Right here, Aunt Marianna!" Norma answered, soothingly. And Chris was
+indeed leaning over the bed almost before she finished speaking.
+
+"I want to talk to you and Chris," the old lady said, contentedly
+closing her eyes. "Everybody else out!" she whispered.
+
+The room was immediately cleared. "It can't hurt her now!" Doctor Murray
+looked rather than said to Norma as he passed her. Chris watched the
+closing doors, sat beside the bed's head with one arm half-supporting
+his mother-in-law's pillows.
+
+"We're all alone, Aunt Marianna," he said. "Leslie and Annie will be
+here in the morning, and Alice told me to tell you that she hoped----"
+
+"Chris," the sick woman interrupted, gazing at him with an intense and
+painful stare, "this child here--Norma! I--I must straighten it all out
+now, Chris. Kate knows. Kate has all the papers--letters--Louison's
+letters! Ask Kate----"
+
+She shut her eyes. Norma and Chris looked at one another in
+bewilderment. There was a long silence.
+
+"So now you know!" Mrs. Melrose said, presently, returning to full
+consciousness as naturally as she had before. "I told you, didn't I?"
+she asked, faintly anxious.
+
+"Don't bother now, Aunt Marianna," the girl begged in distress.
+"To-morrow----"
+
+"Louison," Mrs. Melrose said, "was Annie's French maid--very superior
+girl!"
+
+"I remember her--Theodore's wife," Chris said, eager to help her.
+
+"And she was this girl's mother," Mrs. Melrose added, clasping Norma's
+fingers. "You understand that, Chris?"
+
+"Yes, darling--we understand!" Norma said, with a nod to Chris that he
+was to humour her. But Chris looked only strangely troubled.
+
+"Annie's poor baby lived--Kate brought it home from France, and we named
+it Leslie," the invalid said, clearly. "I couldn't--I couldn't forget
+it, Chris. I used to go see it--at Kate's. And then, when it was three,
+I met Louison--poor girl, I had been cruel to her--and Theodore was far
+off in California--dying, we knew. And I met Louison in Brooklyn. And I
+had a sudden idea, Chris! I told her to go to Kate, and get Annie's
+baby, and bring it to me as if it was her own. I told her to! I told her
+to say that it was her baby--Theodore's baby. And she did, Chris, and I
+paid her well for it. She brought Leslie here, and Annie never
+knew--nobody ever knew! But I never knew that Louison had a baby of her
+own, Chris--I never knew that! Louison hated me, and she never told me
+she had a little girl. No--no--no, I never knew that!"
+
+"Then Leslie--is--Annie's child by Müller, the riding master!" Chris
+whispered, staring blindly ahead of him. "And what--what became of the
+other child--Theodore's child?"
+
+"Louison kept her until she was five," the old lady explained, eagerly,
+"and then she wanted to marry again, and she had to go live in a wild
+sort of place, in Canada. She didn't want to take the little girl there,
+and she remembered Kate Sheridan, who had had the other baby, and who
+had been so good to it--so devoted to it! And she went there, Chris, and
+left her baby there."
+
+"And that baby----" Chris began.
+
+"Yes. That was Norma!" Mrs. Melrose said. "It is all Norma's, the whole
+thing--and you must take care that she gets it, Chris. I--even my will,
+dear, only gives Norma the Melrose Building and some bonds. But those
+are for Leslie, now, all the rest--the whole estate goes to Theodore's
+child--Norma. You must forgive me if I did it all wrong. I meant it for
+the best. I never knew that you were living, dear, until Kate brought
+you here three years ago. She didn't dare do it until your mother died;
+she had promised she would never tell a living soul. But Louison
+softened toward the end, and wrote Kate she must use her own judgment.
+And Kate--Kate--knows all about it----"
+
+The voice thickened. The old lady raised herself in bed.
+
+"That man--behind you, Chris!" she gasped. Chris put her down again,
+Norma flew for help. The muttering and the heavy breathing recommenced.
+Nurses and doctors ran back, Regina came to kneel at the foot of the
+bed.
+
+Another slight stroke, they said later, when they were all about the
+fire in the next room again. Norma was white, her eyes glittering, her
+bitten lips scarlet in her colourless face. Chris looked stunned.
+
+But he found time for just one aside, as the endless night wore on.
+Annie had arrived, superbly horrified and stricken, and Acton was there.
+Mrs. Melrose was still breathing. The sickly light of a winter morning
+was tugging at the shutters.
+
+"Norma," Chris said, "do you realize what a tremendous thing has
+happened to you? Do you realize who you are? You are a rich woman now,
+my dear!"
+
+"But do you believe it?" she asked, in a low tone.
+
+"I know it is true! It explains everything," he answered. "It will be a
+cruel blow to Leslie--poor child, and Annie, too. Alice, I think, need
+never know. But Norma--even though this doesn't seem the time or the
+place, let me be the first to congratulate you on your new position--my
+old friend Theodore's daughter, and the last of the Melroses!"
+
+At seven o'clock in the morning Norma, exhausted with excitement and
+emotion, took a hot bath, and finding things unchanged in the sick-room,
+except that the lights had been extinguished, and the winter daylight
+was drearily mingling with firelight, went on downstairs for coffee and
+for one more conference with the blinking nurses and the tired old
+doctor. She found herself too shaken to eat, but the hot drink was
+wonderfully soothing and stimulating, and for the first time, as she
+stood looking out into the street from the dining-room window, a sense
+of power and pride began to thrill her. Old people must die, of course,
+and after this sad and dark scene was over--then what? Then what? Then
+she would be in Leslie's long-envied place, the heiress, the important
+figure among all the changes that followed.
+
+"If you please, Mrs. Sheridan----!" It was Joseph, haggard and white,
+who had come softly behind her to interrupt her thoughts. She glanced
+with quick apprehension toward the hall stairway. There had been a
+change----?
+
+"No, it was the telephone, Miss." Norma, puzzled by the old butler's
+stricken air, went to the instrument. It was Miss Slater.
+
+"Norma," Miss Slater said, agitatedly, "is Mr. Liggett--there?"
+
+"I think he's with Aunt Annie, upstairs, but he's going home about
+eight," Norma answered. "There is no change. Is Aunt Alice awake? Mr.
+Liggett wanted to be there when she woke!"
+
+"No--she's not awake," the other woman's voice said, solemnly. "She went
+to sleep like a child last night, Norma. But about half an hour ago I
+went in--she hadn't called me--it was just instinct, I suppose! She was
+lying--hadn't changed her position even----"
+
+"_What's that!_" Norma cried, in a whisper that was like a scream. The
+grave voice and the sudden break of tears chilled her to the soul.
+
+"We've had Doctor Merrill here," Miss Slater said. "Norma, you'll have
+to tell him--God help us all! She's gone!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+Mrs. Melrose never spoke again, or showed another flicker of the clear
+and normal intelligence that she had shown in the night. But she still
+breathed, and the long, wet day dragged slowly, in the big, mournful old
+house, until late in the unnatural afternoon. People--all sorts of
+people--were coming and going now, and being answered, or being turned
+away; a few privileged old friends came softly up the carpeted stairs,
+and cried quietly with Annie, who looked unbelievably old and ashen
+under the double shock. Norma began to hear, on all sides, respectful
+and sympathetic references to "the family." The family felt this, and
+would like that, the family was not seeing any one, the family must be
+protected and considered in every way. The privileged old friends talked
+with strange men in the lower hall, and were heard saying "I suppose so"
+dubiously, to questions of hats and veils and carriages and the church.
+
+Chris was gone all day, but at four o'clock an urgent message was sent
+him, and he and Acton came into Mrs. Melrose's room about half an hour
+later, for the end. His face was ghastly, and he seemed almost unable to
+understand what was said to him, but he was very quiet.
+
+Norma never forgot the scene. She knelt on one side of the bed, praying
+with all the concentration and fervour that she could rally under the
+circumstances. But her frightened, tired eyes were impressed with every
+detail of the dark old stately bedroom none the less. This was the end
+of the road, for youth and beauty and power and wealth, this sunken,
+unrecognizable face, this gathering of shadows among the dull, wintry
+shadows of the afternoon.
+
+Annie was kneeling, too, her fine, unringed hands clasping one of her
+mother's hands. Chris sat against the back of the bed, half-supporting
+the piled pillows, in a futile attempt to make more easy the fighting
+breath, and Acton and Hendrick von Behrens, grave and awed, stood beside
+him, their faces full of sympathy and distress. There was an outer
+fringe of nurses, doctors, maids; there was even an audible whisper from
+one of them that caused Annie to frown, annoyed and rebuking, over her
+shoulder.
+
+Minutes passed. Norma, pressing her cheek against the hand she held,
+began a Litany, very low. Suddenly the dying woman opened her eyes.
+
+"Yes--yes--yes!" she whispered, eagerly, and with a break in her
+frightened voice Norma began more clearly, "Our Father, Who art in
+Heaven----" and they all joined in, somewhat awkwardly and uncertainly.
+
+Mrs. Melrose sank back; she had raised herself just a fraction of an
+inch to speak. Now her head fell, and Norma saw the florid colour drain
+from her face as wine drains from an overturned glass. A leaden pallor
+settled suddenly upon her. When the prayer was finished they
+waited--eyed each other--waited again. There was no other breath.
+
+"Doctor----" Annie cried, choking. The doctor gently laid down the limp
+hand he had raised; it was already cool. And behind him the maids began
+to sob and wail unrebuked.
+
+Norma went out into the hall dazed and shaken. This was her first sight
+of death. It made her feel a little faint and sick. Chris came and
+talked to her for a few minutes; Annie had collapsed utterly, and was
+under the doctor's care; Acton broke down, too, and Norma heard Chris
+attempting to quiet him. There was audible sobbing all over the house
+when, an hour or two later, Alice's beautiful body in a magnificent
+casket was brought to lie in the old home beside the mother she had
+adored.
+
+The fragrance of masses and masses of damp flowers began to penetrate
+everywhere, and Norma made occasional pilgrimages in to Annie's bedside,
+and told her what beautiful offerings were coming and coming and coming.
+Joseph had reinforcements of sympathetic, black-clad young men, who kept
+opening the front door, and murmuring at the muffled telephone. Annie's
+secretary, a young woman about Norma's age, was detailed by Hendrick to
+keep cards and messages straight--for every little courtesy must be
+acknowledged on Annie's black-bordered card within a few weeks'
+time--and Norma heard Joseph telephoning several of the prominent
+florists that Mr. Liggett had directed that all flowers were to come to
+the Melrose house. Nothing was overlooked.
+
+When Norma went to her room, big boxes were on the bed, boxes that held
+everything that was simple and beautiful in mourning: plain, charming
+frocks, a smart long seal-bordered coat, veils and gloves, small and
+elegant hats, even black-bordered handkerchiefs. She dressed herself
+soberly, yet not without that mournful thrill that fitness and
+becomingness lends to bereavement. When she went back to Annie's side
+Annie was in beautiful lengths of lustreless crape, too; they settled
+down to low, sad conversation, with a few of the privileged old friends.
+Chris was nowhere to be seen, but at about six o'clock Acton came in to
+show them a telegram from Leslie, flying homeward. Judge Lee was
+hurrying to them from Washington, and for a few minutes Annie's
+handsome, bewildered little boys came in with a governess, and she cried
+over them, and clung to them forlornly.
+
+After a distracted half-hour in the dining-room, when she and Acton and
+Annie's secretary had soup and salad from a sort of buffet meal that was
+going on there indefinitely, Norma went upstairs to find that the door
+to the front upper sitting-room, closed for hours, was set ajar, and to
+see a vague mass of beautiful flowers within--white and purple flowers,
+and wreaths of shining dark round leaves. With a quick-beating heart she
+stepped softly inside, and went to kneel at the nearer coffin, and cover
+her face with her shaking hands. The thick sweetness of the wet leaves
+and blossoms enveloped her. Candles were burning; there was no other
+light.
+
+Two or three other women were in the room, catching their breath up
+through their nostrils with little gasps, pressing folded handkerchiefs
+against their trembling mouths, letting fresh tears well from their
+tear-reddened eyes. Chris was standing a few feet away from the
+white-clad, flower-circled, radiant sleeper who had been Alice; his arms
+were folded, his splendid dark gaze fell upon her with a sort of sombre
+calm; he seemed entirely unconscious of the pitying and sorrowful
+friends who were moving noiselessly to and fro.
+
+In the candlelight there was a wavering smile on Alice's quiet face, her
+broad forehead was unruffled, and her mouth mysteriously sweet. Norma's
+eyes fell upon a familiar black coat, on the kneeling woman nearest her,
+and with a start she recognized Aunt Kate.
+
+They left the room together a few minutes later, and Norma led her aunt
+to her own room, where they talked tenderly of the dead. The older woman
+was touched by the slender little black figure, and badly shaken by the
+double tragedy, and she cried quite openly. Norma had Regina send her up
+some tea, and petted and fussed about her in her little daughterly way.
+
+"I saw about Miss Alice this morning, but I had no idea the poor old
+lady----!" Mrs. Sheridan commented sadly. "Well, well, it seems only
+yesterday that here, in this very house--and they were all young
+then----" Aunt Kate fell silent, and mused for a moment, before adding
+briskly: "But now, will they want you, Norma, after the funeral, I mean?
+Wolf wrote me----"
+
+"I don't think Aunt Annie wants me now," Norma said, and with a
+heightened colour she added, suddenly, "But I belong here, now, Aunt
+Kate--I know who I am at last!"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan's face did not move; but an indefinable tightness came
+about her mouth, and an indefinable sharpness to her eyes. She looked at
+Norma without speaking.
+
+"Aunt Marianna told me," the girl said, simply. "You're sorry," she
+added, quickly, "I can see you are!"
+
+"No--I wouldn't say that, Baby!" But Mrs. Sheridan spoke heavily, and
+ended on a sigh. There was a short silence.
+
+Then Regina came in with a note for Norma, who read it, and turned to
+her aunt.
+
+"It's Chris--he wants very much to see you before you go away," she
+said. "I wonder if you would ask Mr. Liggett to come in here, Regina?"
+But five minutes later, when Chris came in, he looked so ill that she
+was quick to spare him. "Chris, wouldn't to-morrow do--you look so
+tired!"
+
+"I _am_ tired," Chris said, after quietly accepting Mrs. Sheridan's
+murmured condolence, with his hand holding hers, as if he liked the big,
+sympathetic woman. "But I want this off my mind before I see Judge Lee!
+You are right, Mrs. Sheridan," he said, with a sort of boyish gruffness,
+not yet releasing her hands, "my wife was an angel. I always knew
+it--but I wish I could tell her so just once more!"
+
+"Ah, that's the very hardest thing about death," Mrs. Sheridan said,
+sitting down, and quite frankly wiping from her eyes the tears that
+sympathy for his sorrow had made spring again. "We'd always want one
+more hour!"
+
+"But Norma perhaps has told you----?" Chris said, in a different tone.
+"Told you of the--the remarkable talk we had yesterday--with my poor
+mother-in-law----"
+
+Kate Sheridan nodded gravely.
+
+"Yes," she answered, almost reluctantly, "Norma is Theodore Melrose's
+child. I have letters--all their letters. I knew her mother, that was
+Louison Courtot, well. It was a mixed-up business--but you've got the
+whole truth at last. I've lost more than one night's sleep over my share
+of it, Mr. Liggett, thinking who this child was, and whether I had the
+right to hold my tongue.
+
+"I was a widow when I went to Germany with Mrs. Melrose. She begged and
+begged me to, for she was sick with worry about Miss Annie. Miss Annie
+had been over there about eight months, and something she'd written had
+made her mother feel that she was ill, or in trouble. Well, I didn't
+want to leave my own children, but she coaxed me so hard that I went. We
+sailed without cabling, and went straight to Leipsic, and to the
+dreadful, dreary pension that Miss Annie was in--a dismal, lonely place.
+She came downstairs to see her mother, and I'll never forget the scream
+she gave, for she'd had no warning, poor child, and Müller had taken all
+her money, and she was--well, we could see how she was. She began
+laughing and crying, and her mother did, too, but Mrs. Melrose stopped
+after a few minutes, and we couldn't stop Miss Annie at all. She
+shrieked and sobbed and strangled until we saw she was ill, and her
+mother gave me one look, and bundled her right out to the carriage, and
+off to a better place, and we got a doctor and a nurse. But all that
+night she was in danger of her life. I went in to her room that evening,
+to put things in order, and she was lying on the bed like a dead
+thing--white, sick, and with her eyes never moving off her mother's
+face. I could hear her murmuring the whole story, the shame and the
+bitter cruelty of it, crying sometimes--and her mother crying, too.
+
+"'And, Mama,' she said--the innocence of her! 'Mama, did the doctor tell
+you that there might have been a baby?--I didn't know it myself until a
+few weeks ago! And that's why they're so frightened about me now. But,'
+she said, beginning to cry again, 'I should have hated it--I've always
+hated it, and I'd rather have it all over--I don't want to have to face
+anything more!'
+
+"Well, it looked then as if she couldn't possibly live through the
+night, and all her mother could think of was to comfort her. She told
+her that they would go away and forget it all, and Miss Annie clung to
+her through the whole terrible thing. We none of us got any sleep that
+night, and I think it was at about three o'clock the next morning that I
+crept to the door, and the doctor--Doctor Leslie--an old English doctor
+who was very kind, came to the door and gave me the poor little pitiful
+baby in a blanket. I almost screamed when I took it, for the poor little
+soul was alive, working her little mouth! I took her to my room, and
+indeed I baptized her myself--I named her Mary for my mother, and Leslie
+for the doctor, but I never thought she'd need a name--then. She was
+under four pounds, and with a little claw like a monkey's paw, and so
+thin we didn't dare dress her--we thought she was three months too soon,
+then, and I just sat watching her, waiting for her to die, and thinking
+of my own----!
+
+"Miss Annie was given up the next day, she'd gone into a brain fever,
+but my poor little soul was wailing a good healthy wail--I remember I
+cried bitterly when the doctor told me not to hope for her! But she
+lived--and on the fourth day Mrs. Melrose sent us away, and we went and
+stayed in the country for two months after that.
+
+"Then I had a letter from the Riviera, the first that'd come. Miss Annie
+was getting well, her hair was coming out curly, and she hardly
+remembered anything about what had happened at all. She wasn't nineteen
+then, poor child! She had cried once, her mother wrote, and had said she
+thanked God the baby had died and that was all she ever said of it.
+
+"I brought the baby home, and for nearly three years she lived with my
+own, and of course Mrs. Melrose paid me for it. And then one day Louison
+Courtot came to see me--I'd known her, of course--Mr. Theodore's wife,
+that had been Miss Annie's maid. She had a letter from Mrs. Melrose, and
+she took Leslie away, and gave her to her grandmother--just according to
+plan. Well, I didn't like it--though it gave the child her rights, but
+it didn't seem honest. I had no call to interfere, and a few months
+later Mrs. Melrose gave me the double house in Brooklyn, that you'll
+well remember, Norma--and your own father made out the deed of gift, Mr.
+Chris----!
+
+"And then, perhaps a year later, Louison came to call on me again, and
+with her was a little girl--four years old, and I looked at her, and
+looked at Louison, and I said, 'My God--that's a Melrose!' She said,
+yes, it was Theodore's child."
+
+"Norma!" Chris said.
+
+"Norma--and I remember her as if it was yesterday! With a blue velvet
+coat on her, and a white collar, and the way she dragged off her little
+mittens to go over and play with Rose and Wolf--and the little coaxing
+air she had! So then Louison told me the story, how she had never told
+Mrs. Melrose that Theodore really had a daughter, because she hated her
+so! But she was going to be married again, and go to Canada, and she
+wanted me to keep the baby until she could send for her. I said I would
+see how it went, but I could see then that there never was in the
+world----" Mrs. Sheridan interrupted herself, coughed, and glanced at
+the girl. "Well, we liked Norma right then and there!" she finished, a
+little tamely.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Kate!" Norma said, smiling through tears, her hand tight upon
+the older woman's, "you never will praise me!"
+
+"So Norma," the story went on, "had her supper that night between my two
+children, and for fourteen years she never knew that she wasn't our own.
+And perhaps she never would have known if Louison hadn't written me that
+she was in a hospital--she was to have an operation, and she was willing
+at last to make peace with her husband's family. In the same letter was
+her husband's note that she was gone, so I had to use my own judgment
+then. And when I heard Norma talk of the rich girls she saw in the
+bookstore, Mr. Chris, and knew how she loved what money could do for
+her, it seemed to me that at least I must tell her grandmother the
+truth. So we came here, three years ago, and if it wasn't for Miss
+Alice's mistake about her, perhaps the story would have come out then!
+But that's all the truth."
+
+Chris nodded, his arms folded on his chest, his tired face very
+thoughtful.
+
+"It makes her a rich woman, Mrs. Sheridan," he said.
+
+"I suppose so, sir. I understand Mr. Melrose--the old gentleman--left
+everything to his son, Theodore."
+
+"But not only that," Chris said. "She can claim every penny that has
+ever been paid over to Leslie, all through her minority, and since she
+came of age, and she also inherits the larger part of her grandmother's
+estate, under the will. Probably Mrs. Melrose would have changed that,
+if she had lived when all this came to light, and given that same legacy
+to Leslie, but we can't act on that supposition. The court will
+probably feel that a very grave injustice has been done Norma, and exact
+the full arrears."
+
+"But, Chris," Norma said, quickly, "surely some way can be found to
+_give_ Leslie all that would have come to me----"
+
+"Well, that, of course, would be pure generosity on your part!" he said,
+quietly. "However, it would seem to me desirable all round," he added,
+"to keep this in the family."
+
+"Oh, I think so!" Norma agreed, eagerly.
+
+"Annie and Hendrick must be informed, and, as Leslie's mother, Annie
+will provide for her some day, of course. We'll discuss all that later.
+But to-day I only wanted to clear up a few points before I see Judge
+Lee. He has the will, I believe. He will be here to-morrow morning. In
+the meanwhile, I think I would say nothing, Norma, just because Annie is
+so upset, and if Leslie heard any garbled story, before she got
+here----"
+
+"Oh, I agree with you entirely, Chris! Anything that makes it easier all
+round!" Norma could afford to be magnanimous and agreeable. She would
+not have been human not to feel herself the most interesting figure in
+all this dramatic situation, not to know that thoughtfulness and
+generosity were the most charming parts of her new rôle. Quietly,
+affectionately, she went to the door with Aunt Kate.
+
+"I wish I could go home with you!" she said. "But I think they need me
+here! And if Wolf should come up Saturday, Aunt Kate, you'll tell him
+about the funeral----"
+
+"Rose said he wasn't coming up on Saturday," his mother said. "But if he
+does, of course he'll understand! Remember, Norma," she added, drawing
+the girl aside a moment, in the lower hall, "remember that they've all
+been very kind to you, dear! It's going to be hard for them all!"
+
+"Yes, I know!" Norma said, hastily, the admonition not to her taste.
+
+"And what you and Wolf will do with all that money----!" her aunt mused,
+shaking her head. "Well, one thing at a time! But I know," she finished,
+fondly, "my girl will show them all what a generous and a lovely nature
+she has, in all the changes and shifts!"
+
+Clever Aunt Kate! Norma smiled to herself as she went upstairs. She had
+hundreds of times before this guided the girl by premature confidence
+and praise; she knew how Norma loved the approbation of those about her.
+
+Not but what Norma meant to be everything that was broad and considerate
+now; she had assumed that position from the beginning. Leslie's chagrin,
+Aunt Annie's consternation, should be respected and humoured. They had
+sometimes shown her the arrogant, the supercilious side of the Melrose
+nature, in the years gone by. Now she, the truest Melrose of them all,
+would show them real greatness of soul. She would talk it all over with
+Wolf, of course----
+
+She missed Wolf. It was, as always, a curiously unsatisfying atmosphere,
+this of the old Melrose house. The whispers, the hushed footsteps, the
+lowered voices, Aunt Annie's plaintive heroism in her superb crapes, the
+almost belligerent loyalty of the intimate friends who praised and
+marvelled at her, the costly flowers--thousands of dollars' worth of
+them--the extra men helping Joseph to keep everything decorous and
+beautiful--somehow it all sickened Norma, and she wished that Wolf
+could come and take her for a walk, and talk to her about it. He would
+be interested in it all, and he would laugh at her account of the
+undertakers, and he would break into elementary socialism when the cost
+of the whole pompous pageant was estimated.
+
+And what would he think of her new-found wealth? Norma tried to imagine
+it, but somehow she could not think of Wolf as very much affected. He
+hated society, primarily, and he would never be idle, not for the
+treasures of India. He would let her spend it as she pleased, and go on
+working rapturously at his valves and meters and gauges, perhaps
+delighted if she bought him the costliest motor-car made, or the finest
+of mechanical piano-players, but quite as willing that the pearls about
+his wife's throat should cost fifty dollars as fifty thousand, and quite
+as anxious that the heiress of the Melroses should "make good" with his
+associate workers as if she had been still a little clerk from Biretta's
+Bookshop!
+
+But cheerfully indifferent as he was to everything that made life worth
+living to such a man as Christopher Liggett, she knew that he would not
+go to California without her unless there was a definite break between
+them. She knew she could not persuade him to leave her here, as a normal
+and pleasant solution, just until everything was settled, and until they
+could see a little further ahead. No, Wolf was annoyingly conventional
+where his wife was concerned: her place was with him, unless for some
+secondary reason they had decided to part. And she knew that if he let
+her go it would be because he felt that he never should have claimed
+her--that, in the highest sense, he never had had her at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Moving automatically through the solemn scenes of the next two days,
+that, mused Norma, must be the solution. Wolf must go alone to
+California. Not because she did not love him--who could help loving him
+indeed?--but because she loved Chris more--or differently, at least, and
+she belonged to Chris's world now, by every right of birth, wealth, and
+position.
+
+"Of course you must stay here," Chris said, positively, on the one
+occasion when they spoke of her plans. "In the first place, there is the
+estate to settle, we shall need you. Then there are books--pictures--all
+that sort of thing to manage, the old servants to dispose of, and
+probably this house to sell--but we can discuss that. Judge Lee has felt
+for a long time that this is the right site for a big apartment house,
+especially if we can get hold of Boyer's plot. You had better take a
+suite at one of the hotels, and later we can look up the right sort of
+an apartment for you."
+
+Not a word of his personal hopes; missing them she felt oddly cheated.
+
+"Wolf goes to California next month," she said. Christopher gave her a
+sharp, quizzing look.
+
+"But I think you had decided, weeks ago, that you were not going?"
+
+"Yes--I've told him so!" she faltered. She felt strangely lost and
+forlorn, releasing her hold on Wolf, and yet not able to claim
+Christopher's support. It was contemptible--it was weak in her, she
+felt, but she could not quite choke down her hunger for one reassuring
+word from Chris. "I feel so--lonely, Chris," she said.
+
+He gave a quick, uneasy glance about the breakfast-room, where they were
+having a hasty three-o'clock luncheon. No one was within hearing.
+
+"You understand my position now," he said.
+
+"Oh, of course!" But she felt oddly chilled. Chris as the bereaved
+husband and son-in-law was perfect, of course, almost too perfect. If
+Wolf loved a woman----
+
+But then the fancy of Wolf, married, and confessedly loving a woman who
+was another man's wife, was absurd, anyway. Wolf did not belong to the
+world where such things were common, it was utterly foreign to his
+nature, with all the rest. Wolf did not go to operas and picture
+galleries and polo matches; he did not know how to comport himself at
+afternoon teas or summer lunches at the country club.
+
+And Norma's life would be spent in this atmosphere now. She would get
+her frocks from Madame Modiste, and her hats from the Avenue
+specialists; she would be a smart and a conspicuous little figure at
+Lenox and Bar Harbour and Newport; she would spend her days with
+masseuses and dressmakers, and with French and Italian teachers. She
+could travel, some day--but here the thought of Chris crept in, and she
+was a little hurt at Chris. His exquisite poise, his sureness of being
+absolutely correct, was one of his charms. But it was a little hard not
+to have the depth of his present feeling for her sweep him off his feet
+just occasionally. He had, indeed, shown her far more daring favour
+when Alice was alive--meeting Norma down town, driving her about,
+walking with her where they might reasonably fear to be seen now and
+then.
+
+It came to her painfully that, even there, Chris's respect for the
+conventions of his world was not at fault. Flirtations, "crushes,"
+"cases," and "suitors" were entirely acceptable in the circle that Chris
+so conspicuously ornamented. To pay desperate attentions to a pretty
+young married woman was quite excusable; it would have been universally
+understood.
+
+But to show the faintest trace of interest in her while his wife lay
+dead, and while his house was plunged into mourning, no--Chris would not
+do that. That would not be good form, it would be censured as not being
+compatible with the standard of a gentleman. His conduct now must be
+beyond criticism, he was the domestic dictator in this, as in every
+emergency. Norma listened while he and Hendrick and Annie discussed the
+funeral.
+
+They were in the big upstairs bedroom that Annie had appropriated to
+herself during these days. Annie was resting on a couch in a nest of
+little pillows, her long bare hands very white against the blackness of
+her gown. Hendrick did most of the talking, Chris listening
+thoughtfully, accepting, rejecting, Norma a mere spectator. She decided
+that Annie was playing her part with a stimulating consciousness of its
+dignity, and that Chris was not much better. Honest, red-faced Hendrick
+was only genuinely anxious to arrange these details without a scene.
+
+"I take Annie up the aisle," Chris said, "you'll be a pall-bearer,
+Hendrick. Mrs. Lee says that the Judge feels he is too old to serve, so
+he will follow me, with Leslie. She gets here this afternoon. Then
+Acton brings Norma, and that fills the family pew. Now, in the next
+pew----"
+
+It reminded Norma of something, she could not for a moment remember
+what. Then it came to her. Of course!--Leslie's wedding. They had
+discussed precedence and pews just that way. Music, too. Hendrick was
+making a note of music--Alice's favourite dirge was to be played, and
+"Come Ye Disconsolate" which had been sung at Theodore's funeral,
+thirteen years ago, and at his father's, seven years before that, was to
+be sung by the famous church choir.
+
+The church was unfortunately small, so cards were to be given to the few
+hundreds that it would accommodate. Hendrick suggested a larger church,
+but Annie shut her eyes, leaning back, and faintly shaking her head.
+
+"Please--Hendrick--_please_!" she articulated, wearily. "Mama loved that
+church--and there's so little that we can do now--so little that she
+ever wanted, dear old saint!"
+
+It was not hypocrisy, Norma thought. Annie had been a good daughter.
+Indeed she had been unusually loyal, as the daughters of Annie's set saw
+their filial duties. But something in this overwhelming, becoming grief,
+combined with so lively a sense of what was socially correct, jarred
+unpleasantly on the younger woman. Of course, funerals had to have
+management, like everything else. And it was only part of Annie's code
+to believe that an awkwardness now, a social error ever so faint, an
+opportunity given the world for amusement or criticism, would reflect
+upon the family and upon the dead.
+
+Norma carried on long mental conversations with Wolf, criticizing or
+defending the Melroses. She imagined herself telling him of the shock it
+had given her to realize that her grandmother's body was barely cold
+before an autocratic and noisy French hairdresser had arrived, demanding
+electric heat and hand-glasses as casually as if his customer had been
+the bustling, vain old lady of a week ago. She laughed secretly whenever
+she recalled the solemn undertaker who had solicited her own aid in
+filling out a blank. His first melancholy question, "And thud dame of
+the father----" Norma had momentarily supposed to be the beginning of a
+prayer, and it had been with an almost hysterical revulsion of feeling
+that she had said: "Oh, her father's name? Oh, Francis Dabney Murison."
+
+Wolf, who would not laugh at one tenth of the things that amused Chris,
+or that Annie found richly funny, would laugh at these little glimpses
+of a formal funeral, Norma knew, and he would remember other odd bits of
+reading that were in the same key--from Macaulay, or Henry George, or a
+scrap of newspaper that had chanced to be pasted upon an engine-house
+wall.
+
+Leslie came into the house late on the afternoon of Friday, and there
+was much fresh crying between her and Annie. Leslie had on new black,
+too, "just what I could grab down there," she explained--and was pettish
+and weary with fatigue and the nervous shock. She gave only the side of
+her cheek to Acton's dutiful kiss, and answered his question about the
+baby with an impatient, "Oh, heavens, she's all _right_! What could be
+the matter with her? She did have a cold, but now she's all right--and
+when I'm half-crazy about Grandma and poor Aunt Alice, I do _wish_ you
+wouldn't take me up so quickly. I've been travelling all night, and my
+head is splitting! If it was _I_ that had the cold, I don't believe
+you'd be so fussy!"
+
+"Poor little girl, it's hard for you not to have seen them once more,"
+Christopher said, tenderly, failing to meet the half-amused and
+half-indignant glance that Norma sent him. Leslie burst into
+self-pitying tears, and held tight to his hand, as they all sat down in
+Annie's room.
+
+"I believe I feel it most for you, Uncle Chris," she sobbed.
+
+"It changes my life--ends it as surely as it did hers," Chris said,
+quietly. "Just now--well, I don't see ahead--just now. After awhile I
+believe she'll come back to me--her sweetness and goodness and
+bigness--for Alice was the biggest woman, and the finest, that I ever
+knew; and then I'll try to live again--just as she would have had me.
+And meanwhile, I try to comfort myself that I tried to show her, in
+whatever clumsy way I could, that I appreciated her!"
+
+"You not only showed her, you showed all the world, Chris," Annie said,
+stretching a hand toward him. Norma felt a sudden uprising of some
+emotion singularly akin to contempt.
+
+A maid signalled her, and she stepped to the dressing-room door. A
+special delivery letter had come from Wolf. The maid went away again,
+but Norma stood where she was, reading it. Wolf had written:
+
+    DEAR NORMA,
+
+    Mother wrote me of all that you have been going through, and I
+    am as sorry as I can be for all their trouble, and glad that
+    they have you to help them through. Mother also told me of the
+    change in your position there; I had always known vaguely that
+    we didn't understand it all. I remember now your coming to us
+    in Brooklyn, and your mother crying when she went away. I know
+    this will make a difference to you, and be one more reason for
+    your not coming West with me. You must use your own judgment,
+    but the longer I think of it, the meaner it seems to me for me
+    to take advantage of your coming to me, last spring, and our
+    getting married. I've thought about it a great deal. Nothing
+    will ever make me like, or respect, the man you say you care
+    for. I don't believe you do care for him. And I would rather see
+    you dead than married to him. But it isn't for me to say, of
+    course. If you like him, that's enough. If you ever stop liking
+    him, and will come back to me, I'll meet you anywhere, or take
+    you anywhere--it won't make any difference what Mother thinks,
+    or Rose thinks, or any one else. I've written and destroyed this
+    letter about six times. I just want you to know that if you
+    think I am standing in the way of your happiness, I won't stand
+    there, even though I believe you are making an awful mistake
+    about that particular man. And I want to thank you for the
+    happiest eight months that any man ever had.
+
+    Yours always,
+    WOLF.
+
+Norma stood perfectly still, after she read the letter through, with the
+clutch of vague pain and shame at her heart. The stiff, stilted words
+did not seem like Wolf, and the definite casting-off hurt her. Why
+couldn't they be friends, at least? Granted that their marriage was a
+mistake, it had never had anything but harmony in it, companionship,
+mutual respect and understanding, and a happy intimacy as clean and
+natural as the meeting of flowers.
+
+She was standing, motionless and silent, when Leslie's voice came
+clearly to her ears. Evidently Acton, Annie, and Leslie were alone, in
+Annie's room, out of sight, but not a dozen feet away from where she
+stood. Norma did not catch the exact words, but she caught her name, and
+her heart stood still with the instinctive terror of the trapped. Annie
+had not heard either evidently; she said "What, dear?" sympathetically.
+
+"I asked what's Norma doing here--isn't she overdoing her relationship a
+little?" Leslie said, languidly.
+
+Norma's face burned, she could hardly breathe as she waited.
+
+"Mama sent for her, for some reason," Annie answered, with a little
+drawl.
+
+"After all, she's a sort of cousin, isn't she?" Acton added.
+
+"Oh, don't jump on me for _everything_ I say, Acton," Leslie said,
+angrily. "My _goodness_----!"
+
+"Chris says that Mama left her the Melrose Building--and I don't know
+what besides!" Annie said. There was a moment of silence.
+
+"I don't believe it! What for!" Leslie exclaimed, then, incredulously.
+And after another silence she added, in a puzzled tone, "Do _you_
+understand it, Aunt Annie?"
+
+Evidently Annie answered with a glance or a shrug, for there was another
+pause before Annie said:
+
+"What I don't like about it, and what I do wish Mama had thought of, is
+the way that people comment on a thing like that. It's not as if Norma
+needed it; she has a husband to take care of her, now, and it makes us a
+little ridiculous! One likes to feel that, at a time like this,
+everything is to be done decently, at least--not enormous legacies to
+comparative strangers----"
+
+"I like Norma, we've all been kind to her," Leslie contributed, as
+Annie's voice died listlessly away. "I've always made allowances for
+her. But I confess that it was rather a surprise to find her here, one
+of the family----! After all, we Melroses have always rather prided
+ourselves on standing together, haven't we? If she wants to wear black
+for Grandma, why, it makes no difference to _me_----"
+
+"I suppose the will could be broken without any notoriety, Chris?" Annie
+asked, in an undertone. Norma's heart turned sick. She had not supposed
+that Chris was listening without protest to this conversation.
+
+"No," she heard him say, briefly and definitely, "that's impossible!"
+
+"It isn't the money----" Annie began. But Leslie interrupted with a
+bitter little laugh.
+
+"It may not be with you, Aunt Annie, but I assure you I wouldn't mind a
+few extra thousands," she said.
+
+"I think you get the Newport house, Leslie," Chris said, in a tone whose
+dubiety only Norma could understand.
+
+"The Newport house!" Leslie exclaimed. "Why, but don't I own _this_,
+now? I thought----"
+
+"I don't really know," Chris answered. "We'll open the will next week,
+and then we'll straighten everything out."
+
+"In the meanwhile," Annie said, lazily, "if she suggests going back to
+her own family, for Heaven's sake don't stop her! I like Norma--always
+have. But after all, there are times when _any_ outsider--no matter how
+agreeable she is----"
+
+"I think she'll go immediately after the funeral," Chris said,
+constrainedly and uncertainly.
+
+Norma, suddenly roused both to a realization of the utter impropriety of
+her overhearing all this, and the danger of detection, slipped from the
+dressing-room by the hall door, and so escaped to her own room.
+
+She shut the door behind her, walked irresolutely to the bed, stood
+there for a moment, with her hands pressed to her cheeks, walked blindly
+to the window, only to pause again, paced the room mechanically for a
+few minutes, and finally found herself seated on the broad,
+old-fashioned sill of the dressing-room window, staring down unseeing at
+the afternoon traffic in Madison Avenue.
+
+Oh, how she hated them--cruel, selfish, self-satisfied
+snobs--snobs--snobs that they were! Leslie--Leslie "making allowances
+for her!" Leslie making allowances for _her_! And Annie--hoping that for
+Heaven's sake nobody would prevent her from going home after the
+funeral! The remembered phrases burned and stung like acid upon her
+soul; she wanted to hurt Annie and Leslie as they had hurt her, she
+wanted to shame them and anger them.
+
+Yes, and she could do it, too! She could do it! They little knew that
+within a few days' time utter consternation and upheaval, notoriety and
+shame, and the pity of their intimates, would disrupt the surface of
+their lives, that surface that they felt it so important to keep smooth!
+"People will comment," Norma quoted to herself, with a bitter
+smile--indeed people would comment, as they had never commented even
+upon the Melroses before! Leslie would be robbed not only of her
+inheritance but of her name and of her position. And Annie--even
+magnificent Aunt Annie must accept, with what surface veneer of
+cordiality she might affect, the only child of her only brother, the
+heir to the family estate.
+
+"I believe I'm horribly tired," Norma said to herself, looking out into
+the dimming winter day, "or else I'm nervous, or something! I wish I
+could go over to Rose's and help her put the children to bed----! Or I
+wish Aunt Kate would telephone for me--I'm sick of this place! Or I wish
+Wolf would come walking around that corner--oh, if he would--if he
+would----!" Norma said, staring out with an intensity so great that it
+seemed to her for the moment that Wolf indeed might come. "If only he'd
+come to take me to dinner, at some little Italian place with a backyard,
+and skyscrapers all about, so that we could talk!"
+
+Regina, coming in a little later, saw that Mrs. Sheridan had been
+crying, and reproached her with the affectionate familiarity of an old
+servitor.
+
+"You that were always so light-hearted, Miss, it don't seem right for
+you to grieve so!" said Regina, a little tearful herself. Norma smiled,
+and wiped her eyes.
+
+"This is a nice beginning," the girl told herself, as she bathed and
+dressed for the evening ordeal of calls, and messages, and solemn visits
+to the chamber of death, "this is a nice beginning for a woman who knows
+that the man she loves is free to marry her, and who has just fallen
+heir to a great fortune!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+The evening moved through its dark and sombre hours unchanged; Joseph's
+assistants opened and opened and opened the door. More flowers--more
+flowers--and more. Notes, telephone messages, black-clad callers
+murmuring in the dimness of the lower hall, maids coming noiselessly and
+deferentially, the clergyman, the doctor, the choir-master, old Judge
+Lee tremulous and tedious, all her world circled about the lifeless form
+of the old mistress of the house. Certain persons went quietly upstairs,
+women in rich furs, and bare-headed, uncomfortable-looking men, entered
+the front room, and passed through with serious faces and slowly shaking
+heads.
+
+Chris spoke to Norma in the hall, just after she had said good-night to
+some rather important callers, assuring them that Annie and Leslie were
+well, and had been kissed herself as their representative. He extended
+her a crushed document in which she was alarmed to recognize Wolf's
+letter.
+
+"Oh--I think I dropped that in Aunt Annie's dressing-room!" Norma said,
+turning scarlet, and wondering what eyes had seen it.
+
+"There was no envelope; a maid brought it to her, and Annie read it,"
+Chris said. Norma's eyes were racing through it.
+
+"There are no names!" she said, thankfully.
+
+"It would have been a most unfortunate--a--a horrible thing, if there
+had been," Chris commented. Something in his manner said as plainly as
+words that dropping the letter had been a breach of good manners, had
+been extremely careless, almost reprehensible. Norma felt herself
+unreasonably antagonized.
+
+"Oh, I don't know! It's true," she said, recklessly.
+
+"Annie is a very important person in your plans, Norma," Chris reminded
+her. "It would be most regrettable for you to lose your head now, to
+give everyone an opportunity of criticizing you. I should advise you to
+enlist your Aunt Annie's sympathies just as soon as you can. She is, of
+all the world, the one woman who can direct you--help you equip
+yourself--tell you what to get, and how to establish yourself. If Annie
+chose to be unfriendly, to ignore you----"
+
+"I don't see Annie von Behrens ignoring me--now!" Norma said, with
+anger, and throwing her head back proudly. They were in a curtained
+alcove on the landing of the angled stairway, completely hidden by the
+great curtain and by potted palms. "When my revered aunt realizes----"
+
+"Your money will have absolutely no effect on Annie," Chris said,
+quickly.
+
+"No, but what I _am_ will!" Norma answered, breathing hard.
+
+"Not while we keep it to ourselves, as of course we must," Chris
+answered, in displeasure. "No one but ourselves will ever know----"
+
+"The whole world will know!" Norma said, in sudden impatience with
+smoothing and hiding and pretending. Chris straightened his eyeglasses
+on their ribbon, and gave her his scrutinizing, unruffled glance.
+
+"That would be foolish, I think, Norma!" he told her, calmly. "It would
+be a most unnecessary piece of vulgarity. Old families are constantly
+hushing up unfortunate chapters in their history; there is no reason why
+the whole thing should not be kept an absolute secret. My dear girl, you
+have just had a most extraordinary piece of good fortune--but you must
+be very careful how you take it! You will be--you are--a tremendously
+wealthy woman--and you will be in the public eye. Upon how you conduct
+yourself now your future position largely depends. Annie can--and I
+believe will--gladly assist you. Acton and Leslie will go abroad, I
+suppose--they can't live here. But a breath of scandal--or an
+ill-advised slip on your part--would make us all ridiculous. You must
+play your cards carefully. If you could stay with Annie, now----"
+
+"I _hate_ Aunt Annie!" Norma interrupted, childishly.
+
+"My dear girl--you're over-tired, you don't mean what you say!" Chris
+said, putting his hand on her arm. Under the light touch she dropped her
+eyes, and stood still. "Norma, do be advised by me in this," he urged
+her earnestly. "It is one of the most important crises in your life.
+Annie can put you exactly where you want to be, introduced and accepted
+everywhere--a constant guest in her house, in her opera box, or Annie
+can drop you--I've seen her do it!--and it would take you ten years to
+make up the lost ground!"
+
+"It didn't take Annie ten years to be a--a--social leader!" Norma
+argued, resentfully.
+
+"Annie? Ah, my dear, a woman like Annie isn't born twice in a hundred
+years! She has--but you know what she has, Norma. Languages,
+experiences, friends--most of all she has the grand manner--the _belle
+aire_."
+
+Norma was fighting to regain her composure over almost unbearable hurt
+and chagrin.
+
+"But, Chris," she argued, desperately, "you've always said that you had
+no particular use for Annie's crowd--that you'd rather live in some
+little Italian place--or travel slowly through India----"
+
+"I said I would like to do that, and so I would!" he answered. "But
+believe me, Norma, your money makes a very different sort of thing
+possible now, and you would be mad--you would be _mad_!--to throw it
+away. Put yourself in Annie's hands," he finished, with the first hint
+of his old manner that she had seen for forty-eight hours, "and have
+your car, your maids, your little establishment on the upper East Side,
+and then--then"--and now his arm was about her, and he had tipped up her
+face close to his own--"and then you and I will break our little
+surprise to them!" he said, kindly. "Only be careful, Norma. Don't let
+them say that you did anything ostentatious or conspicuous----"
+
+She freed herself, her heart cold and desolate almost beyond bearing,
+and Chris answered her as if she had spoken.
+
+"Yes--and I must go, too! To-morrow will be a terrible day for us all.
+Oh, one thing more, Norma! Annie asked me if I had any idea of who the
+man was--the man Wolf speaks of there in that note--and I had to say
+someone, just to quiet her. So I said that I thought it was Roy
+Gillespie--you don't mind?--I knew he liked you tremendously, and I
+happened to think of him! Is that all right?"
+
+She made no audible answer, almost immediately leaving him, and going
+upstairs. There was nothing to do, in her room, and she knew that she
+could really be of use downstairs, among the intimate old friends who
+were protecting Annie and Leslie from annoyance, but she felt in no mood
+for that. She hated herself and everybody; she was half-mad with fatigue
+and despondency.
+
+Oh, what was the use of living--what was the use of living! Chris
+despised her; that was quite plain. He had advised her to-night as he
+would have advised an ignorant servant--an inexperienced commoner who
+might make the family ridiculous--who might lose her head, and descend
+to "unnecessary pieces of vulgarity!" Leslie had always "made allowances
+for Norma"; Annie considered her an "outsider." Wolf was going to
+California without her, and even Aunt Kate--even Aunt Kate had scolded
+her, reminded her that the Melroses had always been kind to her!
+
+Norma's tears flowed fast, there seemed to be no end to the flood. She
+sopped them away with the black-bordered handkerchief, and tried walking
+about, and drinking cold water, but it was of no use. Her heart seemed
+broken, there was no avenue for her thoughts that did not lead to
+loneliness and grief. They had all pretended to love her--but not one of
+them did--not one of them did! She had never had a father, and never had
+a mother, she had never had a fair chance!
+
+Money--she thought darkly. But what was the use of money if everyone
+hated her, if everyone thought she was selfish and stupid and ignorant
+and superfluous! Why find a beautiful apartment, and buy beautiful
+clothes, if she must flatter and cajole her way into Annie's favour to
+enjoy them, and bear Chris's superior disdain for her stumbling literary
+criticisms and her amateurish Italian?
+
+And she was furious at Chris. How dared he--how dared he insult her by
+coupling her name with that of Roy Gillespie, to quiet Annie and to
+protect himself! She was a married woman; she had never given him any
+reason to take such liberties with her dignity! Roy Gillespie, indeed!
+Annie was to amuse herself by fancying Norma secretly enamoured of that
+big, stupid, simple Gillespie boy, who was twenty-two years old, and
+hardly out of college! And it was for him that Norma was presumably
+leaving her husband!
+
+It was insufferable. It was insufferable. She would go straight to
+Annie--but no, she couldn't do that. She couldn't tell Annie, on the
+night before Annie's sister was buried, that that same sister's husband
+loved and was beloved by another woman.
+
+"Still, it's true," Norma mused, darkly. "Only we seem unable to speak
+the truth in this house! Well, I'm stifling here----"
+
+She had been leaning out of the open window, the night was soft and
+warm. Norma looked at her wrist watch; it was nine o'clock. A sudden mad
+impulse took her: she would go over to Jersey, and see Rose. It was not
+so very late, the babies kept Rose and Harry up until almost eleven. She
+thirsted suddenly for Rose, for Rose's beautiful, pure little face, her
+puzzled, earnest blue eyes under black eyebrows, her pleasant, unready
+words that were always so true and so kind.
+
+Rapidly Norma buttoned the new black coat, dropped the filmy veil, fled
+down the back stairway, and through a bright, hot pantry, where maids
+were laughing and eating gaily. She explained to their horrified silence
+that she was slipping out for a breath of air, went through doorways
+and gratings, and found herself in the blessed coolness and darkness of
+the side street.
+
+Ah--this was delicious! She belonged here, flying along inconspicuous
+and unmolested in light and darkness, just one of the hurrying and
+indifferent millions. The shop windows, the subways, the very
+gum-machines and the chestnut ovens with their blowing lamps looked
+friendly to Norma to-night; she loved every detail of blowing newspapers
+and yawning fellow-passengers, in the hot, bright tube.
+
+On the other side she was hurrying off the train with the plunging crowd
+when her heart jumped wildly at the sight of a familiar shabby overcoat
+some fifty feet ahead of her, topped by the slightly tipped slouch hat
+that Wolf always wore. Friday night! her thoughts flashed joyously, and
+he was coming to New Jersey to see his mother and Rose! Of all fortunate
+accidents--the one person in the world she wanted to see--and must see
+now!
+
+Norma fled after the coat, dodging and slipping through every opening,
+and keeping the rapidly moving slouch hat before her. She was quite out
+of breath when she came abreast of the man, and saw, with a sickening
+revulsion, that it was not Wolf.
+
+What the man thought Norma never knew or cared. The surprising blankness
+of the disappointment made her almost dizzy; she turned aside blindly,
+and stumbled into the quiet backwater behind a stairway, where she could
+recover her self-possession and endure unobserved the first pangs of
+bitterness. It seemed to her that she would die if she could not see
+Wolf, if she had to endure another minute of loneliness and darkness and
+aimless wandering through the night.
+
+Rose's house was only three well-lighted blocks from the station; Norma
+almost ran them. Other houses, she noted, were still brightly lighted at
+quarter to eleven o'clock, and Rose's might be. Aunt Kate was there, and
+she and Rose might well be sitting up, with the restless smaller baby,
+or to finish some bit of sewing.
+
+It was a double house, and the windows that matched Rose's bedroom and
+dining-room were lighted in the wrong half. But all Rose's side was
+black and dark and silent.
+
+Norma, for the first time in her life, needed courage for the knocking
+and ringing and explaining. If they would surely be kind to her, she
+might chance it, she thought. But if Aunt Kate was angry with her
+vacillations in regard to Wolf, and if Rose had also taken Wolf's side,
+then she knew that she, Norma, would begin to cry, and disgrace herself,
+and have good-natured simple old Harry poking about and wondering what
+was the matter----
+
+No, she didn't dare risk it. So she waited in the little garden, looking
+up at the windows, praying that little Harry would wake up, or that the
+baby's little acid wail would drift through the open window, and then
+the dim light bloom suddenly, and show a silhouette of Rose, tall and
+sweet in her wrapper, with a great rope of braid falling over one
+shoulder.
+
+But moments went by, and there was no sound. Norma went to the street
+lamp a hundred feet away and looked at her wrist watch. Quarter past
+eleven; it was useless to wait any longer; it had been a senseless quest
+from the beginning.
+
+She went back to the city by train and boat, crying desolately in the
+darkness above the ploughing of the invisible waters. She cried with
+pity for herself, for it seemed to her that life was very unfair to her.
+
+"Is it _my_ fault that I inherit all that money?" she asked the dark
+night angrily. "Is it my fault that I love Chris Liggett? Isn't it
+better to be honest about it than live with a man I don't love? Isn't
+that the worst thing that woman can endure--a loveless marriage?
+
+"But that's just the High School Debating Society!" she interrupted
+herself, suddenly, using a phrase that she and Wolf had coined long ago
+for glib argument that is untouched by actual knowledge of life.
+"Loveless marriage--and wife in name only! I wonder if I am getting to
+be one of the women who throw those terms about as an excuse for just
+sheer selfishness and stupidity!"
+
+And her aunt's phrases came back to her, making her wonder unhappily
+just where the trouble lay, just what sort of a woman she was.
+
+"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma," Mrs. Sheridan had
+said, "you're a woman now--you're Wolf's wife----"
+
+But that was just what she did not feel herself, a woman and Wolf's
+wife. She was a girl--interested in shaggy sport coats and lace
+stockings; she did not want to be any one's wife! She wanted to punish
+Leslie and Aunt Annie, and to have plenty of money, and to have a
+wonderful little apartment on the east side of the Park, and delicious
+clothes; she wanted to become a well-known figure in New York society,
+at Palm Beach and the summer resorts, and at the opera and the big
+dining-rooms of the hotels.
+
+"And I could do it, too!" Norma thought, walking through the cool, dark
+night restlessly. "In two years--in three or four, anyway, I would be
+where Aunt Annie is; or at least I would if Chris and I were married--he
+could do anything! I suppose," she added, with youthful recklessness, "I
+suppose there are lots of old fogies who would never understand my
+getting separated from Wolf, but it isn't as if _he_ didn't understand,
+for I know he does! Wolf has always known that it took just _certain
+things_ to make me happy!"
+
+Something petty, and contemptible, and unworthy, in this last argument
+smote her ears unpleasantly, and she was conscious of flushing in the
+dark.
+
+"Well, people have to be happy, don't they?" she reasoned, with a rising
+inflection at the end of the phrase that surprised and a trifle
+disquieted her. "Don't they?" she asked herself, thoughtfully, as she
+crept in at the side door of the magnificent, cumbersome old house that
+was her own now. No one but an amazed-looking maid saw her, as she
+regained her room, and fifteen minutes later she was circulating about
+the dim and mournful upper floor again. Annie called her into her room.
+
+"You look fearfully tired, Norma! Do get some sleep," her aunt said,
+with unusual kindness. "I'm going to try to, although my head is aching
+terribly, and I know I can't. To-morrow will be hard on us all. I shall
+go home to-morrow night, and I'm trying to persuade Leslie to come with
+me."
+
+"No, I shan't! I'm going to stay here," Leslie said, with a sort of
+weary pettishness. "My house is closed, and poor Chris is going to begin
+closing Aunt Alice's house, and he doesn't want to go to a club--he'd
+much rather be here, wouldn't he, Norma?"
+
+Something in the tired way that both aunt and niece appealed to her
+touched Norma, and she answered sympathetically:
+
+"Truly, I think he would, Aunt Annie. And if little Patricia and the
+nurse get here on Sunday, she won't be lonely."
+
+"Norma, why don't you stay here, too--your husband's in Philadelphia,"
+Leslie asked her. "Do! We shall have so much to do----"
+
+"We haven't seen the will, but I believe Judge Lee is going to bring it
+on Wednesday," Annie said, "and Chris said that Mama left you--well, I
+don't know what! I wish you could arrange to stay the rest of the week,
+at least!"
+
+"I will!" Norma agreed. She had been feeling neglected and lonely, and
+this unexpected friendliness was heartwarming.
+
+"You've been a real comfort," Annie said, good-naturedly. "You're such a
+sensible child, Norma. I hope one of these days--afterward"--and Annie
+faintly indicated with her eyebrows the direction of the front room from
+which the funeral procession would start to-morrow--"afterward, that
+you'll let us know your husband better. And now it's long past midnight,
+girls, and you ought to be in bed!"
+
+It was mere casual civility on Annie's part, as accidental as had been
+her casual unkindness a few hours before. But it lifted Norma's heart,
+and she went out into the hall in a softer frame of mind than she had
+known for a long time. She managed another word with Chris before going
+to her room for almost nine hours of reviving and restoring sleep.
+
+"Chris, I feel terribly about breaking this news to Aunt Annie and
+Leslie while they feel so badly about Aunt Alice and Aunt Marianna!" she
+said. Again Chris gave the hallway, where she had met him, a quick,
+uneasy scrutiny before he answered her:
+
+"Well, of course! But it can't be helped."
+
+"But do you think that we could put it off until Wednesday, Chris, when
+the will is to be read? Everyone will be here then, and it would seem a
+good time to do it!"
+
+"Yes," he consented, after a moment's thought, "I think that is a good
+idea!" And so they left it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Regina roused Norma just in time for the long, wearisome ceremonials of
+the following day, a cold, bright gusty day, when the wet streets
+flashed back sombre reflections of the motor wheels, and the newly
+turned earth oozed flashing drops of water. The cortège left the old
+Melrose house at ten minutes before ten o'clock, and it was four before
+the tired, headachy, cramped members of the immediate family group
+regathered there, to discard the crape-smothered hats, and the odorous,
+sombre furs, and to talk quietly together as they sipped hot soup and
+crumbled rolls. Everything had been changed, the flowers were gone,
+furniture was back in place, and the upper front room had been opened
+widely to the suddenly spring-like afternoon. There was not a fallen
+violet petal to remind her descendants that the old mistress of forty
+full years was gone for ever.
+
+Annie's boys came to bring Mother home, after so many strange days'
+absence, and Norma liked the way that Annie smiled wearily at Hendrick,
+and pressed her white face hungrily against the boys' blonde, firm
+little faces. Leslie, in an unwontedly tender mood, drew Acton's arm
+about her, as she sat in a big chair, and told him with watering eyes
+that she would be glad to see old Patsie-baby on Sunday. Norma sat
+alone, the carved Tudor oak rising high above her little tired head with
+its crushed soft hair, and Chris sat alone, too, at the other end of
+the table, and somehow, in the soul fatigue that was worse than any
+bodily fatigue, she did not want the distance between them bridged, she
+did not want--she shuddered away from the word--love-making from Chris
+again!
+
+Leslie, who felt quite ill with strain and sorrow, went upstairs to bed,
+the Von Behrens went away, and presently Acton disappeared, to telephone
+old Doctor Murray that his wife would like a sedative--or a heart
+stimulant, or some other little attention as a recognition of her broken
+state.
+
+Then Chris and Norma were alone, and with a quiet dignity that surprised
+him she beckoned him to the chair next to her, and, leaning both elbows
+on the cloth, fixed him with her beautiful, tired eyes.
+
+"I want to talk to you, Chris, and this seems to be the time!" she said.
+"You'll be deep in all sorts of horrible things for weeks now, poor old
+Chris, and I want this said first! I've been thinking very seriously all
+these days--they seem months--since Aunt Marianna died, and I've come to
+the conclusion that I'm--well, I'm a fool!"
+
+She said the last word so unexpectedly, with such obvious surprise, that
+Chris's tired, colourless face broke into something like a smile. He had
+seated himself next to her, and was evidently bending upon her problem
+his most earnest attention.
+
+"Some months ago," Norma said in a low voice, "I thought--I
+_thought_--that I fell in love! The man was rich, and handsome, and
+clever, and he knew more--of certain things!--in his little finger, than
+I shall ever know in my whole life. Not exactly more French, or more of
+politics, or more persons--I don't mean quite that. But I mean a
+conglomerate sort of--I'm expressing myself badly, but you understand--a
+conglomerate total of all these things that make him an aristocrat!
+That's what he is, an aristocrat. Now, I'm not! I've found that out. I'm
+different."
+
+"Nonsense!" Chris said, lightly, but listening patiently none the less.
+
+"I know," Norma resumed, hammering her thought out slowly, and frowning
+down at the teaspoon that she was measuring between her finger-tips, "I
+know that there are two women in me. One is the Melrose, who
+_could_--for I know I could!--push her husband out of sight, take up the
+whole business of doing things correctly, from hair-dressing and writing
+notes of condolence to being"--she could manage a hint of a smile under
+swiftly raised lashes--"being presented at Saint James's!" she said. "In
+five years she would be an admired and correct and popular woman, and
+perhaps even married to this man I speak of! The other woman is my
+little plain French mother's sort--who was a servant--my Aunt Kate's
+kind," and Norma suddenly felt the tears in her eyes, and winked them
+away with an April smile, "who belongs to her husband, who likes to cook
+and tramp about in the woods, and send Christmas boxes to Rose's babies,
+and--and go to movies, and picnics! And that's the sort of woman I _am_,
+Chris," Norma ended, with a sudden firmness, and even a certain relief
+in her voice. "I've just discovered it! I've been spoiled all my
+life--I've been loved too much, I think, but I've thought it all out--it
+really came to me, as I stood beside Aunt Marianna's grave to-day, and
+you don't know how happy it's made me!"
+
+"You are talking very recklessly, Norma," Chris said, as she paused, in
+his quiet, definite voice. "You are over-excited now. There is no such
+difference in the two--the two classes, to call them that, as you fancy!
+The richer people, the people who, as you say, do things correctly, and
+are presented at Saint James's, have all the simple pleasures, too. One
+likes moving pictures now and then; I'm sure we often have picnics in
+the summer. But there are women in New York--hundreds of them, who would
+give the last twenty years of their lives to step into exactly what you
+can take for the asking now. You will have Annie and me back of
+you--this isn't the time, Norma, for me to say just how entirely you
+will have my championship! But surely you know----"
+
+He was just what he had always been: self-possessed, finished,
+splendidly sure in voice and manner. He was rich, he was popular, he was
+a dictator in his quiet way. And she knew even if the shock of his
+wife's sudden going had pushed his thought of her into the background,
+that in a few months he would be hovering about her again,
+conventionally freed for conventional devotion.
+
+She saw all this, and for the first time to-day she saw other things,
+too. That he was forty, and looked it. That there was just the faintest
+suggestion of thinning in his smooth hair, where Wolf's magnificent mane
+was the thickest. That it was just a little bloodless, this decorous
+mourning that had so instantly engulfed him, who had actually told her,
+another man's wife, a few weeks before, that his own wife was dying, and
+so would free him for the woman he loved at last!
+
+In short, Norma mused, watching him as he fell into moody silence, he
+had not scrupled to break the spirit of his bond to Alice, he had not
+hesitated to tell Norma that he loved her when only Norma, and possibly
+Alice, might suffer from his disloyalty. But when the sacred letter was
+touched, the sacred outside of the vessel that must be kept clean before
+the world, then Chris was instantly the impeccable, the irreproachable
+man of his caste again. It was all part of the superficial smallness of
+that world where arbitrary form ruled, where to send a wedding
+invitation printed and not engraved, or to mispronounce the name of a
+visiting Italian tenor or Russian dancer, would mark the noblest woman
+in the world as hopelessly "not belonging."
+
+"One of the things you do that really you oughtn't to, Norma," he
+resumed, presently, in quiet distaste, "is assume that there is some
+mysterious difference between, say, the Craigies, and well--your
+husband. The Craigies are enormously wealthy, of course. That means that
+they have always had fine service, music, travel, the best of everything
+in educational ways, friendship with the best people--and those things
+_are_ an advantage, generation after generation. It's absurd to deny
+that Annie's children, for example, haven't any real and tremendous
+advantages over--well, some child of a perfectly respectable family that
+manages nicely on ten thousand a year. But that Annie's pleasures are
+not as real, or that there must necessarily be something
+dangerous--something detestable--in the life of the best people, is
+ridiculous!"
+
+"That's just what I do assert," she answered, bravely. "It may not be so
+for you, for you were born to it! But when you've lived, as I have, in a
+different sort of life, with people to whom meals, and the rent, and
+their jobs, really matter--this sort of thing doesn't seem _real_. You
+feel like bursting out laughing and saying, 'Oh, get out! What's the
+difference if I _don't_ make calls, and broaden my vowels, and wear just
+this and that, and say just this and that!' It all seems so _tame_."
+
+"Not at all," Chris said, really roused. "Take Betty Doane, now, the
+Craigies' cousin. There's nothing conventional about her. There's a girl
+who dresses like a man all summer, who ran away from school and tramped
+into Hungary dressed as a gipsy, who slapped Joe Brinckerhoff's face for
+him last winter, and who says that when she loves a man she's going off
+with him--no matter who he is, or whether he's married or not, or
+whether she is!"
+
+"I'll tell you what she sounds like to me, Chris, a little saucy girl of
+about eight trying to see how naughty she can be! Why, that," said
+Norma, eagerly, "that's not _real_. That isn't like house-hunting when
+you know you can't pay more than thirty dollars' rent, or surprising
+your husband with a new thermos bottle that he didn't think he could
+afford!"
+
+"Ah, well, if you _like_ slums, of course!" Chris said, coldly. "But
+nothing can prevent your inheriting an enormous sum of money, Norma," he
+said, ending the conversation, "and in six months you'll feel very
+differently!"
+
+"There is just one chance in ten--one chance in a hundred--that I
+might!" she said to herself, going upstairs, after Chris and Acton, who
+presently returned to the dining-room, had begun an undertoned
+conversation. And with a sudden flood of radiance and happiness at her
+heart, she sat down at her desk, and wrote to Wolf.
+
+The note said:
+
+    WOLF DEAR:
+
+    I have been thinking very seriously, during these serious days,
+    and I am writing you more earnestly than I ever wrote any one in
+    my life. I want you to forgive me all my foolishness, and let me
+    come back to you. I have missed you so bitterly, and thought how
+    good and how sensible you were, and how you took care of us all
+    years ago, and gave Rose and me skates that Christmas that you
+    didn't have your bicycle mended, and how we all sat up and cried
+    the night Aunt Kate was sick, and you made us chocolate by the
+    rule on the box. I have been very silly, and I thought I
+    cared--and perhaps I _did_ care--for somebody else; or at least
+    I cared for what he stood for, but I am over that now, and I
+    feel so much older, and as if I needed you so. I shall have a
+    tremendous lot of money, and we'll just have to decide what to
+    do with it, but I think I know now that there won't be any
+    particular pleasure in spending it. We'll always love the old
+    car, and----But it just occurs to me that we _could_ send poor
+    Kitty Barry to the hospital, and perhaps ship them all off
+    somewhere where they'd get better. Aunt Kate would like that.
+    But won't you come up, Wolf, and see me? I'll meet you anywhere,
+    and we can talk, on Monday or Tuesday. Will you write me or wire
+    me? I can't wait to see you!
+
+She cried over the letter, and over the signature that she was his
+loving Nono, but she mailed it with a dancing heart. The road had been
+dark and troubled for awhile, but it was all clear now! The wrong had
+been--the whole wretched trouble had been--in her thinking that she
+could toss aside the solemn oath that she had taken on the bewildering
+day of her marriage almost a year ago.
+
+Never since old, old days of childhood, when she and Wolf and Rose had
+wiped the dishes and raked the yard, and walked a mile to the
+twenty-five-cent seats at the circus, had Norma been so sure of
+herself, and so happy. She felt herself promoted, lifted above the old
+feelings and the old ways, and dedicated to the work before her. And one
+by one the shadows lifted, and the illusions blew away, and she could
+see her way clear for the first time in more than three years. It was
+all simple, all right, all just as she would have had it. She would
+never be a petted and wealthy little Leslie, she would never be a
+leader, like Mrs. von Behrens, and she would never stand before the
+world as the woman chosen by the incomparable Chris. Yet she was the
+last Melrose, and she knew now how she could prove herself the proudest
+of them all, how she could do these kinspeople of hers a greater favour
+than any they had ever dreamed of doing her. And in the richness of
+renouncing Norma knew herself to be for the first time truly rich.
+
+Chris saw the difference in her next day, felt the new dignity, the
+sudden transition from girl to woman, but he had no inkling of its
+cause. Leslie saw it, and Annie, but Norma gave them no clue. At
+luncheon Annie, who had joined them for the meal, proposed that Leslie
+and Norma and the Liggetts come to her for a quiet family dinner, but
+Norma begged off; she really must see Aunt Kate, and would seize this
+opportunity to go home for a night. But leaving the table Norma asked
+Chris if she might talk business to him for a few minutes.
+
+They sat in the old library, Chris sunk in a great leather chair,
+smoking cigarettes, Norma opposite, her white hands clasped on the
+blackness of her simple gown, and her eyes moving occasionally from
+their quiet study of the fire to rest on Chris's face.
+
+"Chris," she said, "I've thought this all out, now, and I'm not really
+asking your advice, I'm telling you what I am going to do! I'm going to
+California with Wolf in a week or two--that's the first thing!"
+
+He stared at her blankly, and as the minutes of silence between them
+lengthened Norma noticed his lips compress themselves into a thin,
+colourless line. But she returned his look bravely, and in her eyes
+there was something that told the man she was determined in her
+decision.
+
+"I don't quite follow you, Norma," he said at last with difficulty. "You
+mean that all the plans and hopes we shared and discussed----" He
+faltered a moment and then made another effort: "Now that whatever
+obstacles there were have been removed, and you and I are free to
+fulfill our destinies, am I to understand that--that you are going back
+to your husband?"
+
+"Exactly." The girl's answer was firm and determined.
+
+The colour fled from Chris's face, and a cold light came into his eye;
+his jaw stiffened.
+
+"You must use your own judgment, Norma," he answered, with a displeased
+shrug.
+
+"I'll leave with you, or send you, my power of attorney," the girl went
+on, "and you and Hendrick as executors must do whatever you think right
+and just--just deposit the money in the bank!"
+
+"I see," Chris said, noncommittally.
+
+"And there's another thing," Norma went on, with heightened colour. "I
+don't want either Leslie or Aunt Annie ever to know--what you and I
+know!"
+
+Chris looked at her, frowning slightly.
+
+"That's impossible, of course," he said. "What are they going to think?"
+
+"They'll think nothing," Norma said, confidently, but with anxious eyes
+fixed on his face, "because they'll know nothing. There'll be no change,
+nothing to make them suspect anything."
+
+"But--great God! You don't seem to understand, Norma. Proofs of your
+birth, of your rightful heritage, your identity, the fact that you are
+Theodore's child, must be shown them, of course. You have inherited by
+Aunt Marianna's will the bulk of her personal fortune, but besides this,
+as Theodore's child, you inherit the Melrose estate, and Leslie must
+turn this all over to you, and make such restitution as she is able, of
+all income from it which she has received since Judge Lee and I turned
+it over to her on her eighteenth birthday."
+
+"No, that's just what she is _not_ to do! I will get exactly what is
+mentioned in the will--as Norma Sheridan, bonds and the Melrose
+Building, and so on," Norma broke in, eagerly. "And that's enough,
+goodness knows, and a thousand times more than Wolf and I ever expected
+to have. Aunt Annie and Leslie are reconciled to that. But for the rest,
+I refuse to accept it. I don't want it. I've never been so unhappy in my
+life as I've been in this house, for all the money and the good times
+and the beautiful clothes. And if that much didn't make me happy, why
+should ten times more? Isn't it far, far better--all round----"
+
+"You are talking absurdities," said Chris. "Do you think that Hendrick
+and I could consent to this? Do you suppose----"
+
+"Hendrick doesn't know it, Chris. It is only you and I and Aunt
+Kate--that's all! And if I do this, and swear you and Aunt Kate to
+secrecy, who is responsible, except me?"
+
+Chris shook his head. "Aunt Marianna wished you righted--wished you to
+take your place as Theodore's daughter. It is her wish, and it is only
+our duty----"
+
+"But think a minute, Chris, think a minute," Norma said, eagerly,
+leaning forward in her chair, so that her locked hands almost touched
+his knees. "_Was_ it her wish? She wanted me to _know_--that's certain!
+And I do know. But do you really think she wanted Leslie to be shamed
+and crushed, and to take away the money Leslie has had all her life, to
+shock Aunt Annie, and stir that old miserable matter up with Hendrick?
+Chris, you _can't_ think that! The one thing she would have wished and
+prayed would have been that somehow the matter would have been righted
+without hurting any one. Chris, _think_ before you tear the whole family
+up by the roots. What harm is there in this way? I have plenty of
+money--and I go away. The others go on just as they always have, and in
+a little way--in just a hundredth part--I pay back dear old Aunt
+Marianna for all the worrying and planning she did, to make up to me for
+what should have been mine, and was Leslie's. Please--_please_, help me
+to do this, Chris. I can't be happy any other way. Aunt Kate will
+approve--you don't know how much she will approve, and it will repay
+her, too, just a little, to feel that it's all known now, and that it
+has turned out this way. And she will destroy every last line and shred
+of letters and papers, and the photographs she said she had, and it will
+all be over--for ever and for ever!"
+
+"You put a terrible responsibility upon me," Chris said, slowly.
+
+"No--I take it myself!" Norma answered. He had gotten to his feet, and
+was standing at the hearth, and now she rose, too, and looked eagerly up
+at him. "It isn't anything like the responsibility of facing the world
+with the whole horrible story!"
+
+Chris was silent, thinking. Presently he turned upon her the old smile
+that she had always found irresistible, and put his two hands on her
+shoulders.
+
+"You are a wonderful woman, Norma!" he said, slowly. "What woman in the
+world, but you, would do that? Yes, I'll do it--for Leslie's sake, and
+Acton's sake, and because I believe Alice would think it as wonderful in
+you as I do. But think," Chris said, "think just a few days, Norma. You
+and I--you and I might go a long way, my dear!"
+
+If he had said it even at this hour yesterday, he might have shaken her,
+for the voice was the voice of the old Chris, and she had been even then
+puzzled and confused to see the wisest way. But now everything was
+changed; he could not reach her now, even when he put his arm about her,
+and said that this was one of their rare last chances to be alone
+together, and asked if it must be good-bye.
+
+She looked up at him gravely and unashamedly.
+
+"Yes, it must be good-bye--dear Chris!" she said, with a little emotion.
+"Although I hope we will see each other often, if ever Wolf and I come
+back. Engineers live in Canada and Panama and India and Alaska, you
+know, and we never will know we are coming until we get here! And I'm
+not going to try to thank you, Chris, for what you did for an ignorant,
+silly, strange little girl; you've been a big brother to me all these
+last years! And something more, of course," Norma added, bravely, "and
+I won't say--I can't say--that if it hadn't been for Wolf, and all the
+changes this year--changes in me, too--I wouldn't have loved you all my
+life. But there's no place that you could take me, as Wolf Sheridan's
+divorced wife, that would seem worth while to me, when I got there--not
+if it was in the peerage!"
+
+"There's just one thing that I want to say, too, Norma," Chris said,
+suddenly, when she had finished. "I'm not good enough for you; I know
+it. I see myself as I am, sometimes, I suppose. I think you're going to
+be happy--and God knows I hope so; perhaps it _is_ a realer life, your
+husband's: and perhaps a man who works for his wife with his hands and
+his head has got something on us other fellows after all! I've often
+wished----But that doesn't matter now. But I want you to know I'll
+always remember you as the finest woman I ever knew--just the best there
+is! And if ever I've hurt you, forgive me, won't you, Norma?--and--and
+let me kiss you good-bye!"
+
+She raised her face to his confidently, and her eyes were misty when she
+went upstairs, because she had seen that his were wet. But there was no
+more unhappiness; indeed an overwhelming sense that everything was
+right--that every life had shifted back into normal and manageable and
+infinitely better lines, went with her as she walked slowly out into the
+sunshine, and wandered in the general direction of Aunt Kate's. As she
+left the old Melrose home, the big limousine was standing at the door,
+and presently Annie and Leslie would sweep out in their flowing veils
+and crapes, and whirl off to the Von Behrens mansion. But Norma Sheridan
+was content to walk to the omnibus, and to take the jolting front seat,
+and to look down in all brotherly love and companionship at the moving
+and shifting crowds that were glorying in the warm spring weather.
+
+To be busy--to be needed--to be loved--she said to herself. That was the
+sweet of life, and it could not be taken from the policeman at the
+crossing or the humblest little shop-girl who scampered under his big
+arm, or bought by the bored women in limousines who, furred and flowered
+and feathered, were moving from the matinée to the tea table. Caroline
+Craigie, Aunt Annie, Leslie; she had seen the material advantages of
+life fail them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Aunt Kate was out when Norma reached the apartment, but she knew that
+the key was always on the top of the door frame, and entered the
+familiar old rooms without any trouble. But she saw in a dismayed flash
+that Aunt Kate was not coming back, for that night at least. The kitchen
+window had been left four inches open, to accommodate the cat, milk and
+bones were laid in waiting, and a note in the bottle notified the
+milkman "no milk until to-morrow." There was also a note in pencil, on
+the bottom of an egg-box, for the nurses who rented two rooms, should
+either one of them chance to come in and be hungry, she was to eat "the
+pudding and the chicken stew, and get herself a good supper."
+
+Norma, chuckling a little, got herself the good supper instead. It was
+with a delightful sense of solitude and irresponsibility that she sat
+eating it, at the only window in the flat that possessed a good view,
+the kitchen window. Aunt Kate, she decided, was with Rose, who had no
+telephone; Norma thought that she would wait until Aunt Kate got home
+the next day, rather than chance the long trip to the Oranges again. An
+alternative would have been to go to Aunt Annie's house, but somehow the
+thought of the big, silent handsome place, with the men in evening wear,
+Aunt Annie and Leslie in just the correct mourning décolleté, and the
+conversation decorously funereal, did not appeal to her. Instead it
+seemed a real adventure to dine alone, and after dinner to put on a
+less conspicuous hat and coat, and slip out into the streets, and walk
+about in her new-found freedom.
+
+The night was soft and balmy, and the sidewalks filled with sauntering
+groups enjoying the first delicious promise of summer as much as Norma
+did. The winter had been long and cold and snowy; great masses of
+thawing ice from far-away rivers were slowly drifting down the
+star-lighted surface of the Hudson, and the trees were still bare. But
+the air was warm, and the breezes lifted and stirred the tender darkness
+above her head with a summery sweetness.
+
+Norma loved all the world to-night; the work-tired world that was
+revelling in idleness and fresh air. Romance seemed all about her, the
+doorways into which children reluctantly vanished, the gossiping women
+coming back from bakery or market, the candy stores flooded with light,
+and crowded with young people who were having the brightest and most
+thrilling moments of all their lives over banana specials and chocolate
+sundaes. The usual whirlpools eddied about the subway openings and
+moving-picture houses, the usual lovers locked arms, in the high rocking
+darkness of the omnibus tops, and looked down in apathetic indifference
+upon the disappointment of other lovers at the crossings. In the bright
+windows of dairy restaurants grapefruit were piled, and big baked apples
+ranged in saucers, and beyond there were hungry men leaning far over the
+table while they discussed doughnuts and strong coffee, and shook open
+evening papers.
+
+She and Wolf had studied it all for years; it was sordid and crowded and
+cheap, perhaps, but it was honest and happy, too, and it was real. There
+was no affectation here, even the premature spring hats, and the rouge,
+and the high heels were an ingenuous bid for just a little notice, just
+a little admiration, just a little longer youth.
+
+Sauntering along in the very heart of it, hearing the flirtation, the
+theatrical chatter, the homely gossip about her, Norma knew that she was
+at home. Leslie, perhaps, might have loathed it had she been put down in
+the midst of it; to Aunt Annie it would always seem entirely beneath
+even contempt. But Norma realized to-night, as she slipped into church
+for a few minutes, as she dropped a coin into a beggar's tin cup, as she
+entered into casual conversation with the angry mother of a defiant boy,
+that this, to her, was life. It was life--to work, to plan, to marry and
+bear children, to wrest her own home from unfavourable conditions, and
+help her own man to win. She would live, because she would care--care
+deeply how Wolf fared in his work, how her house prospered, how her
+children developed. She would not be Aunt Annie's sort of woman--Chris's
+sort--she would be herself, judged not by what she had, but by what she
+could do--what she could give.
+
+"And that's the kind of woman I am, after all," she said to herself,
+rejoicingly. "The child of a French maid and a spoiled, rich young man!
+But no, I'm not their child. I'm Aunt Kate's--just as much as Rose and
+Wolf are----!" And at the thought of Wolf she smiled. "Won't Wolf
+Sheridan _open his eyes_?"
+
+When she reached Forty-first Street she turned east, and went past the
+familiar door of the opera house. It was a special performance, and the
+waiting line stretched from the box office down the street, and around
+the corner, into the dark. They would only be able to buy standing
+room, these patient happy music lovers who grew weary and cold waiting
+for their treat, and even standing, they would be behind an immovable
+crowd, they would catch only occasional glimpses of the stage. But Norma
+told herself that she would rather be in that line, than yawningly
+deciding, as she had so often seen Annie decide, that she would perhaps
+rustle into the box at ten o'clock for the third act--although it was
+rather a bore.
+
+She flitted near enough to see the general stir, and to see once more
+the sign "No Footmen Allowed in This Lobby," and then, smiling at the
+old memories, she slipped away into the darkness, drinking in insatiably
+the intimate friendliness of the big city and the spring night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+It was ten o'clock the next day, a silent gray day, when Aunt Kate let
+herself into the apartment, and "let out," to use her own phrase, a
+startled exclamation at finding her young daughter-in-law deeply asleep
+in her bed. Norma, a vision of cloudy dark tumbled hair and beautiful
+sleepy blue eyes, half-strangled the older woman in a rapturous embrace,
+and explained that she had come home the night before, and eaten the
+chicken stew, and perhaps overslept--at any rate would love some coffee.
+
+Something faintly shadowed in her aunt's welcome, however, was
+immediately apparent, and Norma asked, with a trace of anxiety, if
+Rose's babies were well. For answer her aunt merely asked if Wolf had
+telephoned.
+
+"Wolf!" said Wolf's wife. "Is he home?"
+
+"My dear," Mrs. Sheridan said. "He's going--he's gone!--to California!"
+
+Norma did not move. But the colour went out of her face, and the
+brightness from her eyes.
+
+"Gone!" she whispered.
+
+"Well--he goes to-day! At six o'clock----"
+
+"At six o'clock!" Norma leaped from her bed, stood with clenched hands
+and wild eyes, thinking, in the middle of the floor. "It's twenty-two
+minutes past ten," she breathed. "Where does he leave?"
+
+"Rose and I were to see him at the Grand Central at quarter past five,"
+his mother began, catching the contagious excitement. "But, darling, I
+don't know where you can get him before that!--Here, let me do that,"
+she added, for Norma had dashed into the kitchen, and was measuring
+coffee recklessly. A brown stream trickled to the floor.
+
+"Oh, Lord--Lord--help me to get hold of him somewhere!" she heard Norma
+breathe. "And you weren't going to let me know--but it's my fault," she
+said, putting her hands over her face, and rocking to and fro in
+desperate suspense. "Oh, how can I get him?--I must! Oh, Aunt
+Kate--_help me_! Oh, I'm not even dressed--and that clock says half-past
+ten! Aunt Kate, will you help me!"
+
+"Norma, my darling," her aunt said, arresting the whirling little figure
+with a big arm, and looking down at her with all the love and sadness of
+her great heart in her face, "why do you want to see him, dear? He told
+me--he had to tell his mother, poor boy, for his heart is broken--that
+you were not going with him!"
+
+"Oh, but Aunt Kate--he'll have to wait for me!" Norma said, stamping a
+slippered foot, and beginning to cry with hurt and helplessness. "Oh,
+won't you help me? You always help me! Don't--don't mind what I said to
+Wolf; you know how silly I am! But please--_please_----"
+
+"But, Baby--you're sure?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, feeling as if ice that
+had been packed about her heart for days was breaking and stirring, and
+as if the exquisite pain of it would kill her. "Don't--hurt him again,
+Norma!"
+
+"But he's going off--without me," Norma wailed, rushing to the bathroom,
+and pinning her magnificent mass of soft dark hair into a stern knob for
+her bath. "Aunt Kate, I've always loved Wolf, always!" she said,
+passionately. "And if he really had gone away without me I think it
+would have broken my heart! You _know_ how I love him! We'll catch him
+somewhere, I know we will! We'll telephone--or else Harry----"
+
+She trailed into the kitchen half-dressed, ten minutes later.
+
+"I've telephoned for a taxi, Aunt Kate, and we'll find him somewhere,"
+she said, gulping hot coffee appreciatively. "I must--I've something to
+tell him. But I'll have to tell you everything in the cab. To begin
+with--it's all over. I'm done with the Melroses. I appreciate all they
+did for me, and I appreciate your worrying and planning about that old
+secret. But I've made up my mind. Whatever you have of letters, and
+papers and proofs, I want you please to do the family a last favour by
+burning--every last shred. I've told Chris, I won't touch a cent of the
+money, except what Aunt Marianna left me; and I never, never, never
+intend to say one more word on the subject! Thousands didn't make me
+happy, so why should a million? The best thing my father ever did for me
+was to give my mother a chance to bring me here to you!"
+
+She had gotten into her aunt's lap as she spoke, and was rubbing her
+cheek against the older, roughened cheek, and punctuating her
+conversation with little kisses. Mrs. Sheridan looked at her, and
+blinked, and seemed to find nothing to say.
+
+"Perhaps some day when it's hot--and the jelly doesn't jell--and the
+children break the fence," pursued Norma, "I will be sorry! I haven't
+much sense, and I may feel that I've been a fool. But then I just want
+you to remind me of Leslie--and the Craigies--or better, of what a beast
+I am myself in that atmosphere! So it's all over, Aunt Kate, and if
+Wolf will forgive me--and he always does----"
+
+"He's bitterly hurt this time, Nono," said her aunt, gently.
+
+Norma looked a little anxious.
+
+"I wrote him in Philadelphia," she said, "but he won't get that letter.
+Oh, Aunt Kate--if we don't find him! But we will--if I have to walk up
+to him in the station the last minute--and stop him----"
+
+"Ah, Norma, you love him!" his mother said, in a great burst of
+thankfulness. "And may God be thanked for all His goodness! That's all I
+care about--that you love him, and that you two will be together again.
+We'll get hold of him, dear, somehow----!"
+
+"But, my darling," she added, coming presently to the bedroom door to
+see the dashing little feathered hat go on, and the dotted veil pinned
+with exquisite nicety over Norma's glowing face, and the belted brown
+coat and loose brown fur rapidly assumed, "you're not wearing your
+mourning!"
+
+"Not to-day," Norma said, abstractedly. And aloud she read a list:
+
+"Bank; Grand Central; drawing-room; new suit-case; notary for power of
+attorney; Kitty Barry; telephone Chris, Leslie, Annie; telephone Regina
+about trunks. Can we be back here at say--four, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"But what's all that for?" her aunt asked, dazedly.
+
+Norma looked at a check book; put it in her coat pocket. Then as her
+aunt's question reached her preoccupied mind, she turned toward her with
+a puzzled expression.
+
+"Why, Aunt Kate--you don't seem to understand; I'm going with Wolf to
+California this evening."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+It was exactly nineteen minutes past five o'clock when Wolf Sheridan
+walked into the Grand Central Station that afternoon. He had stopped
+outside to send his wife some flowers, and just a brief line of
+farewell, and he was thinking so hard of Norma that it seemed natural
+that the woman who was coming toward him, in the great central
+concourse, should suggest her. The woman was pretty, too, and wore the
+sort of dashing little hat that Norma often wore, and there was
+something so familiar about the belted brown coat and the soft brown
+furs that Wolf's heart gave a great plunge, and began to
+ache--ache--ache--hopelessly again.
+
+The brown coat came nearer--and nearer. And then he saw that the wearer
+was indeed his wife. She had dewy violets in her belt, and her violet
+eyes were dewy, too, and her face paled suddenly as she put her hand on
+his arm.
+
+What Norma all that tired and panicky afternoon had planned to say to
+Wolf on this occasion was something like this:
+
+"Wolf, if you ever loved me, and if I ever did anything that made you
+happy, and if all these years when I have been your little sister, and
+your chum, and your wife, mean anything to you--don't push me away now!
+I am sorrier for my foolishness, and more ashamed of it, than you can
+possibly be! I think it was never anything but weakness and vanity that
+made me want to flirt with Chris Liggett. I think that if he had once
+stopped flattering me, and if ever our meetings had been anything but
+stolen fruit, as it were, I would have seen how utterly blind I was! I'm
+different now, Wolf; I know that what I felt for him was only shallow
+vanity, and that what I feel for you is the deepest and realest love
+that any woman ever knew! There's nothing--no minute of the day or night
+when I don't need you. There's nothing that you think that isn't what I
+think! I want to go West with you, and make a home there, and when you
+go to China, or go to India, I want you to go because your wife has
+helped you--because you have had happy years of working and
+experimenting and picnicking and planning--with me!
+
+"It's all over, Wolf, that Melrose business--that dream! I've said
+good-bye to them, and they have to me, and they know I'm never coming
+back! I'm a Sheridan now--really and truly--for ever."
+
+And in the lonesome and bitter days in which his great dream had come
+true, without Norma to share it, days in which he had been thinking of
+her as affiliated more and more with the element he despised, identified
+more and more with the man who had wrecked--or tried to wreck--her life,
+Wolf had imagined this meeting, and imagined her as tentatively holding
+out the olive branch of peace; and he had had time to formulate exactly
+what he should answer to such an appeal.
+
+"I'm sorry, Norma," he had imagined himself saying. "I'm terribly sorry!
+But just talking doesn't undo these things, just _saying_ that you
+didn't mean it, and that it's all over. No, married life can't be picked
+up and put down again like a coat. You _were_ my wife, and God knows I
+worshipped you--heart and soul! If some day these people get tired of
+you, or you get tired of them, that'll be different! But you've cut me
+too deep--you've killed a part of me, and it won't come alive again!
+I've been through hell--wondering what you were doing, what you were
+going to do! I never should have married you; now let's call it all
+quits, and get out of it the best way we can!"
+
+But when he saw her, the familiar, lovely face that he had loved for so
+many years, when he felt the little gloved hand on his arm, and realized
+that somehow, out of the utter desolation and loneliness of the big
+city, she had come to him again, that she was here, mistily smiling at
+him, and he could touch her and hear her voice, everything else
+vanished, as if it had never been, and he put his big arm about her
+hungrily, and kissed her, and they were both in tears.
+
+"Oh, Wolf----!" Norma faltered, the dry spaces of her soul flooding with
+springtime warmth and greenness, and a great happiness sweeping away all
+consciousness of the place in which they stood, and the interested eyes
+about them. "Oh, Wolf----!" She thought that she added, "Would you have
+gone away without me!" but as a matter of fact words were not needed
+now.
+
+"Nono--you _do_ love me?" he whispered. Or perhaps he only thought he
+enunciated the phrase, for although Norma answered, it was not audibly.
+Neither of them ever remembered anything coherent of that first five
+minutes, in which momentous questions were settled between Norma's
+admiring comment upon Wolf's new coat, and in which they laughed and
+cried and clung together in shameless indifference to the general
+public.
+
+But presently they were calm enough to talk, and Wolf's first
+constructive remark, not even now very steady or clear, was that he must
+put off his going, get hold of Voorhies somehow----
+
+But no, Norma said, even while they were dashing toward the telegraph
+office. She had already bought her ticket; she was going,
+too--to-night--this very hour----!
+
+Wolf brought her up short, ecstatic bewilderment in his face.
+
+"But your trunks----?"
+
+"Regina--I tell you it's all settled--Regina sends them on after me. And
+I've got a new big suit-case, and my old brown one, that's plenty for
+the present! They're checked here, in the parcel-room----"
+
+"But we'll----" They had started automatically to rush toward the
+parcel-room, but now he brought her up short again. "It's five-thirty
+now," he muttered, turning briskly in still another direction, "let me
+have your ticket, we'll have to try for a section--it's pretty late, but
+there may be cancellations!"
+
+"Oh, but see, Wolf----! I've been here since half-past four. I've got
+the A drawing-room in Car 131----" She brought forth an official-looking
+envelope, and flashed a flimsy bit of coloured paper. For a third time
+Wolf checked his hurried rushing, and they both broke into delicious
+laughter. "I've been at it all day, with Aunt Kate," Norma said,
+proudly. "I've been to banks and to Judge Lee's office, and I've seen
+Annie and Leslie, and I bought a new wrapper and a suit-case, and--oh,
+and I saw Kitty Barry, and I got you a book for the train, and I got
+myself one----"
+
+"Oh, Norma," Wolf said, his eyes filling, "you God-blessèd little
+adorable idiot, do you know how I love you? My darling--my own wife, do
+you know that I want to die, to-night, I'm so happy! Do you realize what
+it's going to mean to us, poking about Chicago, and sending home little
+presents to Rose and the kids, and reaching San Francisco, and going up
+to the big mine? Do you realize that I feel like a man out of jail--like
+a kid who knows it's Saturday morning?"
+
+"Well--I feel that way, too!" Norma smiled. "And now," she added, in a
+businesslike tone, "we've got to look for Aunt Kate and Rose, and get
+our bags; and Leslie said to-day that it was a good idea to wire a
+Chicago hotel for a room, just for the few hours before the Overland
+pulls out, because one feels so dirty and tired; do you realize that
+I've never spent a night on a Pullman yet?"
+
+"And I'll turn in the ticket for my lower," Wolf said; "we'll have
+dinner on board, so that's all right----"
+
+"Oh, Wolf, and won't that be fun?" Norma exulted. And then, joyously:
+"Oh, there they are!"
+
+And she fled across the great space to meet Rose, pretty and matronly,
+at the foot of the great stairway, and Harry grinning and proud, with
+his little sturdy white-caped boy in his arms, and Aunt Kate beaming
+utter happiness upon them all. And then ensued that thrilling time of
+incoherencies and confusions, laughter and tears, to which the big place
+is, by nature, dedicated. They were parting so lightly, but they all
+knew that there would be changes before they six met again. To Aunt
+Kate, holding close the child whose destinies had been so strangely
+entangled with her own, the moment held a poignant pleasure as well as
+pain. She was launched now, their imperious, beloved youngest; she had
+been taken to the mountain-tops, and shown the world at her feet, and
+she had chosen bravely and wisely, chosen her part of service and
+simplicity and love. Life would go on, changes indeed and growth
+everywhere, but she knew that the years would bring her back a new
+Norma--a developed, sweetened, self-reliant woman--and a new Wolf, his
+hard childhood all swept away and forgotten in the richness and beauty
+of this woman's love and companionship. And she was content.
+
+"And, Wolf--she told you about Kitty! Every month, as long as they need
+it," Rose said, crying heartily, as she clung to her brother. "Why, it's
+the most wonderful thing I ever heard! Poor Louis Barry can't believe
+it--he broke down completely! And Kitty was crying, and kissing the
+children, and she knelt down, and put her arms about Norma's knees; and
+Norma was crying, too--you never saw anything like it!"
+
+"She never told me a word about it," Wolf said, trying to laugh, and
+blinking, as he looked at her, a few feet away. One of her arms was
+about his mother, her hand was in Harry's, her face close to the rosy
+baby's face.
+
+"Wolf," his sister said, earnestly, drying her eyes, "it will bring a
+blessing on your own children----!"
+
+"Ah, Rose!" he answered, quickly. "Pray that there is one, some day--one
+of our own as sweet as yours are!"
+
+"Ah, you'll have everything, you two, never fear!" she said, radiantly.
+And then a gate opened, and the bustle about them thickened, and
+laughing faces grew pale, and last words faltered.
+
+Harry gave Rose the baby, and put his arm about Rose's mother, and they
+watched them go, the red-cap leading with the suit-cases, Wolf carrying
+another, Norma on his arm, twisting herself about, at the very last
+second, to smile an April smile over her shoulder, and wave the green
+jade handle of her slim little umbrella. There was just a glimpse of
+Wolf's old boyish, proud, protecting smile, and then his head drooped
+toward his companion, and the surging crowd shut them out of sight.
+
+Then Rose immediately was concerned for the little baby. Wouldn't it be
+wiser to go straight home, just for fear that Mrs. Noon might have
+fallen asleep--and the house caught on fire----? Mrs. Sheridan blew her
+nose and dried her eyes, and straightened her widow's bonnet, and
+cleared her throat, and agreed that it would. And they all went away.
+
+But there was another watcher who had shared, unseen, all this last
+half-hour, and who stood immovable to the last second, until the iron
+gates had actually clashed shut. It was a well-built, keen-eyed man, in
+an irreproachably fitting fur-collared overcoat, who finally turned
+away, fitting his eyeglasses, on their black ribbon, firmly upon the
+bridge of his nose, and sighing just a little as he went back to the
+sidewalk, and climbed into a waiting roadster.
+
+Even after he took his seat at the wheel, he made no effort to start the
+car, but sat slowly drawing on his heavy gloves, and staring
+abstractedly at the dull, uninteresting stretch of street before him,
+where a dismal spring wind was stirring chaff and papers about the
+subway entrance, and surface cars were grinding and ringing on the
+curve.
+
+It looked dull and empty--dull and empty, he thought. She had been very
+happy, looking up at her man, kissing her people good-bye. She was a
+remarkable woman, Norma.
+
+"A remarkable woman--Norma," he said, half-aloud. "She will make him a
+wonderful wife; she will help him to go a long way. And she never would
+have had patience for formal living; it wasn't in her!"
+
+But he remembered what was in her, what eager gaiety, what hunger for
+new impressions, what courage in seizing her dilemmas the instant she
+saw them. He remembered the flash of her eyes, and the curve of her
+proud little mouth.
+
+"Theodore had more charm than any of them," he said, "and she is like
+him. Well--perhaps I'll meet somebody like her, some day, and the story
+will have a different ending!"
+
+But he knew in his heart that there was nobody like her, and that she
+had gone out of his life for ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had hung the belted brown coat over the big new gray one in the
+drawing-room, and Norma had brushed her hair, and Wolf had shoved the
+suit-cases under the seats, and they had gone straight into the
+dining-car, and were at a lighted little shining table by this time.
+Wolf had had no lunch; Norma was, she said, starving. They ordered their
+meal just as the train drew out of the underground arcades and swept
+over the city, in the twilight of the dull, sunless day.
+
+Norma looked down, and joy and a vague heartache struggled within her.
+The little city blocks, draped with their frail tangles of fire-escapes,
+were as clean-cut as toys. In the streets children were screaming and
+racing, at the doorways women loitered and talked. Great trucks lumbered
+in and out among surging pedestrians, and women and children stood
+before the green-grocers' displays of oranges and cabbages, and trickled
+in and out of the markets, where cheap cuts were advertised in great
+chalk signs on the windows. Red brick, yellow brick, gray cement, the
+streets fled by; the dear, familiar streets that she and Wolf, and she
+and Rose, had tramped and explored, in the burning dry heat of July, in
+the flutter of November's first snows.
+
+"Say good-bye to it, Wolf; it will be a long time before we see New York
+again!"
+
+Wolf looked down, grinning. Then, as they left the city, and the dusk
+deepened, his eyes went toward the river, went toward the vague and
+waiting West. The Palisades lay, a wide bar of soft dull gray, against
+the paler dove-colour of the sky. Above them, bare trees were etched
+sharply, and beneath them was the satiny surface of the full Hudson.
+
+It was still water, and the river was smooth enough to give back a clear
+reflection of the buildings and the wharves on the opposite shore, and
+the floating ice from the north looked like rounded bunches of foam
+arrested on the shining waters.
+
+Suddenly the sinking sun evaded the smother of cloud, and flashed out
+red and shining, for only a few brilliant minutes. It caught window
+glass like flame, twinkled and smouldered in the mirror of the river,
+and lighted the under edges of low clouds with a crisp touch of apricot
+and pink. Wet streets shone joyously, doves rose in a circling whirl
+from a near-by roof, and all the world shone and sparkled in the last
+breath of the spring day. Then dusk came indeed, and the villages
+across the river were strung with increasing lights, and in the tender
+opal softness of the evening sky Norma saw a great star hanging.
+
+"That's a good omen--that's our own little star!" she said softly to
+herself. She looked up to see Wolf smiling at her, and the smile in her
+own eyes deepened, and she stretched a warm and comradely hand to him
+across the little table.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beloved Woman, by Kathleen Norris
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@@ -0,0 +1,11099 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beloved Woman, by Kathleen Norris
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Beloved Woman
+
+Author: Kathleen Norris
+
+Release Date: March 10, 2009 [EBook #28301]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BELOVED WOMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Katherine Ward and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+ [Transcriber's Note:
+  Hyphenation standardized.
+  Archaic and variable spelling was preserved as printed.
+  Missing quotation marks were added to standardize usage. Otherwise,
+    the editor's punctuation style was preserved.
+  Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  BELOVED WOMAN
+
+
+  BY KATHLEEN NORRIS
+
+
+  AUTHOR OF
+  _"Harriet and the Piper," etc._
+
+
+  A. L. BURT COMPANY
+
+  Publishers
+  New York
+
+  Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company
+  Printed in U. S. A.
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
+  KATHLEEN NORRIS
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
+  INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+  COPYRIGHT 1920, 1921, BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY
+
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
+  AT
+  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+  TO
+  MARY O'SULLIVAN SUTRO
+
+    For gifts beyond all counting and esteeming,
+      For kindness than which Heaven's self is not kinder,
+    For the old days of tears, and smiles, and dreaming,
+      This in acknowledgment, and in reminder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+For forty-eight hours the snow-storm had been raging unabated over New
+York. After a wild and windy Thursday night the world had awakened to a
+mysterious whirl of white on Friday morning, and to a dark, strange day
+of steady snowing. Now, on Saturday, dirty snow was banked and heaped
+in great blocks everywhere, and still the clean, new flakes fluttered
+and twirled softly down, powdering and feathering every little ledge
+and sill, blanketing areas in spotless white, capping and hooding every
+unsightly hydrant and rubbish-can with exquisite and lavish beauty.
+Shovels had clinked on icy sidewalks all the first day, and even during
+the night the sound of shouting and scraping had not ceased for a
+moment, and their more and more obvious helplessness in the teeth of
+the storm awakened at last in the snow-shovellers, and in the men and
+women who gasped and stumbled along the choked thoroughfares, a sort of
+heady exhilaration in the emergency, a tendency to be proud of the
+storm, and of its effect upon their humdrum lives. They laughed and
+shouted as they battled with it, and as Nature's great barrier of snow
+threw down the little barriers of convention and shyness. Men held out
+their hands to slipping and stumbling women, caught them by their
+shoulders, panted to them that this was a storm, all right, this was
+the worst yet! Girls, staggering in through the revolving glass doors
+of the big department stores, must stand laughing helplessly for a few
+seconds in the gush of reviving warmth, while they beat their wet
+gloves together, regaining breath and self-possession, and straightened
+outraged millinery.
+
+Traffic was congested, deserted trucks and motor-cars lined the side
+streets, the subways were jammed, the surface cars helpless. Here and
+there long lines of the omnibuses stood blocked in snow, and the press
+frantically heralded impending shortages of milk and coal, reiterating
+pessimistically: "No relief in sight."
+
+But late in Saturday morning there was a sudden lull. The snow stopped,
+the wind fell, and the pure, cold air was motionless and sweet. The city
+emerged exhausted from its temporary blanketing, and from the buried
+benches of Bowling Green to the virgin sweep of pure white beyond Van
+Cortlandt Park, began its usual January fight with the snow.
+
+A handsome, rosy old lady, wrapped regally in furs, and with a maid
+picking her way cautiously beside her, was one of the first to take
+advantage of the sudden change in the weather. Mrs. Melrose had been
+held captive for almost two days, first by Thursday's inclement winds,
+and then by the blizzard. Her motor-car was useless, and although at
+sixty she was an extremely youthful and vigorous woman, her daughters
+and granddaughter had threatened to use force rather than let her risk
+the danger of an expedition on foot, at least while the storm continued.
+
+But now the wind was gone, and by the time Mrs. Melrose had been
+properly shod, and coated, and hatted, there was even a dull glimmer
+toward the southeast that indicated the location of the long-lost sun.
+The old lady looked her approval at Fifth Avenue, with all its crudities
+veiled and softened by the snowfall, and as she climbed into an omnibus
+expressed herself firmly to Regina.
+
+"You mark my words, the sun will be out before we come home!"
+
+Regina, punching the two dimes carefully into the jolting receiver, made
+only a respectful murmur for answer. She was, like many a maid, a snob
+where her mistress was concerned, and she did not like to have Mrs.
+Melrose ride in public omnibuses. For Regina herself it did not matter,
+but Mrs. Melrose was one of the city's prominent and wealthy women, and
+Regina could not remember that she had ever sunk to the use of a public
+conveyance before to-day. The maid was glad when they descended at a
+street in the East Sixties. They would probably be sent home, she
+reflected, in Mrs. Liggett's car. For Regina noticed that private cars
+were beginning to grind and slip over the snow again.
+
+Old Mrs. Melrose was going to see her daughter Alice, who was Mrs.
+Christopher Liggett, because Alice was an invalid. It had been only a
+few years after Alice's most felicitous marriage, a dozen years ago,
+when an accident had laid the lovely and brilliant woman upon the bed of
+helplessness that she might never leave again. There was no real reason
+why the spine should continue useless, the great specialists said, there
+was a hope--even a probability--that as Alice grew rested and strong,
+after the serious accident, she might find herself walking again. But
+Alice had been a prisoner for ten years now, and the mother and sister
+who idolized her feared that she would never again be the old dancing
+Alice and feared that she knew it. What Christopher Liggett feared they
+did not know. He insisted that Alice's illness was but temporary, and
+was tireless in his energetic pursuit of treatment for his wife.
+Everything must be hoped, and everything must be tried, and Alice's
+mother knew that one of the real crosses of her daughter's life was
+sorrowful pity for Chris's optimistic delusions.
+
+The young Liggetts had sold the old house of Christopher's father, an
+immense brownstone mansion a few squares away, and lived in a modern,
+flat-faced gray-stone house that rose five stories from the beautifully
+arranged basement entrance. There were stone benches at the entrance,
+and a great iron grill, and two potted trees, and the small square
+windows were leaded, and showed blossoming plants inside. The three long
+windows above gave upon a little-used formal drawing-room, with a Gothic
+fireplace of white stone at one end, and a dim jumble of rich colours
+and polished surfaces between that and the big piano at the other. The
+room at the back, on this floor, was an equally large and formal
+dining-room, gleaming with carved mahogany and fretted plate, used only
+on the rare occasions of a dinner-party.
+
+But on the floor above the gracious mistress of the house had her
+domain, and here there was enough beauty and colour to make the whole
+house live. The front room, cool all summer because it faced north, and
+warm all winter, because of the great open fireplace that augmented the
+furnace heat, was Alice's sitting-room; comfortable, beautiful, and
+exquisitely ordered. None of the usual clutter of the invalid was there.
+The fireplace was of plain creamy tiling, the rugs dull-toned upon a
+dark, polished floor. There were only two canvases on the dove-gray
+walls, and the six or seven photographs that were arranged together on
+the top of one of the low, plain, built-in bookcases, were framed alike.
+There were no meaningless vases, no jars or trays or plaques or
+ornaments in Alice's room. Her flowers she liked to see in shining glass
+bowls; her flat-topped desk was severely bare.
+
+But the cretonne that dressed her big comfortable chairs and her couch
+was bright with roses and parrots and hollyhocks, and the same cretonne,
+with plain net undercurtaining, hung at her four front windows. The room
+was big enough to accommodate besides, even with an air of space and
+simplicity, the little grand piano that Christopher played for her
+almost every night. A great Persian tortoise-shell cat was at home here,
+and sometimes Alice had her magnificent parrot besides, hanging himself
+upside down on his gaily-painted stand, and veiling the beady, sharp eye
+with which he watched her. The indulgent extravagance of her mother had
+bound all the books that Alice loved in the same tone of stony-blue
+vellum, the countless cushions with which the aching back was so
+skillfully packed were of the same dull tone, and it pleased the persons
+who loved her to amuse the prisoner sometimes with a ring in which her
+favourite note was repeated, or a chain of old lapis-lazuli that made
+Alice's appreciative blue eyes more blue.
+
+Back of Alice's room was a den in which Christopher could conduct much
+of his personal business, and beyond that was the luxurious bathroom, a
+modern miracle of enamel tiling and shining glass. Across the
+sun-flooded back of the house were Alice's little bedroom, nunlike in
+its rigid austerity, her nurse's room adjoining, and a square sun-room,
+giving glimpses of roofs and trim back-gardens, full of flowers, with a
+little fountain and goldfish, a floor of dull pink tiling, and plants in
+great jars of Chinese enamel. Christopher had planned this delightful
+addition to Alice's domain only a few years ago, and, with that
+knowledge of her secret heart that only Christopher could claim, had let
+her share the pleasure of designing and arranging it. It stretched out
+across the west side of the spacious backyard, almost touching the
+branches of the great plane tree, and when, after the painful move to
+her mother's house, and the necessary absence during the building of it,
+Alice had been brought back to this new evidence of their love and
+goodness, she had buried her face against Christopher's shoulder, and
+told him that she didn't think people with all the world to wander in
+had ever had anything lovelier than this!
+
+One of the paintings that Alice might look at idly, in the silence of
+the winter noon, was of a daisied meadow, stretching between walls of
+heavy summer woodland to the roof of a half-buried farmhouse in the
+valley below. The other picture was of the very mother who was coming
+toward Alice now, in the jolting omnibus. But it was a younger mother,
+and a younger Alice, that had been captured by the painter's genius. It
+was a stout, imperious, magnificently gowned woman, of not much more
+than thirty, in whose spreading silk lap a fair little girl was sitting.
+This little earnest-eyed child was Alice at seven. The splendid,
+dark-eyed, proud-looking boy of about fourteen, who stood beside the
+mother, was Teddy, her only son, dead now for many years, and perhaps
+mercifully dead. The fourth and last person pictured was the elder
+daughter, Annie, who had been about nine years old then, Alice
+remembered. Annie and Alice had been unusually alike, even for sisters,
+but even then Annie's fair, aristocratic type of blonde prettiness had
+been definite where Alice's was vague, and Annie's expression had been
+just a trifle haughty and discontented where Alice's was always grave
+and sweet. Annie had almost been a beauty, she was extremely and
+conspicuously good-looking even now, when as Mrs. Hendrick von Behrens,
+wife of a son of an old and wealthy Knickerbocker family, she was
+supreme in the very holy of holies of the city's social life.
+
+Mrs. Melrose came unannounced upon her daughter to-day, and Alice's
+colourless warm cheek flushed with happiness under her mother's fresh,
+cold kiss.
+
+"Mummy--you darling! But how did you get here? Miss Slater says that the
+streets are absolutely impassable!"
+
+"I came in the 'bus, dear," Mrs. Melrose said, very much pleased with
+herself. "How warm and comfy you are in here, darling. But what did I
+interrupt?"
+
+"You didn't interrupt anything," Alice said, quickly. "Chris telephoned,
+and he's bringing Henrici--the Frenchman who wrote that play I loved
+so--to tea. Isn't that fun? I'm so excited--and I think Chris was such a
+duck to get hold of him. I was translating it, you know, and Bowditch,
+who was here for dinner last night, told me he'd place it, if I finished
+it. And now I can talk it over with Henrici himself--thanks to Chris!
+Chris met my man at the club, and told him about me, and he said he
+would be charmed. So I telephoned several persons, and I tried to get
+hold of Annie----"
+
+"Annie has a lunch--and a board meeting at the hospital at four,"
+Annie's mother remembered, "and Leslie is at a girls' luncheon
+somewhere. Annie had breakfast with me, and was rushing off afterward.
+She's quite wonderfully faithful about those things."
+
+"Well, but you'll stay for lunch and tea, too, Mummy?" Alice pleaded.
+She was lying back in her pillows, feasting her eyes upon her mother's
+face with that peculiarly tense devotion that was part of her nature.
+Rarely did a day pass without their meeting, and no detail touching
+Annie's life, Annie's boys or husband, was too small to interest Alice.
+She was especially interested, too, in Leslie, the eighteen-year-old
+daughter that her brother Theodore had left to his mother's care; in
+fact, between the mother and daughters, the one granddaughter and two
+little grandsons, and the two sons-in-law of the Melrose family, a deep
+bond existed, a bond of pride as well as affection. It was one of their
+favourite boasts that to the Melroses the unity and honour of the family
+was the first consideration in the world.
+
+But to-day Mrs. Melrose could not stay. At one o'clock she left Alice to
+be put into her prettiest robe by the devoted Miss Slater, saw with
+satisfaction that preparations for tea were noiselessly under way,
+called Regina, odorous of tea and mutton chops, from the pantry, and
+went out into the quiet cold of the winter noon.
+
+The old Melrose house was a substantial, roomy, brownstone building in
+Madison Avenue, inconspicuous perhaps among several notoriously handsome
+homes, but irreproachably dignified none the less. A few blocks below it
+the commercial current of East Thirty-fourth Street ebbed and flowed; a
+few blocks north the great facade of the Grand Central Station shut off
+the street completely. Third Avenue, behind it, swarmed and rattled
+alarmingly close, and Broadway flared its impudent signs only five
+minutes' walk in the other direction, but here, in a little oasis of
+quiet street, two score of old families serenely held their place
+against the rising tide, and among them the Melroses confidently felt
+themselves valued and significant.
+
+Mrs. Melrose mounted her steps with the householder's secret
+complacency. They were scrupulously brushed of the last trace of snow,
+and the heavy door at the top swung noiselessly open to admit her. She
+suddenly realized that she was very tired, that her fur coat was heavy,
+and her back ached. She swept straight to the dark old curving stairway,
+and mounted slowly.
+
+"Joseph," she said over her shoulder, "send luncheon upstairs, please.
+And when Miss Leslie comes in, tell her I should like to see her, if it
+isn't too late. Anybody coming to-night?"
+
+"Mr. von Behrens telephoned that he and Mr. Liggett might come in for a
+moment, on his way to the banquet at the Waldorf, Madam. But that was
+all."
+
+"I may have dinner upstairs, too, if Leslie is going anywhere," Mrs.
+Melrose said to herself, mounting slowly. And it seemed to her fatigue
+very restful to find her big room warm and orderly, her coal fire
+burning behind the old-fashioned steel rods, all the homely,
+comfortable treasures of her busy years awaiting her. She sank into a
+chair, and Regina flew noiselessly about with slippers and a loose silk
+robe. Presently a maid was serving smoking-hot bouillon, and Mrs.
+Melrose felt herself relaxed and soothed; it was good to be home.
+
+Yet there was trace of uneasiness, of something almost like
+apprehension, in the look that wandered thoughtfully about the
+overcrowded room. Presently she reached a plump, well-groomed hand
+toward the bell. But when Regina came to stand expectantly near her,
+Mrs. Melrose roused herself from a profound abstraction to assure her
+that she had not rung--it must have been a mistake.
+
+"Miss Leslie hasn't come in?"
+
+"Not yet, Madam, Miss Melrose is at Miss Higgins's luncheon."
+
+"Yes; but it was an early luncheon," the grandmother said,
+discontentedly. "She was playing squash, or tennis, or something!
+Regina----"
+
+"Yes, Madam?"
+
+But Mrs. Melrose was musing again.
+
+"Regina, I am expecting a caller at four o'clock, a Mrs. Sheridan.
+Please see that she is shown up at once. I want to see her here. And
+please----"
+
+A pause. Regina waited.
+
+"That's all!" her mistress announced, suddenly.
+
+Alone again, the old lady stirred her tea, ruminated for a few moments
+with narrowed eyes fixed on space, recalled herself to her surroundings,
+and finished her cup.
+
+Her room was large, filled with chairs and tables, lamps and cushions,
+silver trays and lacquer boxes, vases and jars and bowls, gift books
+and current magazines. There was not an unbroken inch of surface
+anywhere, the walls were closely set with pictures of all sorts. Along
+the old-fashioned mantel, a scalloped, narrow shelf of marble, was a
+crowding line of photographs in silver frames, and there were other
+framed photographs all about the room. There were the young mothers of
+the late eighties, seated to best display their bustles and their French
+twists, with heavy-headed infants in their tightly cased arms, and there
+were children's pictures, babes in shells, in swings, or leaning on
+gates. There were three Annies: one in ringlets, plaid silk, and
+tasselled boots, at eight; one magnificent in drawing-room plumes; and a
+recent one, a cloudy study of the severely superb mother, with a
+sleek-headed, wide-collared boy on each side of her. There was a
+photograph of the son Theodore, handsome, sullen, dressed in the fashion
+of the opening century, and there was more than one of Theodore's
+daughter, the last of the Melroses. Leslie had been a wide-eyed, sturdy
+little girl who carried a perpetually surprised, even a babyish
+expression into her teens, but her last pictures showed the debutante,
+the piquant and charming eighteen-year-old, whose knowingly tipped hat
+and high fur collar left only a glimpse of pretty and pouting face
+between.
+
+Leslie came in upon her grandmother at about three o'clock. She was
+genuinely tired, after an athletic morning at the club, a luncheon amid
+a group of chattering intimates, and a walk with the young man whose
+attentions to her were thrilling not only her grandmother and aunts, but
+the cool-blooded little Leslie herself. Acton Liggett was Christopher's
+only brother, only relative indeed, and promised already to be as great
+a favourite as the irresistible Chris himself. Both were rich, both
+fine-looking, straightforward, honourable men, proud of their own
+integrity, their long-established family, and their old firm. Acton was
+pleasantly at home in the Melrose, Liggett, and Von Behrens houses, the
+very maids loved him, and his quiet singling out of Leslie for his
+devotion had satisfied everyone's sense of what was fitting and
+delightful. Pretty Leslie, back from a summer's idling with Aunt Annie
+and the little boys, in California and Hawaii, had found Acton's
+admiration waiting for her, with all the other joys of her debutante
+winter.
+
+And even the critical Aunt Annie had to admit that the little minx was
+managing the whole matter with consummate skill. Leslie was not in the
+least self-conscious with Acton; she turned to him with all the artless
+confidence of a little sister. She asked him about her dancing partners,
+and about her gowns, and she discussed with him all the various bits of
+small gossip that concerned their own friends.
+
+"Should I have said that, Acton?" she would ask, trustfully. "Shall I be
+Marion's bridesmaid? Would you?--after I refused Linda Fox, you know. I
+don't like to dance with Louis Davis, after what you told me; what shall
+I do when he comes up to me?"
+
+Acton was twenty-five, seven years her senior. He advised her earnestly,
+over many a confidential cup of tea. And just lately, the grandmother
+noticed exultantly, hardly a day passed that did not find the young
+couple together.
+
+"How did Acton happen to meet you, lovey?" she asked to-day, _apropos_
+of the walk.
+
+"Why, he telephoned Vesta Higgins's, and asked me how I was going to get
+home. I said, walk. There was no use trying motor-cars, anyway, for they
+were slipping and bumping terribly! He said he was in the neighbourhood,
+and he came up. Granny----"
+
+She paused, and her grandmother was conscious of a quickened heart-beat.
+The thoughtful almost tremulous tone was not like giddy little Leslie.
+
+"Granny," the girl repeated, presently, "how old was my mother when she
+got married?"
+
+"About twenty-two," the old woman said.
+
+"And how old was Aunt Annie when she did?"
+
+"Annie's about thirty-seven," her mother considered. "She was about
+twenty-five. But why, dear?"
+
+"Nothing," said Leslie, and fell silent.
+
+She was still in the silk blouse and short homespun skirt that she had
+worn at the athletic club luncheon, but she had thrown aside her loose
+woolly coat, and the narrow furs that were no softer than her own fair
+skin. Flung back into a deep chair, and relaxed after her vigorous day,
+she looked peculiarly childish and charming, her grandmother thought.
+She was like both her aunts, with Annie's fair, almost ashen hair and
+Alice's full, pretty mouth. But she was more squarely built than either,
+and a hint of a tip, at the end of her nose, gave her an expression at
+once infantile and astonished. When Leslie opened her blue eyes widely,
+and stared at anything, she looked like an amazed baby, and the effect
+of her round eyes and tilted nose was augmented by her very fair skin,
+and by just a sixteenth of an inch shortness in her upper lip. Of course
+she knew all this. Her acquaintance with her own good and bad points had
+begun in school days, and while through her grandmother's care her
+teeth were being straightened, and her eyes and throat subjected to mild
+forms of surgery, her Aunt Annie had seen to it that her masses of fair
+hair had been burnished and groomed, her hands scraped and polished into
+beauty, and finally that her weight was watched with scrupulous care.
+Nature had perhaps intended Leslie to be plump and ruddy, but modern
+fashion had decreed otherwise, and, with half the girls of her own age
+and set, Leslie took saccharine in her tea, rarely touched sweets or
+fried food, and had the supreme satisfaction of knowing that she was
+actually too slim and too willowy for her height, and interestingly
+colourless into the bargain.
+
+Could Acton possibly have said anything definite to start this unusual
+train of thought, the grandmother speculated. With Leslie so
+felicitously married, she would have felt ready for her _nunc dimittis_.
+She watched Leslie expectantly. But the girl was apparently dreaming,
+and was staring absently at the tip of one sturdy oxford above which a
+stretch of thick white woollen stocking was visible almost to her knee.
+
+"How can they fall in love with them, dressed like Welsh peasants!" the
+grandmother said to herself, in mild disapproval. And aloud she said:
+"Ah, don't, lovey!"
+
+For Leslie had taken out a small gold case, and was regarding it
+thoughtfully.
+
+"My first to-day, on my honour!" Leslie said, as she lazily lighted a
+sweet-scented cigarette. It never occurred to her to pay any attention
+to her grandmother's protest, for Grandmother had been regularly
+protesting against everything Leslie had done since her adored and
+despotic childhood. She had fainted when Leslie had dived off the dock
+at Newport, and had wept when Leslie had galloped through the big iron
+gates on her own roan stallion; she had called in Christopher, as
+Leslie's guardian, when Leslie, at fifteen, had calmly climbed into one
+of the big cars, and driven it seven miles, alone and unadvised, and
+totally without instruction or experience. Leslie knew that this
+half-scandalized and wholly-admiring opposition was one of her
+grandmother's secret satisfactions, and she combatted it only
+mechanically.
+
+"Have one, Grandma?"
+
+"Have one--you wild girl you! I'd like to know what a nice young man
+thinks when a refined girl offers him----"
+
+"All the nice young men are smoking themselves, like chimneys!"
+
+"Ah, but that's a very different thing. No, my dear, no man, whether he
+smokes himself or not, likes to have a sweet, womanly girl descend----"
+
+"Darling, didn't you ever do anything that my revered great-grandmother
+Murison disapproved of?" Leslie teased, dropping on her knees before her
+grandmother, and resting her arms on her lap.
+
+"Smoke----! My mother would have fainted," said Mrs. Melrose. "And don't
+blow that nasty-smelling stuff in my face!"
+
+But she could not resist the pleasure that the lovely young face, so
+near her own, gave her, and she patted it with her soft, wrinkled hand.
+Suddenly Leslie jumped up eagerly, listening to the sound of voices in
+the hall.
+
+"There's Aunt Annie--oh, goody! I wanted to ask her----"
+
+But it was Regina who opened the door, showing in two callers. The first
+was a splendid-looking woman of perhaps forty-five, with a rosy,
+cheerful face, and wide, shrewd gray eyes shining under a somewhat
+shabby mourning veil. With her was a pretty girl of eighteen, or perhaps
+a little more.
+
+Leslie glanced astonished at her grandmother. It was extremely unusual
+to have callers shown in in this unceremonious fashion, even if she had
+been rather unprepossessed by these particular callers. The younger
+woman's clothing, indeed, if plain, was smart and simple; her severe
+tailor-made had a collar of beaver fur to relieve its dark blue, and her
+little hat of blue beaver felt was trimmed only by a band of the same
+fur. She had attractive dark-blue eyes and a flashing smile.
+
+But her companion's comfortable dowdiness, her black cotton gloves, her
+squarely built figure, and worn shoes, all awakened a certain contempt
+in the granddaughter of the house, and caused Leslie shrewdly to surmise
+that these humble strangers were pensioners of her grandmother, the
+older one probably an old servant.
+
+"Kate Sheridan!" Old Mrs. Melrose had gotten to her feet, and had put
+her arm about the visitor. "Well, my dear, my dear, I've not seen you
+these----What is it? Don't tell me how many years it is! And which
+daughter is this?"
+
+"This is my niece, Norma," the older woman said, in a delightful rich
+voice that was full of easy confidence and friendliness. "This is Mrs.
+Melrose, Norma, darling, that was such a good friend to me and mine
+years ago!"
+
+"No warmer friend than you were to me, Kate," the old lady said,
+quickly, still keeping an arm about the sturdy figure. "This is my
+granddaughter, Theodore's little girl," Mrs. Melrose added, catching
+Leslie with her free hand.
+
+Leslie was not more of a snob than is natural to a girl of her age and
+upbringing, but she could not but give Mrs. Sheridan a pretty cool
+glance. Grandmother's old friends were all very well----
+
+But Mrs. Sheridan was studying her with affectionate freedom.
+
+"And isn't she Miss Alice's image! But she's like you all--she's like
+Mr. Theodore, too, especially through the eyes!"
+
+And she turned back to her hostess, interested, animated, and as
+oblivious to Leslie's hostile look as if the girl were her own picture
+on the wall.
+
+"And you and my Norma must know each other," she said, presently,
+watching the girls as they shook hands, with a world of love and
+solicitude in her eyes.
+
+"Sit down, both you two," Mrs. Melrose said. Leslie glanced at the
+strapped watch at her wrist.
+
+"Grandmother, I really----" she began.
+
+"No, you don't really!" her grandmother smiled. "Talk to Miss Sheridan
+while I talk"--she turned smiling to her old friend--"to Kate! Tell me,
+how are you all, Kate? And where are you all--you were in Detroit?"
+
+"We've been in New York more than two years now, and why I haven't been
+to see you before, perhaps _you_ can tell me, for _I_ can't!" Kate
+Sheridan said. "But my boy is a great big fellow now; Wolf's
+twenty-four, and Rose is twenty-one, and this one," she nodded toward
+Norma, who was exchanging comments on the great storm with Leslie, "this
+one is nearly nineteen! And you see they're all working: Wolf's doing
+wonderfully with a firm of machine manufacturers, in Newark, and Rose
+has been with one real estate firm since we came. And Norma here works
+in a bookstore, up the Avenue a bit, Biretta's."
+
+"Why, I go in there nearly every week!" the old lady said.
+
+"She told me the other night that she had been selling some books to Mr.
+Christopher Liggett, and that's Miss Alice's husband, I hear," said Mrs.
+Sheridan. "She's in what they call the Old Book Room," she added,
+lowering her voice. "She's wonderful about books, reads them, and knows
+them as if they were children--they think the world of her in there! And
+I keep house for the three of them, and what with this and that--I never
+have any time!"
+
+"But you have someone to help you, Kate?" the old lady asked, with her
+amused and affectionate eyes on the other's wholesome face.
+
+"Why would I?" demanded Mrs. Sheridan, roundly. "The girls are a great
+help----"
+
+"She always assumes a terrific brogue the minute you ask her why we
+don't have someone in to help her," Norma contributed, with a sort of
+shy and loving audacity. "She'll tell you in a minute that faith, she
+and her sister used to run barefoot over the primroses, and they
+blooming beyond anything the Lord ever created, and the spring on
+them----"
+
+Leslie Melrose laughed out suddenly, in delighted appreciation, and the
+tension between the two girls was over. They had not quite known how to
+talk to each other; Norma naturally assuming that Leslie looked down
+upon a seller of books, and anxious to show her that she was unconscious
+of either envy or inferiority, and Leslie at a loss because her usual
+social chatter was as foreign here as a strange tongue would be. But no
+type is quicker to grasp upon amusement, and to appreciate the amuser,
+than Leslie's, unable to amuse itself, and skilled in seeking for
+entertainment. She was too shy to ask Norma to imitate her aunt again,
+but her stiffness relaxed, and she asked Norma if it was not great "fun"
+to sell things--especially at Christmas, for instance. Norma asked in
+turn if Mr. Liggett was not Leslie's uncle, and said that she had sold
+him hundreds of beautiful books for his wife, and had even had a note
+from Leslie's Aunt Alice, thanking her for some little courtesy.
+
+"But isn't that funny!" Leslie said, with her childish widening of the
+eyes. "That you should know Chris!"
+
+"Well, now," said Mrs. Sheridan's voice, cutting across both
+conversations, "where can these girls go for about fifteen minutes? I'll
+tell you my little bit of business, Mrs. Melrose, and then Norma and I
+will go along. It won't take me fifteen minutes, for there's nothing to
+decide to-day," the girls heard her add, comfortably, as they went into
+the hall.
+
+"Leslie!" her grandmother called after her. "If you must change,
+dear--but wait a minute, is that Aunt Annie out there?"
+
+"No, Grandma, just ourselves. What were you going to say?"
+
+"I was going to say, lovey, that you could ask Miss Sheridan to wait in
+the library; her aunt tells me she is fond of books." Mrs. Melrose did
+not quite like to commit Leslie to entertaining the strange girl for
+perhaps half an hour. She was pleasantly reassured by Leslie's answering
+voice:
+
+"We'll have tea in my room, Grandma. Marion and Doris may come in!"
+
+"That's right, have a good time!" her grandmother answered. And then
+settling back comfortably, she added with her kind, fussy superiority,
+"Well, Kate, I've wondered where you were hiding yourself all this time!
+Let's have the business. But first I want to say that I appreciate your
+turning to me. If it's money--I've got it. If it's something else, Chris
+Liggett is one of the cleverest men in New York, and we'll consult him."
+
+"It's not money, thank God!" Mrs. Sheridan said, in her forthright
+voice. "Lord knows where it all comes from, these days, but the children
+always have plenty," she added, glad of a diversion. "They bought
+themselves a car two years ago, and if it isn't a Victrola this week,
+it's a thermos bottle, or a pair of white buckskin shoes! Rose told me
+she paid eight dollars for her corsets. 'Eight dollars for what,' I
+said, 'a dozen?' But then I've the two houses in Brooklyn, you know----"
+
+"You still have those?"
+
+"I have, indeed. And even the baby--we call Norma the baby--is earning
+good money now."
+
+"She has your name, Kate--Sheridan. Had your husband a brother?"
+
+Kate Sheridan's face grew a trifle pale. She glanced at the door to see
+that it was shut, and at the one to the adjoining room to make sure
+that it was closed also. Then she turned to Mrs. Melrose, and it was an
+anxious glance she directed at the older woman.
+
+"Well, now, there's no hurry about this," she began, "and you may say
+that it's all nonsense, and send me packing--and God knows I hope you
+will! But it just began to get on my mind--and I've never been a great
+one to worry! I'll begin at the beginning----"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Marion Duer and Doris Alexander duly arrived for tea with Leslie, and
+Norma was introduced. They all sat in Leslie's room, and laughed as they
+reached for crumpets, and marvelled at the storm. Norma found them
+rather younger than their years, and shyly anxious to be gracious. On
+her part she realized with some surprise that they were not really
+unapproachable, and that Leslie was genuinely anxious to take her to tea
+with Aunt Alice some day, and have them "talk books and things." The
+barriers between such girls as this one and herself, Norma was honest
+enough to admit, were largely of her own imagining. They were neither so
+contemptibly helpless nor so scornfully clever as she had fancied them;
+they were just laughing girls, absorbed in thoughts of gowns and
+admirers and good times, like her cousin Rose and herself.
+
+There had been perhaps one chance in one hundred that she and Leslie
+Melrose might at once become friends, but by fortunate accident that
+chance had favoured them. Leslie's spontaneous laugh in Mrs. Melrose's
+room, her casual mention of tea, her appreciative little phrases as she
+introduced to Marion and Doris the young lady who picked out books for
+Aunt Alice, had all helped to crush out the vaguely hostile impulse
+Norma Sheridan had toward rich little members of a society she only knew
+by hearsay. Norma had found herself sitting on Leslie's big velvet
+couch laughing and chatting quite naturally, and where Norma chatted
+naturally the day was won. She could be all friendliness, and all
+sparkle and fun, and presently Leslie was listening to her in actual
+fascination.
+
+The butler announced a motor-car, a maid came up; Doris and Marion had
+to go. Leslie and Norma went into Leslie's dressing-room, and Leslie's
+maid went obsequiously to and fro, and the girls talked almost
+intimately as they washed their hands and brushed their hair. Neither
+cared that the time was passing.
+
+But the time was passing none the less. Five o'clock came with a pale
+and uncertain sunset, and a cold twilight began to settle over the snowy
+city. Leslie and Norma came back to the fire, and were standing there, a
+trifle uncertainly, but still talking hard and fast, when there was an
+interruption.
+
+They looked at each other, paling. What was that?
+
+There was utter silence in the old house. Leslie, with a frightened look
+at Norma, ran to the hall door. As she opened it Mrs. Sheridan opened
+the door of her grandmother's room opposite, and called, quite loudly:
+
+"It's nothing, dear! Get hold of your grandmother's maid--somebody! She
+feels a little--but she's quite all right!"
+
+Leslie and Norma ran across the hall, and into Mrs. Melrose's room. By
+this time Regina had come flying in, and two of the younger maids, and
+Joseph had run upstairs. Leslie had only one glimpse of her grandmother,
+leaning against Regina's arm, and drinking from a glass of water that
+shook in the maid's hands. Then Mrs. Sheridan guided both herself and
+Norma firmly into the hall, and reassured them cheerfully:
+
+"The room was very hot, dear, and your grandmother said that she had
+gotten tired, walking in the wind. She's quite all right--you can go in
+immediately. No; she didn't faint--she just had a moment of dizziness,
+and called out."
+
+Regina came out, too evidently convinced that she had to deal with a
+murderess, and coldly asked that Mrs. Sheridan would please step back
+for a minute. Mrs. Sheridan immediately complied, but it was hardly more
+than a minute when she joined the girls again.
+
+"She wants to see you, dear," she said to Leslie, whose first frightened
+tears had dried from bewilderment and curiosity, "and we must hurry on.
+Come, Norma, we'll say good-night!"
+
+"Good-night, Miss Melrose," Norma said.
+
+"Good-night," Leslie answered, hesitating over the name. Her wide
+babyish smile, the more appealing because of her wet lashes, made a
+sudden impression upon Norma's heart. Leslie hung childishly on the
+upstairs balustrade, in the dim wide upper hall, and watched them go.
+"I--I almost called you Norma!" she confessed, mischievously.
+
+"I wish you had!" Norma called up from below. She was in great spirits
+as they went out into the deepening cold blue of the street, and almost
+persuaded her aunt to take the omnibus up the Avenue. But Mrs. Sheridan
+protested rather absent-mindedly against this extravagance. They were
+close to the subway and that was quicker.
+
+Norma could not talk in the packed and swaying train, and when they
+emerged at Sixty-fifth Street they had only one slippery, cold, dark
+block to walk. But when they had reached the flat, and snapped on
+lights everywhere, and cast off outer garments, aproned and busy, in the
+kitchen, she burst out:
+
+"What on earth was the matter with that old lady, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose they all eat too much, and sleep too much, and pamper
+themselves as if they were babies," her aunt returned, composedly, "and
+so it doesn't take much to upset 'em!"
+
+"Oh, come now!" the girl said, stopping with arrested knife. "That
+wasn't what made her let out a yell like that!"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan, kneeling at the oven of the gas stove, laughed uneasily.
+
+"Oh, you could hear that, could you?"
+
+"Hear it! They heard it in Yonkers."
+
+"Well," Mrs. Sheridan said, "she has always been high-strung, that one.
+I remember years ago she'd be going into crying and raving fits. She's
+got very deep affections, Mrs. Melrose, and when she gets thinking of
+Theodore, and of Alice's accident, and this and that, she'll go right
+off the handle. She had been crying, poor soul, and suddenly she began
+this moaning and rocking. I told her I'd call someone if she didn't
+stop, for she'd go from bad to worse, with me."
+
+"But why with you, Aunt Kate? Do you know her so well?"
+
+"Do I know them?" Mrs. Sheridan dug an opener into a can of corn with a
+vigorous hand. "I know them all!"
+
+"But how was that?" Norma persisted, now dropping her peeled potatoes
+into dancing hot water.
+
+"I've told you five thousand times, but you and Rose would likely have
+one of your giggling fits on, and not a word would you remember!" her
+aunt said. "I've told you that years ago, when your Uncle Tom died, and
+I was left with two babies, and not much money, a friend of mine, a
+milliner she was, told me that she knew a lady that wanted someone to
+help manage her affairs--household affairs. Well, I'd often helped your
+Uncle Tom with his books, and my mother was with me, to look out for the
+children----"
+
+"Where was I, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"You! Wolf wasn't but three, and Rose a year old--where would you be?"
+
+"I was minus two years," Norma said, sententiously. "I was part of the
+cosmic all----"
+
+"You be very careful how you talk about such things until you're a
+married woman!" her aunt said. "Salt those potatoes, darling. Norma, can
+you remember what I did with the corn that Rose liked so?"
+
+Norma was attentive.
+
+"You beat it up with eggs, and it came out a sort of puff," she
+recalled. "I know--you put a little cornstarch in, to give it body!
+Listen, Aunt Kate, how long did you stay with Mrs. Melrose?"
+
+"Well, first I just watched her help for her, and paid the bills, and
+went to market. And then I got gradually managing more and more; I'd go
+to pay her interest, or deposit money, or talk to tenants; I liked it
+and she liked me. And then she talked me into going to France with her,
+but I cried all the way for my children, and I was glad enough to come
+home again! She and Miss Annie spent some time over there, but I came
+back. Miss Alice was in school, and Theodore--dear knows where he
+was--into some mischief somewhere! But I'd saved money, and she'd given
+me the Brooklyn houses, and I took a boarder or two, and that was the
+last I ever worked for any one but my own!"
+
+"Well, that's a nice girl, that Leslie," Norma said, "if her father
+_was_ wild!"
+
+"Her mother was a good girl," Kate said, "I knew her. But the old lady
+was proud, Baby--God save any one of us from pride like that! You'd
+never know it, to see her now, but she was very proud. Theodore's wife
+was a good girl, but she was Miss Annie's maid, and what Mrs. Melrose
+never could forgive was that when she ordered the girl out of the house,
+she showed her her wedding certificate. She was Mrs. Theodore Melrose,
+fast enough--though his mother never would see her or acknowledge her in
+any way."
+
+"They must think the Lord has made a special arrangement for
+them--people like that!" Norma commented, turning a lovely flushed face
+from the pan where she was dexterously crisping bacon. "What business is
+it of hers if her son marries a working girl? That gives me a feeling
+akin to pain--just because she happens to have a lot of money! What does
+Miss Leslie Melrose think of that?"
+
+"I don't know what she thinks--she loves her grandmother, I suppose.
+Mrs. Melrose took her in when she was only a tiny girl, and she's been
+the apple of her eye ever since. Theodore and his wife were divorced,
+and when Leslie was about four or five he came back to his mother to
+die--poor fellow! It was a terrible sorrow to the old lady--she'd had
+her share, one way and another! My goodness, Norma," Mrs. Sheridan
+interrupted herself to say, in half-reproachful appreciation, "I wish
+you'd always help me like this, my dear! You can be as useful as ten
+girls, when you've a mind to! And then perhaps to-morrow you'll be as
+contrary----!"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Kate, aren't you ashamed! When I ironed all your dish-towels
+last night, when you were setting bread, and I made the popovers
+Sunday!" Norma kissed her aunt, brushed a dab of cornstarch from the
+older woman's firm cheek, and performed a sort of erratic dance about
+the protestant and solid figure. "I'm a poor working girl," she said,
+"and I get dragged out with my long, hard day!"
+
+"Well, God knows that's true, too," her aunt said, with a sudden look of
+compunction; "you may make a joke of it, but it's no life for a girl. My
+dear," she added, seriously, holding Norma with a firm arm, and looking
+into her eyes, "I hope I did no harm by what I did to-day! I did it for
+the best, whatever comes of it."
+
+"You mean stirring up the whole thing?" Norma asked, frowning a little
+in curiosity and bewilderment. "Going to see her?"
+
+"That--yes." Mrs. Sheridan rubbed her forehead with her hand, a fashion
+she had when puzzled or troubled, and suddenly resumed, with a great
+rattling of pans and hissing of water, her operations at the sink.
+"Well, nothing may come of it--we'll see!" she added, briskly. Norma,
+who was watching her expectantly, sighed disappointedly; the subject was
+too evidently closed. But a second later she was happily distracted by
+the slamming of the front door; Wolf and Rose Sheridan had come in
+together, and dinner was immediately served.
+
+Norma recounted, with her own spirited embellishments, her adventures of
+the afternoon as the meal progressed. She had had "fun" getting to the
+office in the first place, a man had helped her, and they had both
+skidded into another man, and bing!--they had all gone down on the ice
+together. And then at the shop nobody had come in, and the lights had
+been lighted, and the clerks had all gathered together and talked. Then
+Aunt Kate had come in to have lunch, and to have Norma go with her to
+the gas company's office about the disputed charge, and they had decided
+to make, at last, that long-planned call on the Melroses. There followed
+a description of the big house and the spoiled, pretty girl, and the
+impressive yet friendly old lady.
+
+"And Aunt Kate--I'm sorry to say!--talked her into a nervous convulsion.
+You did, Aunt Kate--the poor old lady gave one piercing yell----"
+
+"You awful girl, there'll be a judgment on you for your impudence!" her
+aunt said, fondly. But Rose looked solicitously at her mother, and said:
+
+"Mother looks as if she had had a nervous convulsion, too. You look
+terribly tired, Mother!"
+
+"Well, I had a little business to discuss with Mrs. Melrose," Mrs.
+Sheridan said, "and I'm no hand for business!"
+
+"You know it!" Wolf Sheridan concurred, with his ready laugh. "Why
+didn't you send me?"
+
+"It was her business, lovey," his mother said, mildly, over her second
+heartening cup of strong black tea.
+
+The Sheridan apartment was, in exterior at least, exactly like one
+hundred thousand others that line the side streets of New York. It faced
+the familiar grimy street, fringed on the great arteries each side by
+cigarette stands and saloons, and it was entered by the usual flight of
+stained and shabby steps, its doorway showing a set of some dozen
+letter-boxes, and looking down upon a basement entrance frequently
+embellished with ash-cans and milk-bottles, and, just at present, with
+banks of soiled and sooty snow. The Sheridans climbed three long flights
+inside, to their own rooms, but as this gained them a glimpse of river,
+and a sense in summer of airiness and height, to say nothing of pleasant
+nearness to the roof, they rarely complained of the stairs--in fact,
+rarely thought of them at all.
+
+With the opening of their own door, however, all likeness to their
+neighbours ceased. Even in a class where home ties and home comforts are
+far more common than is generally suspected, Kate Sheridan was
+exceptional, and her young persons fortunate among their kind. Her
+training had been, she used to tell them, "old country" training, but it
+was not only in fresh linen and hot, good food that their advantage lay.
+It was in the great heart that held family love a divine gift, that had
+stood between them and life's cold realities for some twenty courageous
+years. Kate idolized her own two children and her foster-child with a
+passion that is the purest and the strongest in the world. In possessing
+them, she thought herself the most blessed of women. To keep a roof over
+their heads, to watch them progress triumphantly through long division
+and measles and skates, to see milk glasses emptied and plates scraped,
+to realize that Wolf was as strong morally as he was physically, and
+that all her teachers called Rose an angel, to spoil and adore the
+beautiful, mischievous, and amusing "Baby"; this made a life full to the
+brim, for Kate, of pride and happiness. Kate had never had a servant,
+or a fur coat; for long intervals she had not had a night's unbroken
+rest; and there had been times, when Wolf's fractured arm necessitated a
+doctor's bill, or when coal for the little Detroit house had made a
+disproportionate hole in her bank account, in which even the thrifty
+Kate had known biting financial worry.
+
+But the children never knew it. They knew only her law of service and
+love. They must love each other, whatever happened. There was no
+quarrelling at meals at Kate's house. Rose must of course oblige her
+brother, sew on the button, or take his book to the library; Wolf must
+always protect the girls, and consider them. Wolf firmly believed his
+sister and cousin to be the sweetest girls in the world; Rose and Norma
+regarded Wolf as perfection in human form. They rarely met without
+embraces, never without brightening eyes and light hearts.
+
+That this attitude toward each other was only the result of the healthy
+bodies and honest souls that Kate had given them they would hardly have
+believed. That her resolute training had literally forced them to love
+and depend upon themselves in a world where brothers and sisters as
+habitually teased and annoyed each other, would have struck them as
+fantastic. Perhaps Kate herself hardly knew the power of her own will
+upon them. Her commands in their babyhood had not been couched in the
+language of modern child-analysts, nor had she given, or been able to
+give, any particular reason for her law. But the instinct by which she
+drew Wolf's attention to his sister's goodness, or noted Wolf's
+cleverness for Rose's benefit, was better than any reason. She summed
+the situation up simply for the few friends she had, with the phrase:
+
+"They're all crazy about each other, every one of them!"
+
+Kate's parlour would have caused Annie von Behrens actual faintness. But
+it was a delightful place to Rose and Wolf and their friends. The
+cushioned divan on Sunday nights customarily held a row of them, the
+upright ebony piano sifted popular music impartially upon the taboret,
+the patent rocker, and the Rover rug. They laughed, gossiped, munched
+candy, and experimented in love-making quite as happily as did Leslie
+and her own intimates. They streamed out into the streets, and sauntered
+along under the lights to the moving pictures, or on hot summer nights
+they perched like tiers of birds on the steps, and the world and youth
+seemed sweet to them. In Kate's dining-room, finished in black wood and
+red paper, they made Welsh rarebits and fudge, and in Kate's spotless
+kitchen odours of toast and coffee rose at unseemly hours.
+
+Lately, Rose and Norma had been talking of changes. Rose was employed in
+an office whose severe and beautiful interior decoration had cost
+thousands of dollars, and Norma's Old Book Room was a study in dull
+carved woods, Oriental rugs, dull bronzes, and flawless glass. The girls
+began to feel that a plain cartridge paper and net curtains might well
+replace the parlour's florid green scrolling and Nottingham lace. But
+they did not worry about it; it served as a topic to amuse their leisure
+hours. The subject was generally routed by a shrewd allusion, from Norma
+or Wolf, to the sort of parlour people would like if they got married,
+married to someone who was doing very well in the shoe business, for
+example.
+
+These allusions deepened the colour in Rose's happy face; she had been
+"going" for some three months with an attractive young man who exactly
+met these specifications--not her first admirer, not noticeable for any
+especial quality, yet Rose and Norma, and Kate, too, felt in their souls
+that Rose's hour had come. Young Harry Redding was a big, broad, rather
+inarticulate fellow, whose humble calling was not the more attractive to
+the average young woman because he supported his mother by it. But he
+suited Rose, more, he seemed wonderful to Rose, and because her dreams
+had always been humble and self-sacrificing, Harry was a thousand times
+more than she had dreamed. She felt herself the luckiest girl in the
+world.
+
+Kate sat at the head of her table, and Wolf at the foot. Rose, a gentle,
+quiet copy of her handsome mother, was nearest the kitchen door, to
+which she made constant flying trips. Norma was opposite Rose, and by
+falling back heavily could tip her entire chair against the sideboard,
+from which she extracted forks or salt or candy, as the case might be.
+The telephone was in the dining-room, Wolf's especial responsibility,
+and Mrs. Sheridan herself occasionally left the table for calls to the
+front door or the dumb-waiter.
+
+To-night, after supper, the girls flew through their share of
+clearing-up. It never weighed very heavily upon them; they usually began
+the process of piling and scraping dishes before they left the table,
+Rose whisking the tablecloth into its drawer as Norma bumped through the
+swinging door with the last dishes, and Kate halfway through the washing
+even then. Chattering and busy, they hustled the hot plates onto their
+shelves, rattled the hot plated ware into its basket, clanked saucepans,
+and splashed water. Not fifteen minutes after the serving of the dessert
+the last signs of the meal had been obliterated, and Kate was guilty of
+what the girls called "making excuses" to linger in the kitchen. She was
+mixing cereal, storing cold potatoes and cut bread, soaking dish-towels.
+But these things did not belong to the duties of Norma and Rose, and the
+younger girl could flash with a free conscience to the little room she
+shared with Rose. Wolf had called out for a companion, they were going
+to take a walk and see what the blizzard had done!
+
+Norma washed her face, the velvety skin emerging with its bloom
+untouched, the lips crimson, the blue eyes blazing. She pressed a great
+wave of silky dark hair across her white forehead, and put the
+fur-trimmed hat at a dashing angle. The lace blouse, the pearl beads,
+her fur-collared coat again, and Norma was ready to dance out beside
+Wolf as if fatigue and labours did not exist.
+
+"Where's Rose?" he said, as they went downstairs.
+
+"Oh, Wolf--Saturday night! Harry's coming, of course!" Norma slipped her
+little hand, in its shabby glove, through his big arm. "She and Aunt
+Kate were gossiping!"
+
+"Suits me!" Wolf said, contentedly. He held her firmly on the slippery
+lumps of packed snow. The sidewalks were almost impassable, yet hundreds
+of other happy persons were stumbling and scrambling over them in the
+mild winter darkness. Stars were out; and whether Norma was blinking up
+at them, or staring into lighted windows of candy stores and fruit
+markets, her own eyes danced and twinkled. The elevated trains thundered
+above their heads, and the subway roared under their feet; great
+advertising signs, with thousands of coloured lights, fanned up and down
+in a haze of pink and blue; the air was full of voices, laughing and
+shouting, and the screaming of coasting children.
+
+"I have my pearls on," Norma told her companion. They stopped for some
+molasses peppermints, and their pungent odour mingled for Norma in the
+impression of this happy hour. "Wolf, how do they do that?" the girl
+asked, watching an electric sign on which a maid mopped a dirty floor
+with some prepared cleaner, leaving the floor clean after her mop. Wolf,
+interested, explained, and Norma listened. They stopped at a drug store,
+and studied a picture that subtly altered from Roosevelt's face to
+Lincoln's, and thence to Wilson's face, and Wolf explained that, too.
+Norma knew that he understood everything of that nature, but she liked
+to impress him, too, and did so far more often than she realized, with
+her book-lore. When Norma spoke lightly of a full calf edition de luxe
+of the Sonnets from the Portuguese, she might almost have been speaking
+in that language for all she conveyed to Wolf, but he watched the
+animated face proudly just the same. Rose had always been good and
+steady and thoughtful, but Wolf knew that Norma was clever, taking his
+big-brotherly patronage with admiring awe, but daring where he
+hesitated, and boldly at home where he was ill at ease. When she said
+that when she got married she wanted Dedham china, and just a plain,
+glass bowl for goldfish, Wolf nodded, but he would have nodded just as
+placidly if she had wanted a Turkish corner and bead portieres. And
+to-night when she asserted that she wouldn't be Leslie Melrose for
+anything in the world, Wolf asked in simple wonderment why she should
+be.
+
+"Imagine, a maid came to take those big girls home, Wolf! They can speak
+French," Norma confided. Wolf did not look for coherence from her, and
+took the two statements on their face value. "Now, I know I'm not
+pretty," she continued, following, as was usual with her, some obscure
+line of thought, "but I'm prettier than Doris Alexander, and she had her
+picture in the paper!"
+
+"Who broke it to you that you're not pretty?" Wolf asked.
+
+"Well, I _know_ I'm not!" Norma jumped along at his side for a few
+minutes, eyeing him expectantly, but Wolf's mind was honestly busy with
+this assertion, and he did not speak. Wasn't she pretty? Girls had funny
+standards. "You know," she resumed, "you'd hate a girl like Leslie
+Melrose, Wolf!"
+
+"Would I?"
+
+"Oh, you'd loathe her. But I'll tell you who you _would_ like," Norma
+added, in a sudden burst. "You'd love Mr. Liggett!"
+
+"Why should I?" Wolf asked, in some surprise.
+
+"Oh, because he's nice--he's very good-looking, and he has such a
+pleasant voice, as if he knew everything, but wasn't a bit conceited!"
+Norma said. "And he picks out books for his wife, and when I try to tell
+him something about them, he always knows lots more. You know, in a
+pleasant, careless sort of way, not a bit as if he was showing off. And
+I'll tell you what he did. Miss Drake was showing him a pottery bowl
+one day, and she dropped it, and she told me he sort of caught at it
+with his hand, and he said to Mr. Biretta, 'I've very stupidly broken
+this--just put it on my bill, will you?' Of course," Norma added,
+vivaciously, "old B. G. immediately said that it was nothing at all, but
+_you know_ what Miss Drake would have caught, if _she'd_ broken it!"
+
+Perhaps Wolf did, but he was thinking at the moment that the family baby
+was very cunning, with her bright eyes and indignant mouth. He stopped
+her before a vaudeville house, in a flare of bright light.
+
+"Want to go in?"
+
+"Oh, Wolf! Would Aunt Kate care? Oh, Wolf, _let's_!"
+
+There was absolute ecstasy in her eyes as they went through the
+enchanted doorway and up the rising empty foyer toward the house. It was
+nine o'clock; the performance was fairly under way. Norma rustled into a
+seat beside her companion without moving her eyes from the coloured
+comedian on the stage; she could remove hat and gloves and jacket
+without losing an instant of him.
+
+When the lights went up Wolf approved the dark hair and the pearls, and
+bent toward her to hear the unending confidences. Norma thought she had
+never seen anything better, and even Wolf admitted that it was a good
+show. They finished the peppermints, and were very happy.
+
+They had seen the big film, and so could cut the last third of the
+programme, and reach home at ten o'clock. There was no comment from Aunt
+Kate, who was yawning over the evening paper in the dining-room. Rose
+and Harry were murmuring in the dimly lighted parlour. Wolf, who was of
+the slow-thinking, intense type that discovers a new world every time it
+reads a new book, was halfway through a shabby library copy of "War and
+Peace," and went off to his room with the second volume under his arm.
+Norma went to her room, too, but she sat dreaming before the mirror,
+thinking of that Melrose house, and of Leslie's friendliness, until Rose
+came in at eleven o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At almost this same moment Norma's self was the subject of a rather
+unusual talk between Christopher Liggett and his wife.
+
+Christopher had come softly into his house, at about half-past ten, to
+find Alice awake, still on the big couch before her fire. Her little
+bedroom beyond was softly lighted, the white bed turned down, and the
+religious books she always read before going to sleep laid in place by
+Miss Slater. But Alice had no light except her fire and two or three
+candles in old sconces.
+
+She welcomed Christopher with a smile, and he sat down, in his somewhat
+rumpled evening dress, and smiled back at her in a rather weary fashion.
+He often told her that these rooms of hers were a sanctuary, that he
+tested the men and women he met daily in the world by her fine and lofty
+standard. It was part of his utter generosity to her that he talked to
+her as frankly as if he thought aloud, and it was Alice's pride and joy
+to know that this marriage of theirs, which had so sadly and suddenly
+become no marriage at all, was not as one-sided as the world might have
+suspected. Her clear, dispassionate viewpoint and her dignified
+companionship were not wifehood, but they were dear and valuable to him
+none the less, a part of his life that he would not have spared. And he
+could still admire her, too, not only for the exquisite clearness of her
+intellect, her French and Italian, her knowledge of countries and
+affairs, but physically--the clear, childish forehead that was as
+unwrinkled as Leslie's, the fair, beautifully brushed hair, the mouth
+with its chiselling of wisdom and of pain, and the transparent hand from
+which she shook back transparent laces. She was always proud, always
+fresh and fragrant, always free for him and for his problems, and it was
+proverbial in the circle of their intimates that Chris admired Alice
+with all his heart, and never felt himself anything but the privileged
+guardian of a treasure.
+
+To-night he dropped into a chair before her fire, and she watched him
+for five or six restful minutes in silence.
+
+"Stupid dinner?" she ventured.
+
+"Rotten!" he answered, cheerfully. "I was late, but I got in to hear
+Hendrick's speech. The Vice-President was there, everyone else I knew. I
+cut away finally; I'm done up."
+
+"I thought you picked up Hendrick on your way and went together," Mrs.
+Liggett said, sympathetically. "I'm sorry it was dull--I suppose men
+have to go to these political things!"
+
+Chris was leaning forward, his locked hands dropped between his knees,
+and his eyes on the fire.
+
+"Hendrick and I stopped at your mother's," he said, deliberately, "and
+she was so upset that I sent Hendrick on alone!"
+
+Alice's eyes lighted apprehensively, but she spoke very quietly.
+
+"What was it, Chris? Leslie getting saucy?"
+
+"Oh, no, no! It was a complication of things, I imagine!" Christopher
+took out his cigarette-case, looked at its moire surface reflectively,
+and selected a smoke. "She was tired--she'd been out in the
+snow--Leslie had gone off with Annie to some debutante affair--I daresay
+she felt blue. Alice, do you remember a woman named Kate Sheridan?"
+
+The question was sudden, and Alice blinked.
+
+"Yes, I do," she answered, after a moment's thought, "she was a sort of
+maid or travelling companion of Mama's. We called her Mrs. Sheridan--she
+was quite a superior sort of person."
+
+"What do you remember about her, dear?"
+
+"Well--just that. She came when I was only a child--and then when Annie
+was ill in Paris she went abroad with Mama--and I remember that she came
+back, and she used to come see me at school, for Mama, and once she took
+me up to Grandma's, in Brookline. She was a widow, and she had a
+child--or two, maybe. Why, Chris?"
+
+Her husband did not answer, and she repeated the question.
+
+"Well," he said, at last, flinging the end of his cigarette into the
+fire, "she came to see your mother to-day."
+
+Alice waited, a little at a loss. To her this had no particular
+significance.
+
+"She had her niece with her, young girl about eighteen," Christopher
+said.
+
+"Well--what _of_ it?" Alice demanded, with a sort of superb indifference
+to anything such a woman might do.
+
+He looked at her through his round eyeglasses, with the slight frown
+that many of life's problems brought to his handsome face. Then the
+glass fell, on its black ribbon, and he laughed.
+
+"That's just what I don't _get_," he said, good-humouredly. "But I'll
+tell you exactly what occurred. What's-His-Name, your mother's
+butler----"
+
+"Joseph."
+
+"Joseph. Joseph told me that at about four o'clock this Mrs. Sheridan
+came in. Your mother had told him that she was expecting the lady, and
+that he was to bring her upstairs. With her came this girl--I can't
+remember her name--but it was something Sheridan--Nora Sheridan, maybe.
+Leslie carried the girl off for tea, and the woman stayed with your
+mother.
+
+"Well, at five--or later, this Mrs. Sheridan ran into the hall, and it
+seems--she's all right now!--it seems that your mother had fainted."
+
+"Mama!" Alice said, anxiously, with an incredulous frown.
+
+"Yes, but don't worry. She's absolutely all right now. Leslie,"
+Christopher went back to his narrative, "Leslie cried, and I suppose
+there was a scene. Mrs. Sheridan and the girl went home--Leslie dressed
+and went out--and your mother immediately telephoned Lee----"
+
+"Judge Lee?"
+
+"Yes--she said so. Lee's up in Westchester with his daughter, she
+couldn't get him----"
+
+"But, Chris, why did she want her lawyer?"
+
+"That's just it--_why_? Well, then she telephoned here for me--I was on
+my way there, as it happened, and just before eight Hendrick and I went
+in. I could see she was altogether up stage, so I sent Von on and had it
+out with her."
+
+"And what was her explanation, Chris?"
+
+Christopher laughed again.
+
+"I'll be darned," he said, thoughtfully, "if I can make head or tail of
+it! It would be funny if it wasn't that she's taking it so hard. She was
+in bed, and she had been crying--wouldn't eat any dinner----"
+
+"But, Chris," Alice said, worriedly, "what do you _make_ of it! What did
+she _say_?"
+
+"Well, she clasped my hand, and she said that she had an opportunity to
+undo a great wrong--and that I must help her--and not ask any
+questions--she was just acting as you and I would have her act under the
+circumstances----"
+
+"What circumstances?" Alice said, at an utter loss, as he paused.
+
+"She didn't say," he smiled.
+
+"Oh, come, now, Chris, she must have said more than that!"
+
+"No, she didn't. She said that she must make it up to this girl, and she
+wished to see Lee about it immediately."
+
+"To change her will!" Alice exclaimed.
+
+"She didn't say so. Of course, it may be some sort of blackmail."
+Christopher looked whimsically at his wife. "As I remember my
+father-in-law," he said, "it seems to me improbable that out of the past
+could come this engaging young girl--very pretty, they said----"
+
+"Father! Oh, nonsense!" Alice exclaimed, almost in relief at the
+absurdity. "No, but it might be some business--some claim against the
+firm," she suggested.
+
+"Well, I thought of that. But there are one or two reasons why it
+doesn't seem the solution. I asked your mother if it was money, and she
+said no, said it positively and repeatedly. Then I asked her if she
+would like this Sheridan woman shut up, and she was quite indignant.
+Kate!--Kate was one of the most magnificent women God had ever made, and
+so on!"
+
+"Well, I do remember Mrs. Sheridan as a lovely sort of person," Alice
+contributed. "Plain, you know, but quite wonderful for--well,
+_goodness_. It's funny--but then you know Mama is terribly excitable,"
+she added, "she gets frightfully worked up over nothing, or almost
+nothing. It's quite possible that when Kate recalled old times to her
+she suddenly wished that she had done more for Kate--something like
+that. She'd think nothing of sending for Judge Lee on the spot. You
+remember her recalling us from our wedding-trip because she couldn't
+find the pearls? All the way from Lake Louise to hear that they had been
+lost!"
+
+"I know," Christopher smiled. "She is--unique, _ma belle mere_. By
+George, I'll never forget our rushing into the house like maniacs, not
+knowing what had happened to Leslie or Acton, and having her fall
+sobbing into your arms, with the pearls in her hands!"
+
+"Mama's wonderful," Alice laughed. "Chris, did you eat any dinner?"
+
+He considered.
+
+"But I'm really not hungry, dear," he protested.
+
+Alice, superbly incredulous, rang at once. Who was in the kitchen? Well,
+she was to be asked to send up a tray at once to Mr. Liggett. "Now that
+you asked me, the dinner had reached the point of ice-cream in a paper
+tub, as I sat down," he remembered. "You're a little miracle of healing
+to me, Alice. When I came in here I didn't know _what_ we were up
+against, as a family. Your mother wished the girl pensioned----"
+
+"Oh, Chris, not really?"
+
+"I give you my word!" But he was enough his usual self to have taken his
+seat at the piano, now, and was looking at her across it, while his
+fingers fitted themselves lazily to chords and harmonics.
+
+"I'll tell you something, if you'll promise to stop playing the instant
+your supper comes up!"
+
+"I'll promise!"
+
+"Well, then--the new Puccini is there!" She nodded toward the
+music-shelves, and he turned to the new score with an eager exclamation.
+Fifteen minutes later she had to scold him to bring him to the fire
+again, and to the smoking little supper. While Alice sipped ginger ale,
+Christopher fell upon his meal, and they discussed the probable
+presentation of the opera, and its quality.
+
+But an hour later, when she was in bed, and Christopher was going back
+to the piano for another half-hour of music, she caught his hand.
+
+"Chris, you're not worried about this Sheridan matter?"
+
+"Worried? No, dearest child, what is there to worry about? It isn't
+blackmail, apparently it's nothing but an overdose of imagination on
+your mother's part. If the girl really was promised something, or
+has--for example!--old stock, or if her father was an employee who did
+this or that or the other--Mrs. Sheridan's husband was employed by your
+father at the time of his death, by the way--why, it's easy enough to
+pay the claim, whatever it is! The girl seems to have made a nice
+impression--your mother tells me she's sold me books, but that doesn't
+mean much, I buy books everywhere! No, I don't think you'll ever hear of
+her again. But your mother will be here in a day or two; see what you
+can make of it all!"
+
+"Oh, of course, it's nothing _wrong_!" Alice said, confidently.
+
+And Christopher returned to his beloved piano, relieved in mind by his
+wife's counsel, refreshed in body by the impromptu supper, and ready for
+the music that soothed in him all the restless and unsatisfied fibres of
+his soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Annie, who signed herself "Anne Melrose von Behrens," was the real
+dictator in the various circles of the allied families, and had a
+fashion of finding herself supreme in larger circles, as well. Annie was
+thirty-seven or eight, tall, thin, ash-blonde, superb in manner and
+bearing. Nature had been generous to her, but she had done far more for
+herself than Nature had. Her matchless skin, her figure, her hands, her
+voice, were all the result of painstaking and intelligent care. Annie
+had been a headstrong, undisciplined girl twenty years ago. She had come
+back from a European visit, at twenty-three, with a vague if general
+reputation of being "a terror." But Annie was clever, and she had real
+charm. She spoke familiarly of European courts, had been presented even
+in inaccessible Vienna. She spoke languages, quoted poets, had great
+writers and painters for her friends, and rippled through songs that had
+been indisputably dedicated, in flowing foreign hands, to the beautiful
+Mademoiselle Melrose. Society bowed before Annie; she was the sensation
+of her winter, and the marriage she promptly made was the most brilliant
+in many winters.
+
+Annie proceeded to bear her sober, fine, dull, and devoted Hendrick two
+splendid sons, and thus riveted to herself his lasting devotion and
+trust. The old name was safe, the millions would descend duly to young
+Hendrick and Piet. The family had been rich, conspicuous, and respected
+in the city, since its sturdy Holstein cattle had browsed along the
+fields of lower Broadway, but under Annie's hands it began to shine.
+Annie's handsome motor-cars bore the family arms, her china had been
+made in the ancestral village, two miles from Rotterdam, and also
+carried the shield. Her city home, in Fifth Avenue, was so magnificent,
+so chastely restrained and sober, so sternly dignified, that it set the
+cue for half the other homes of the ultra-aristocratic set. Annie's
+servants had been in the Von Behrens family for years; there was nothing
+in the Avenue house, or the Newport summer home, that was not as
+handsome, as old, as solid, as carven, as richly dull, or as purely
+shining, as human ingenuity could contrive to have it. Collectors saved
+their choicest discoveries for Annie; and there was no painter in the
+new world who would not have been proud to have Annie place a canvas of
+his among her treasures from the old.
+
+If family relics were worth preserving, what could be more remarkable
+than Annie's Washington letter, her Jefferson tray, her Gainsboroughs of
+the Murisons who had been the only Americans so honoured by the painter?
+Melrose and Von Behrens honours crowded each other--here was the thin
+old silver "shepherdess" cup awarded that Johanna von Behrens who had
+won a prize with her sheep, while Washington was yet a boy; and here the
+quaint tortoise-shell snuff-box that a great prince, homeless and
+unknown, had given the American family that took him in; and the silver
+buttons from Lafayette's waistcoat that the great Frenchman had
+presented Colonel Horace Murison of the "Continentals."
+
+These things were not thrust at the visitor, nor indeed were they
+conspicuous among the thousand other priceless souvenirs that Annie had
+gathered about her.
+
+"Rather nice, isn't it?" Annie would say, abstractedly, when some
+enthusiastic girl pored over the colonial letters or the old portraits.
+"See here, Margaret," she might add, casually, "do you see the inside of
+this little slipper, my dear? Read what's written there: 'In these
+slippers Deborah Murison danced with Governor Winthrop, on the night of
+her fifteenth birthday, July 1st, 1742.' Isn't that rather quaint?"
+
+Annie could afford to be casual, to be abstracted. In her all the pride
+of the Melrose and Murison families was gathered; hers was an arrogance
+so sure of itself, a self-confidence so supreme, that the world
+questioned it no more than it questioned the heat of the sun. The old
+silver, the Copleys, and the colonial china, the Knickerbocker "court
+chests" with their great locks of Dutch silver, and the laces that had
+been shown at the Hague two hundred years before, were all confirmed,
+all reinforced, as it were, by the power and prosperity of to-day. It
+was no by-gone glory that made brilliant the lives of Hendrick and Anne
+Melrose von Behrens. Hendrick's cousins and uncles, magnificent persons
+of title, were prominent in Holland to-day, their names associated with
+that of royalty, and their gracious friendship extended to the American
+branch of the family whenever Hendrick chose to claim it. Old maps of
+New York bore the boundary lines of the Von Behrens farm; early
+histories of the city mingled the names of Melrose and Von Behrens among
+those of the men who had served the public need.
+
+Wherever there was needed that tone that only names of prominence and
+wealth can bestow Annie's name was solicited. Wherever it appeared it
+gave the instant stamp of dignity and integrity. She had seen this goal
+dimly in the distance, when she stepped from her rather spoiled and
+wilful girlhood into this splendid wifehood, but even Annie was
+astonished at the rapidity with which it had come about. Mama, of
+course, had known all the right people, even if she _had_ dropped all
+social ties after Papa's death. And Hendrick's name was an open sesame.
+But even so it was surprising, and it was gratifying.
+
+In appearance Annie had no problem. If she was not a beauty she was near
+enough to being one. She was smart enough, and blonde enough, and
+splendidly dressed enough to be instantly identifiable, and that was all
+she desired. Financially, Annie had no problem. Her own inheritance and
+her husband's great wealth silenced all question there. The Murison
+pearls and the famous diamond tiara that her father had given her mother
+years ago had come to Annie, but they were eclipsed by the Von Behrens
+family jewels, and these were all hers, with the laces, and the ivories,
+and the brocades. Life could give nothing more to Annie, but not many
+women would have made so much of what Annie had. There was, far down and
+out of sight, a little streak of the adventuress in her, and she never
+stopped halfway.
+
+A young wife, Annie had dutifully considered her nursery.
+
+"Hendrick's is the elder line, of course, although it is the colonial
+one," Annie had said, superintending a princely layette. The child was a
+son, his father's image, and nobody who knew Annie was in the least
+surprised that fortune had fallen in with her plans. It was the
+magnificent Annie who was quoted as telling Madame Modiste to give her a
+fitter who would not talk; it was Annie who decided what should be done
+in recognizing the principals of the Jacqmain divorce, and that old
+Floyd Densmore's actress-wife should not be accepted. Annie's neat and
+quiet answer to a certain social acquaintance who remarked, in Annie's
+little gallery, "I have seen the original of that picture, in one of the
+European galleries," was still quoted by Annie's friends. "This _is_ the
+original!" Annie had said quite simply and truthfully.
+
+Leslie admired her aunt more than any one else in the world. Grandma was
+old-fashioned, and Aunt Alice insignificant, in Leslie's eyes, but
+stunning, arrogant, fearless Aunt Annie was the model upon which she
+would have based herself if she had known how. Annie's quick
+positiveness with her servants, her cool friendliness with big men, and
+clever men, her calm assurance as to which hats she liked, and which
+hats she didn't, her utter belief in everything that was of Melrose or
+von Behrens, and her calm contempt for everything that was not, were
+masterly in Leslie's eyes.
+
+Annie might have been a strong royalist had she been born a few
+generations earlier. But in Annie's day the ideal of social service had
+been laid down by fashion, and she was consequently a tremendously
+independent and energetic person, with small time for languishing airs.
+She headed committees and boards, knew hundreds of working girls by
+name, kept a secretary and a stenographer, and mentioned topics at big
+dinners that would not have shocked either old Goodwife Melrose of
+Boston, or Vrouw von Behrens of Nieu Amsterdam, for neither had the
+faintest idea that such things, or their names, existed.
+
+Withal, Annie was attractive, even her little affectations were
+impressive, and as she went about from luncheons to meetings, swept up
+to her model nursery to revel in her model boys, tossed aside regal furs
+and tore off princely rings the better to play with them, wrapped her
+beautiful figure in satins and jewels to descend to formal dinners, she
+was almost as much admired and envied and copied as she might fondly
+have hoped to be. She managed her life on modern lines of efficiency,
+planned ahead what she wished, tutored herself not to think of anything
+undesirable as being even in the range of possibility, trod lightly upon
+the sensitive souls of others, and asked no quarter herself, aimed high,
+and enjoyed her life and its countless successes to the full.
+
+Of course there had been setbacks. Her brother Theodore, his most
+unfortunate marriage to a servant, his intemperance, the general scandal
+of his mother's violent detestation of his wife, all this was most
+unpleasant. But Louison, the wife, upon sufficient pressure, had brought
+her child to the Melroses, and had doubtfully disappeared, and Theodore
+had returned from his wanderings to live, silent and unobtrusive, in his
+mother's home, for several years, and to die with his daughter beside
+him, and be duly laid in the Melrose plot at Woodlawn. And
+Leslie--Leslie had repaid them all, for all of it.
+
+Alice was another disappointment, or had been one, to Annie. For Alice,
+after having achieved a most unexpectedly satisfactory marriage, and
+having set up her household gods in the very shadow of her sister's
+brilliant example, as it were, had met with that most unfortunate
+accident. For a few years Annie had been utterly exasperated whenever
+she thought of it. For Christopher was really an extraordinary husband
+for Alice to hold, even in normal circumstances. He was so outrageously,
+frightfully, irresistibly popular with women everywhere, his wife must
+needs keep a very sharp, albeit loving, eye upon him. A sickly wife--a
+wife who was a burden and a reproach, that would be fatal to them all!
+
+But Alice had showed unsuspected courage and pride in this hard trial.
+She had made herself beautiful, well-informed, tactful; she had made
+herself a magnet to her husband's friends, and his home the centre of a
+real social group. Annie respected her for it, and helped her by
+flashing into her rooms not less often than every alternate day, with
+gossip, with books, with hints that showed Alice just where her course
+in this or that matter must lie.
+
+So Alice had come to be an actual asset, and now to her Aunt Annie's
+tremendous satisfaction, Leslie promised to add one more feather to the
+family cap by announcing her engagement to Acton Liggett. Annie smiled
+to herself whenever she thought of it. When this was consummated she
+would have nothing left but the selection of suitable wives for Hendrick
+Junior, now aged ten, and Piet, who was four years younger.
+
+Two or three days after the ending of the big snow-storm, and the
+beginning of that domestic storm that was destined strangely to change
+some of the lives nearest her, Annie went in to have luncheon with her
+sister. It was a brilliant sunshiny winter day, with crossings swimming
+in melting snow and roofs steaming brightly into the clear air.
+
+Annie went straight upstairs to Alice's room, with the usual apology for
+lateness. She kissed Alice lightly on the forehead, and while Freda was
+coming and going with their meal, they discussed the little boys, books,
+politics, and the difficulties of the city in the snow.
+
+But when they were alone Annie asked immediately:
+
+"What on earth is the matter with Mama, Alice?"
+
+"You mean about----? Did she tell you?"
+
+"No; she didn't have to. Leslie ran in yesterday afternoon, and told me
+that Mama has been in bed since Saturday! I telephoned Sunday morning,
+but Hendrick and I were taking the boys up to his uncle's house, in
+Westchester, and--as she didn't say one word about being ill--I didn't
+see her that day, nor yesterday, as it happened, for we didn't come down
+until noon. When Leslie came in, there were other people there for tea,
+and I didn't have a chance to speak to her alone. But I went over to
+Mama this morning, and she seems all broken up!"
+
+"What did she tell you?" Alice asked, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, my dear, you know Mama! She wept, and patted my hand, and said that
+it was sad to be the last of your own generation, and she hoped you and
+I would always have each other, and that she had always loved us, and
+tried to do her best for us----"
+
+Alice laughed.
+
+"Poor Mama! She gets so worked up!" she said.
+
+"But what do you make of it?" demanded Annie. "She talked of this Kate
+Sheridan--I remember her perfectly, she came to Paris when I was so
+ill, years ago. Poor Mama cried, and said that she wished to do
+something for Kate. Now you know, Alice," Annie went on reasonably,
+"nobody is tying Mama's hands! If she wants to educate this young
+girl--this Norma person--to please Kate, or all her children for that
+matter, she doesn't have to go into hysterics, and send for Judge Lee.
+She said she didn't feel at all well, and she wanted to secure to Kate
+some money in her will I told her it was ridiculous--she never looked
+better in her life! I wish she could get over to see you, Alice; you
+always soothe her so. What on earth does Chris make of it?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what we've done," Alice smiled. "Chris went to see
+her Sunday, and they had a long talk. He tells me that she was just as
+vague and unsatisfactory as ever, but calmer, and she finally admitted
+that all she really wanted to do was to befriend this niece of Kate
+Sheridan. Of course Chris and I think Mama has one of her funny notions
+about it, but if the child's mother had befriended Mama, for example, a
+thousand years ago, or if Mama had borrowed five dollars from Kate, and
+forgotten to return it, you know that would be enough to account for all
+this excitement."
+
+"Yes, I know!" Annie admitted, with her favourite look of intolerant,
+yet indulgent, scorn.
+
+"Well, it seems the girl is in Biretta's Bookshop, and Chris has often
+bought books of her. So to quiet Mama he promised that he would bring
+her out here to have tea with me some day soon. Mama was delighted, and
+I think she hopes that a friendship will come of it." Alice threw
+herself back into the pillows, and drew a great breath as if she were
+weary. "I only want to please Mama!" she finished.
+
+"You're an angel," Annie said, absently. "I suppose I could get the
+truth out of Mama in five seconds," she mused. "It looks to me rather
+like blackmail!"
+
+"No; she said not!" Alice contradicted, quickly.
+
+"Well, it's all so silly," the elder sister said, impatiently. "And
+coming just now----" she added, significantly.
+
+"Yes. I know!" Alice agreed, with a comprehending look. And in lowered
+tones they began to talk of Leslie's possible engagement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Norma Sheridan saw the engagement announced in a morning paper two weeks
+later, and carried the picture of pretty Miss Melrose home, to entertain
+the dinner table. The news had been made known at a dinner given to
+forty young persons, in the home of the debutante's aunt, Mrs. Hendrick
+von Behrens. Miss Melrose, said the paper, was the daughter and heiress
+of the late Theodore Melrose, and made her home with her grandmother.
+Mr. Liggett was the brother of Christopher Liggett, whose marriage to
+Miss Alice Melrose was a social event some years ago. A number of
+dinners and dances were already planned in honour of the young pair.
+
+Norma looked at the pictured face with a little stir of feelings so
+confused that she could not define them, at her heart. But she passed
+the paper to her aunt with no comment.
+
+"You might send them two dozen kitchen towels, Mother," Wolf suggested,
+drily, and Rose laughed joyously. Her own engagement present from her
+mother had been this extremely practical one, and Rose loved to open her
+lower bureau drawer, and gloat over the incredible richness of
+possessing twenty-four smooth, red-striped, well-hemmed glass-towels,
+all her own. Norma had brought her two thick, dull gray Dedham bowls,
+with ducks waddling around them, and these were in the drawer, too,
+wrapped in tissue paper. And beside these were the length of
+lemon-coloured silk that Rose had had for a year, without making up, and
+six of her mother's fine sheets of Irish linen, and two glass
+candlesticks that Rose had won at a Five-hundred party. Altogether, Rose
+felt that she was making great strides toward home-making, especially as
+she and Harry must wait for months, perhaps a year. Norma had promised
+her two towels a month, until there were a whole dozen, and Wolf,
+prompted by the same generous little heart, told her not to give the
+gas-stove a thought, for she was to have the handsomest one that money
+could buy, with a stand-up oven and a water-heater, from her brother.
+Rose walked upon air.
+
+But Norma was in a mood that she herself seemed unable to understand or
+to combat. She felt a constant inclination toward tears. She didn't hate
+the Melroses--no, they had been most friendly and kind. But--but it was
+a funny world in which one girl had everything, like Leslie, and another
+girl had no brighter prospect than to drudge away in a bookstore all her
+life, or to go out on Sundays with her cousin. Norma dreamed for hours
+of Leslie's life, the ease and warmth and beauty of it, and when Leslie
+was actually heralded as engaged the younger girl felt a pang of the
+first actual jealousy she had ever known. She imagined the beautiful
+drawing-room in which Acton Liggett--perhaps as fascinating a person as
+his brother!--would clasp pearls about Leslie's fair little throat; she
+imagined the shining dinner tables at which Leslie's modestly dropped
+blonde head would be stormed with compliments and congratulations.
+
+And suddenly molasses peppermints and dish-washing became odious to
+her, and she almost disliked Rose for her pitiable ecstasies over china
+bowls and glass-towels. All the pleasant excitement of her call upon
+Mrs. Melrose, with Aunt Kate, died away. It had seemed the beginning of
+some vaguely dreamed-of progress toward a life of beauty and
+achievement, but it was two weeks ago now, and its glamour was fading.
+
+True, Christopher Liggett had come into Biretta's bookstore, with
+Leslie, and he and Norma had talked together for a few minutes, and
+Leslie had extended her Aunt Alice's kind invitation for tea. But no day
+had been set for the tea, Norma reflected gloomily. Now, she supposed,
+the stir of Leslie's engagement would put all that out of Christopher's
+head.
+
+Wolf was not particularly sympathetic with her, she mused,
+disconsolately. Wolf had been acting in an unprecedented manner of late.
+Rose's engagement seemed to have completely turned his head. He laughed
+at Norma, hardly heard her words when she spoke to him, and never moved
+his eyes from her when they were together. Norma could not look up from
+her book, or her plate, or from the study of a Broadway shop window,
+without encountering that same steady, unembarrassed, half-puzzled
+stare.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Wolf?" she would ask, impatiently. But Wolf
+never told her.
+
+As a matter of fact, he did not know. He was a silent, thoughtful
+fellow, old for his years in many ways, and in some still a boy. Norma
+and Rose had known only the more prosperous years of Kate's life, but
+Wolf remembered many a vigil with his mother, remembered her lonely
+struggles to make a living for him and for the girls. He himself was the
+type that inevitably prospers--industrious, good, intelligent, and
+painstaking, but as a young boy in the working world he had early seen
+the terrors in the lives of men about him: drink, dirt, unemployment and
+disease, debt and dishonour. Wolf was not quick of thought; he had
+little imagination, rather marvelling at other men's cleverness than
+displaying any of his own, and he had reached perhaps his twenty-second
+or twenty-third summer before he realized that these terrors did not
+menace him, that whatever changes he made in his work would be
+improvements, steps upward. For actual months after the move to New York
+Wolf had pondered it, in quiet gratitude and pleasure. Rent and bills
+could be paid, there might be theatre treats for the girls, and chicken
+for Sunday supper, and yet the savings account in the Broadway bank
+might grow steadily, too. Far from being a slave to his employer, Wolf
+began to realize that this rather simple person was afraid of him,
+afraid that young Sheridan and some of the other smart, ingenious,
+practically educated men in his employ might recognize too soon their
+own independence.
+
+And when the second summer in New York came, and Wolf could negotiate
+the modest financial deal that gave him and the girls a second-hand
+motor-car to cruise about in on Sundays and holidays, when they could
+picnic up in beautiful Connecticut, or unpack the little fringed red
+napkins far down on the Long Island shore, life had begun to seem very
+pleasant to him. Debt and dirt and all the squalid horrors of what he
+had seen, and what he had read, had faded from his mind, and for awhile
+he had felt that his cup could hold no more.
+
+But now, just lately, there was something else, and although the full
+significance of it had not yet actually dawned upon him, Wolf began to
+realize that a change was near. It was the most miraculous thing that
+had ever come to him, although it concerned only little Norma--only the
+little cousin who had been an actual member of his family for all these
+years.
+
+He had heard his mother say a thousand times that she was pretty; he had
+laughed himself a thousand times at her quick wit. But he had never
+dreamed that it would make his heart come up into his throat and
+suffocate him whenever he thought of her, or that her lightest and
+simplest words, her most casual and unconscious glance, would burn in
+his heart for hours.
+
+During his busy days Wolf found himself musing about this undefined and
+nebulous happiness that began to tremble, like a growing brightness
+behind clouds, through all his days and nights. Had there ever been a
+time, he wondered, when he had taken her for granted, helped her into
+her blessed little coat as coolly as he had Rose? Had it been this same
+Norma who scolded him about throwing his collars on the floor, and who
+had sent his coat to the cleaner with a ten-dollar bill in the pocket?
+
+Wolf remembered summer days, and little Norma chattering beside him on
+the front seat, as the shabby motor-car fled through the hot, dry city
+toward shade and coolness. He remembered early Christmas Mass, and Norma
+and Rose kneeling between him and his mother, in the warm, fir-scented
+church. He remembered breakfast afterward, in a general sense of hunger
+and relaxation and well-being, and the girls exulting over their
+presents. And every time that straight-shouldered, childish figure came
+into his dream, that mop of cloudy dark hair and flashing laugh, the
+new delicious sense of some unknown felicity touched him, and he would
+glance about the busy factory self-consciously, as if his thoughts were
+written on his face for all the world to read.
+
+Wolf had never had a sweetheart. It came to him with the blinding flash
+of all epoch-making discoveries that Norma was his girl--that he wanted
+Norma for his own, and that there was no barrier between them. And in
+the ecstasy of this new vision, which changed the whole face of his
+world, he was content to wait with no special impatience for the hour in
+which he should claim her. Of course Norma must like him--must love him,
+as he did her, unworthy as he felt himself of her, and wonderful as this
+new Norma seemed to be. Wolf, in his simple way, felt that this had been
+his destiny from the beginning.
+
+That a glimpse of life as foreign and unnatural as the Melrose life
+might seriously disenchant Norma never occurred to him. Norma had always
+been fanciful, it was a part of her charm. Wolf, who worked in the great
+Forman shops, had felt it no particular distinction when by chance one
+day he had been called from his luncheon to look at the engine of young
+Stanley Forman's car. He had left his seat upon a pile of lumber, bolted
+the last of his pie, and leaned over the hood of the specially designed
+racer interested only in its peculiarities, and entirely indifferent to
+the respectful young owner, who was aware that he knew far less about it
+than this mechanic did. Sauntering back to his work in the autumn
+sunlight, Wolf had followed the youthful millionaire by not even a
+thought. If he had done so, it might have been a half-contemptuous
+decision that a man who knew so little of engines ought not to drive a
+racer.
+
+So Norma's half-formed jealousies, desires, and dreams were a sealed
+book to him. But this very unreasonableness lent her an odd exotic charm
+in his eyes. She was to Wolf like a baby who wants the moon. The moon
+might be an awkward and useless possession, and the baby much better
+without it, still there is something winning and touching about the
+little imperious mouth and the little upstretched arms.
+
+One night, when he had reached home earlier than either of the girls,
+Wolf was in the warm bright kitchen, alone with his mother. He was
+seated at the end of the scrubbed and bleached little table; Kate at the
+other end was neatly and dexterously packing a yellow bowl with bread
+pudding.
+
+"Do you remember, years and years ago, Mother," Wolf said, chewing a
+raisin, thoughtfully, "that you told me that Norma isn't my real
+cousin?"
+
+Kate's ruddy colour paled a little, and she looked anxious. Not Perseus,
+coming at last in sight of his Gorgon, had a heart more sick with fear
+than hers was at that instant.
+
+"What put that into your head, dear?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. But it's true, isn't it?"
+
+Kate scattered chopped nuts from the bowl of her spoon.
+
+"Yes, it's true," she said. "There's not a drop of the same blood in
+your veins, although I love her as I do you and Rose."
+
+She was silent, and Wolf, idly turning the egg-beater in an empty dish,
+smiled to himself.
+
+"But what made you think of that, Wolf?" his mother asked.
+
+"I don't know!" Wolf did not look at her, but his big handsome face was
+suffused with happy colour. "Harry and Rose, maybe," he admitted.
+
+Kate sat down suddenly, her eyes upon him.
+
+"Not the Baby?" she half whispered.
+
+Her son leaned back in his chair, and folded his big arms across his
+chest. When he looked at her the smile had faded from his face, and his
+eyes were a trifle narrowed, and his mouth set.
+
+"I guess so!" he said, simply. "I guess it's always been--Norma. But I
+didn't always know it. I used to think of her as just another
+sister--like Rose. But I know now that she'll never seem that
+again--never did, really."
+
+He was silent, and Kate sat staring at him in silence.
+
+"Has she any relatives, Mother?"
+
+"Has--what?"
+
+"Has she people--who are they?"
+
+Kate looked at the floor.
+
+"She has no one but me, Son."
+
+"Of course, she's not nineteen, and I don't believe it's ever crossed
+her mind," Wolf said. "I don't think Norma ever had a real affair--just
+kid affairs, like Paul Harrison, and that man at the store who used to
+send her flowers. But I don't believe those count."
+
+"I don't think she ever has," Kate said, heavily getting to her feet,
+and beginning to pour her custard slowly through the packed bread.
+Presently she stopped, and set the saucepan down, her eyes narrowed and
+fixed on space. Then Wolf saw her press the fingers of one hand upon
+her mouth, a sure sign of mental perturbation.
+
+"I know I'm not worthy to tie her little shoes for her, Mother," he
+said, suddenly, and very low.
+
+"There's no woman in the world good enough for you," his mother
+answered, with a troubled laugh. And she gave the top of his head one of
+her rare, brisk kisses as she passed him, on her way out of the room.
+
+Wolf was sufficiently familiar with the domestic routine to know that
+every minute was precious now, and that she was setting the table. But
+his heart was heavy with a vague uneasiness; she had not encouraged him
+very much. She had not accepted this suggestion as she did almost all of
+the young people's ideas, with eager cooperation and sympathy. He sat
+brooding at the kitchen table, her notable lack of enthusiasm chilling
+him, and infusing him with her own doubts.
+
+When she came back, she stood with her back turned to him, busied with
+some manipulation of platters and jars in the ice-box.
+
+"Wolf, dear," she said, "I want to ask you something. The child's too
+young to listen to you--or any one!--now. Promise me--_promise me_, that
+you'll speak to me again before you----"
+
+"Certainly I'll promise that, Mother!" Wolf said, quickly, hurt to the
+soul. She read his tone aright, and came to lay her cheek against his
+hair.
+
+"Listen to me, Son. Since the day her mother gave her to me I've hoped
+it would be this way! But there's nothing to be gained by hurry.
+You----"
+
+"But you would be glad, Mother! You do think that she might have me?"
+poor Wolf said, eagerly and humbly. He was amazed to see tears brimming
+his mother's eyes as she nodded and turned away.
+
+Before either spoke again a rush in the hall announced the home-coming
+girls, who entered the kitchen gasping and laughing with the cold.
+
+"Whew!" panted Norma, catching Wolf's hands in her own half-frozen ones.
+"I'm dying! Oh, Wolf, feel my nose!" She pressed it against his
+forehead. "Oh, there's a wind like a knife--and look at my shoe--in I
+went, right through the ice! Oh, Aunt Kate, let me stay here!" and
+locking both slender arms about the older woman's neck, she dropped her
+dark, shining head upon her breast like a storm-blown bird. "It's four
+below zero in Broadway this minute," she added, looking sidewise under
+her curling lashes at Wolf.
+
+"Who said so?" Wolf demanded.
+
+"The man I bought that paper from said so; go back and ask him. Oh, joy,
+that looks good!" said Norma, eyeing the pudding that was now being
+drawn, crackling, bubbling, and crisp, from the oven. "Rose and I fell
+over the new lineoleum in the hall; I thought it was a dead body!" she
+went on, cheerfully. "I came _down_ on my family feature with such a
+noise that I thought the woman downstairs would be rattling the
+dumb-waiter ropes again long before this!" She stepped to the
+dumb-waiter, and put her head into the shaft. "What is it, darling?" she
+called.
+
+"Norma, behave yourself. It would serve you good and right if she heard
+you," Mrs. Sheridan said, in a panic. "Go change your shoes, and come
+and eat your dinner. I believe," her aunt added, pausing near her, "that
+you _did_ skin your nose in the hall."
+
+"Oh, heavens!" Norma exclaimed, bringing her face close to the dark
+window, as to a mirror. "Oh, say it will be gone by Friday! Because on
+Friday I'm going to have tea with Mrs. Liggett--her husband came in
+to-day and asked me. Oh, the darling! He certainly is the--well, the
+most--well, I don't know!----His voice, and the quiet, _quiet_ way----"
+
+"Oh, for pity's sake go change your shoes!" Rose interrupted. "You are
+the biggest idiot! I went into the store to get her," Rose explained,
+"and I've had all this once, in the subway. How Mr. Liggett picks up his
+glasses, on their ribbon, to read the titles of books----"
+
+"Oh, you shut up!" Norma called, departing. And unashamed, when dinner
+was finished, and the table cleared, she produced a pack of cards and
+said that she was going to play _The Idle Year_.
+
+"... and if I get it, it'll mean that the man I marry is going to look
+exactly like Chris Liggett."
+
+She did not get it, and played it again. The third time she interrupted
+Wolf's slow and patient perusal of the _Scientific American_ to announce
+that she was now going to play it to see if he was in love with Mary
+Redding.
+
+"Think how nice that would be, Aunt Kate, a double wedding. And if Wolf
+or Rose died and left a lot of children, the other one would always be
+there to take in whoever was left--you know what I mean!"
+
+"You're the one Wolf ought to marry, to make it complete," Rose, who was
+neatly marking a cross-stitch "R" on a crash towel, retaliated neatly.
+
+"I can't marry my cousin, Miss Smarty."
+
+"Oh, don't let a little thing like that worry you," Wolf said, looking
+across the table.
+
+"Our children would be idiots--perhaps they would be, anyway!" Norma
+reminded him, in a gale of laughter. Her aunt looked up disapprovingly
+over her glasses.
+
+"Baby, don't talk like that. That's not a nice way to talk at all. Wolf,
+you lead her on. Now, we'll not have any more of that, if you please. I
+see the President is making himself very unpopular, Wolf--I don't know
+why they all make it so hard for the poor man! Mrs. McCrea was in the
+market this morning----"
+
+"If I win this game, Rose, by this time next year," Norma said, in an
+undertone, "you'll have----"
+
+"Norma Sheridan!"
+
+"Yes, Aunt Kate!"
+
+"Do you want me to speak to you again?"
+
+"No, ma'am!"
+
+Norma subsided for a brief space, Rose covertly watching the game.
+Presently the younger girl burst forth anew.
+
+"Listen, Wolf, I'll bet you that I can get more words out of the letters
+in Christopher than you can!"
+
+Wolf roused himself, smiled, took out his fountain pen, and reached for
+a sheet of paper. He was always ready for any sort of game. Norma,
+bending herself to the contest, put her pencil into her mouth, and
+stared fixedly at the green-shaded drop light. Rose, according to
+ancient precedent, was permitted to assist evenly and alternately.
+
+And Kate, watching them and listening, even while she drowsed over the
+Woman's Page, decided that after all they were nothing but a pack of
+children.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+To Leslie Melrose had come the very happiest time of her life. She had
+always had everything she wanted; it had never occurred to her to
+consider a fortunate marriage engagement as anything but a matter of
+course, in her case. She was nineteen, she was "mad," in her own terms,
+about Acton Liggett, and the engagement was the natural result.
+
+But the ensuing events were far more delightful than Leslie had dreamed,
+even in her happy dreams. All her world turned from its affairs of
+business and intrigue and amusement to centre its attention upon her
+little person for the moment, and to shower her with ten times enough
+flattery and praise to turn a much steadier head. Presents rained upon
+Leslie, and every one of them was astonishingly handsome and valuable;
+newspapers clamoured for her picture, and wherever she went she was
+immediately the focus for all eyes. That old Judge Lee should send her
+some of his mother's beautiful diamonds; that Christopher and Alice
+should order for her great crates of specially woven linen that were
+worthy of a queen; that Emanuel Massaro, the painter of the hour, should
+ask her to sit for him, were all just so much sheer pleasure added to
+the sum total of her happiness in loving the man of her choice and
+knowing herself beloved by him.
+
+Leslie found herself, for the first time in her life, a person of
+importance with Aunt Annie, too. The social leader found time to advise
+her little niece in the new contingencies that were perpetually arising,
+lent Leslie her private secretary for the expeditious making of lists or
+writing of notes, and bullied her own autocratic modiste into promising
+at least half of the trousseau. It was Annie who decided that the
+marriage must be at a certain Park Avenue church, and at a certain hour,
+and that the reception at the house must be arranged in a certain
+manner, and no other. Hendrick or Judge Lee would give away the bride,
+Christopher would be his brother's best man, and Leslie would be given
+time to greet her guests and change her gown and be driven to Alice's
+house for just one kiss before she and Acton went away.
+
+Acton had begged for an Easter wedding, but Leslie, upon her aunt's
+advice, held out for June. If the war was over by that time--and
+everyone said it must be, for so hideous a combat could not possibly
+last more than six or eight months--then they would go to England and
+the Continent, but otherwise they might drift through Canada to the
+Pacific Coast, and even come back by San Francisco and the newly opened
+Canal.
+
+Meanwhile, Annie entertained her niece royally and untiringly. Formal
+dinners to old family friends must come first, but when spring arrived
+Leslie was promised house parties and yachting trips more after her own
+heart. The girl was so excited, so bewildered and tired, even after the
+first two weeks, that she remained in bed until noon every day, and had
+a young maid especially detailed to take her dressmaker's fittings for
+her. But even so she lost weight, her cheeks burned and her eyes
+glittered feverishly, and her voice took an unnaturally high key, her
+speech a certain shallow quickness. Acton's undeviating adoration she
+took with a pretty, spoiled acquiescence, and with old family friends
+she was charmingly dutiful and deferential, but always with the air of
+sparing a few glittering drops to their age and dulness from the
+overflowing cup of her youth and beauty and power. But with her
+grandmother and aunts she had a new attitude of self-confidence, and to
+her girl friends she was no longer the old intimate and equal, but a
+being who had, for the moment at least, left them all behind. She would
+show them the new silver, the new linens, the engagement-time frocks
+that were in themselves a trousseau, and wish that Doris or Marion or
+Virginia were engaged, too; it was such fun! And with older women, the
+debutantes of six and eight and ten years ago, who had failed of all
+this glory, who could only listen sweetly to the chatter of plans and
+honours, and look in uncomplaining admiration at the blazing ring,
+Leslie was quite merciless. The number of times that she managed to
+mention her age, the fact that Madame Modiste had tried to give her
+fittings after three o'clock under the impression that she was a
+schoolgirl, and the "craziness" of "little me" going over all the late
+Mrs. Liggett's chests of silver and china, perhaps only these
+unsuccessful candidates for matrimony could estimate. Certainly Leslie
+herself was quite unconscious of it, and truly believed what she heard
+on all sides, that she was "adorable," and "not changed one bit," and
+"just as unconscious that there was anything else in the world but
+Acton, as a little girl with her first doll."
+
+Christopher and Alice, in the first years of their married life, had
+built a home at Glen Cove, and Christopher made this his wedding
+present to his brother. Necessarily, even the handsomest of country
+homes, if ten years old, needs an almost complete renovation, and this
+renovation Acton and Leslie, guided by a famous architect, began
+rapturously to plan, reserving a beautiful apartment not far from Alice
+in Park Avenue for autumn furnishing and refitting.
+
+All these activities and interests kept the lovers busy, and kept them
+apart indeed, or united them only in groups of other people. But Acton
+could bring his pretty sweetheart home from a dinner now and then, and
+come into the old Melrose house for a precious half hour of murmuring
+talk, or could sometimes persuade her to leave a tea or a matinee early
+enough to walk a few blocks with him.
+
+In this fashion they slipped away from a box party one Friday afternoon,
+and found themselves walking briskly northward, into the neighbourhood
+of Alice's house. Leslie had had, for several days, a rather guilty
+feeling in regard to this lovely aunt. It was really hard, rising at
+noon, and trying to see and please so many persons, to keep in close
+touch with the patient and uncomplaining invalid, who had to depend
+wholly upon the generosity of those she loved for knowledge of them. So
+Leslie was glad to suggest, and Acton glad to agree, that they had
+better go in and see Aunt Alice for a few minutes.
+
+As usual, Mrs. Liggett had company, although it proved only to be the
+pretty Miss Sheridan who had called upon Leslie's grandmother on the
+first day of that mysterious indisposition that had kept the old lady
+bedridden almost ever since.
+
+Alice looked oddly tired, but her eyes were shining brightly, and Norma
+was charmingly happy and at ease. She jumped up to shake hands with
+Acton with a bright comment that he was not in the _least_ like his
+brother, and recalled herself to Leslie before offering her all sorts of
+good wishes. Norma, hoping that it would some day occur, had indeed
+anticipated this meeting with Leslie by a little mental consideration of
+what she should say, but the effect was so spontaneous and sincere that
+the four were enabled to settle down comfortably to tea, in a few
+moments, like old friends.
+
+"Miss Sheridan--or Norma, rather--and I have been having a perfectly
+delicious talk," said Alice. "She loves Christina Rossetti, and she knew
+the 'Hound of Heaven' by heart, and she has promised to send me a new
+man's work that sounds delightful--what was it? Something about General
+Booth?"
+
+"If I haven't chattered you to death!" Norma said, penitentially. And
+Leslie added: "Aunt Alice, you _do_ look tired! Not that talking poetry
+ever would tire you!" she hastened to add, with a smile for Norma.
+
+"No, I'm not--or rather, I was, but I feel wonderfully!" Alice said.
+"Pour the tea, Kitten. What have you two little adventurers been doing
+with yourselves?"
+
+"Mrs. Dupre's party--Yvette Guilbert," Leslie said. "She is quite too
+wonderful!"
+
+"I've always wanted to see her, and I've always known I would adore
+her," Norma interpolated, dreamily.
+
+Alice glanced at her quickly.
+
+"Does she give another matinee, Leslie?"
+
+"Two----" Leslie looked at Acton. "Is it two weeks from to-day?" she
+questioned.
+
+"I'll send you seats for it," Alice said, making a little note on her
+ivory memoranda pages, as she nodded to Norma. The colour rushed into
+Norma's face, and she bit her lip.
+
+"But, Mrs. Liggett--honestly--I truly didn't mean--I only meant----" she
+began to stammer, half laughing. Alice laid her hand upon Norma's
+reassuringly.
+
+"My dear, you know I don't think you hinted! But I want to do it. I
+can't"--Alice said, smiling--"I can't do anything for little Miss
+Aladdin here, and it gives me the greatest pleasure, now and then----"
+
+"I want to tell you something about Mrs. Liggett," Acton said; "she's
+got a grasping nature and a mean soul--you can see that! She's the
+limit, all right!" He smiled down at her as he gave her her teacup, and
+Leslie laughed outright. Acton was a person of few words, but when he
+chose to talk, Leslie found his manner amusing. Christopher, coming up
+to join them fifteen minutes later, said that from the noise they made
+he had supposed at least fifty persons to be in his wife's room.
+
+Did Norma, as she gave the master of the house her hand, have sudden
+memory of all her recent absurd extravagances in his name--the games,
+the surmises, the wild statements that had had Chris Liggett as their
+inspiration? If she did, she gave no sign of it beyond the bright flush
+with which she greeted her oldest acquaintance in this group.
+Christopher sat down, content to be a listener and an onlooker, as he
+sipped his tea, but Norma saw that his wife's look of white fatigue made
+him uneasy, and immediately said that she must go.
+
+He made no protest, but said that the car was at the door, and she must
+let him send her home. Norma agreed, and Acton asked if he and Leslie
+might not use it, too. The three departed in high spirits, Alice
+detaining the radiant and excited Norma long enough to exact from her
+the promise of another visit soon, and to send an affectionate message
+to Mrs. Sheridan from "Miss Alice." Then they went down to the big car,
+an exciting and delightful experience to Norma.
+
+Leslie was left first, and Acton, pleading that he was already late for
+another engagement, was dropped at his club. Then Norma had the car to
+herself, and as it smoothly flew toward the humble doorway of the
+Sheridans, could giggle, almost aloud, in her pleasure and exhilaration
+at an afternoon that had gone without a single awkward minute, all
+pleasant, harmonious, and vaguely flattering. And the wonderful Mrs.
+Liggett had asked her to come soon again, and had made that delightful
+suggestion about the concert. The name of Yvette Guilbert meant little
+to Norma, but the thought that Alice Liggett really wanted to hold her
+friendship was nothing less than intoxicating.
+
+She looked out of the car, the streets were bare of snow now, there was
+not a leaf showing in the park, and the ground was dark and unpromising.
+But a cool, steady wind was blowing through the lingering twilight, men
+were running after rolling hats, and at least the milliners' windows
+were radiant with springtime bloom. Children were playing in Norma's
+street, wrapped and muffled children, wild with joy to be out of doors
+again, and a tiny frail little moon was floating in the opal sky just
+above the grim line of roofs. Norma looked up at it, and the pure
+blowing air touched her hot face, and her heart sang with the sheer joy
+of living.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Christopher had gone down to the door with his brother and the girls,
+and had sent a glance up and down the quiet, handsome block, feeling in
+the moving air what Norma felt, what all the city felt--the bold, wild
+promise of spring. He turned back into the house with something like a
+sigh; Acton and Leslie in their young happiness were somehow a little
+haunting to-night.
+
+The butler was starting upstairs with the papers; Christopher took them
+from him, and went back to Alice's room with his eyes idly following the
+headlines. The pretty apartment was somewhat disordered, and looked dull
+and dark in the half light. Christopher walked to a window, and pushed
+it open upon its railed balcony.
+
+"Chris!" whispered his wife's voice, thick and dry in the gloom.
+
+Aghast in the instant apprehension of something wrong, he sprang to her
+couch, dropped to his knees, and put an arm about her.
+
+"Alice! What is it, my darling?"
+
+She struggled for speech, and he could see that her face was ashen.
+
+"Chris--no, don't ring. Chris, _who is that girl_?"
+
+Christopher touched the chain that flooded the couch with rosy light. He
+bent in eager sympathy over his wife's relaxed form.
+
+"Alice, what is it?" he asked, tenderly. "Don't worry, dear, don't try
+to talk too fast! Just tell Chris what frightened you----"
+
+Alice laughed wretchedly as she detached the fingers he had pressed
+anxiously upon her forehead.
+
+"No, I'm not feverish!" she assured him, holding tight to his hand. "But
+I want you to tell me, Chris, I must know--and no matter what promise
+you have given Mother--or given any one----"
+
+"Now, now, now!" he soothed her. "I'll tell you anything, sweetheart,
+only don't let yourself get so excited. Just tell me what it is, Alice,
+and I'll do anything in the world for you, of course!"
+
+"Chris," she said, swallowing with a dry throat, and sitting up with an
+air of regaining self-control, "you must tell me. You know you can trust
+me, you _know_----! That girl----"
+
+"But _what_ girl--what are you talking about, dear? Do--do try to be
+just a little clearer, and calmer----"
+
+"Who"--said Alice, with a ghastly look, sweeping the hair back from her
+damp forehead--"who is that Norma Sheridan?"
+
+"Why, I told you, dear, that I don't know," her husband protested. "I
+told you weeks ago, after your mother made that scene, the night of
+Hendrick's speech, that I couldn't make head or tail of it!"
+
+"Chris"--Alice was regarding him fixedly--"you _must_ know!"
+
+"Dearest, couldn't your mother simply wish to befriend a girl whose
+parents----"
+
+Alice flung her loosened hair back, and at her gesture and her glance at
+the little carafe on her table he poured her a glass of cold water.
+Drinking it off, and raising herself in her cushions, she stretched her
+hand to touch the chair beside her, and still without a word indicated
+that he was to take it. With a face of grave concern Christopher sat
+down beside her, holding her hands in both his own.
+
+"Chris," she said, clearly and quickly, if with occasional catches of
+breath, "the minute that girl came into the room I knew that--I knew
+that _horror_ had come upon us all! I knew that she was one of us--one
+of us Melroses, somehow----"
+
+"Alice!" he said, pleadingly.
+
+"But Mama," she said, with a keen look, "didn't tell you that?"
+
+"She told me only what I told you that night, on my honour as a
+gentleman! Alice, what makes you say what you do?"
+
+"Ah, Chris," his wife cried, almost frantically, "look at her! _Look_ at
+her! Why, her voice is Annie's, the same identical voice--she looks like
+my father, like Theodore--she looks like us all! She and Leslie were so
+much alike, as they sat there, in spite of the colouring, that I almost
+screamed it at them! Surely--surely, you see it--everyone sees it!"
+
+He stared at her, beginning to breathe a little quickly in his turn.
+
+"By George!" she heard him whisper, as if to himself.
+
+"Do you see it, Chris?" Alice whispered, almost fearfully.
+
+"But--but----" He got up and walked restlessly to the window, and came
+back to sit down again. "But there's a cousinship somewhere," he said,
+sensibly. "There's no reason to suppose that the thing can't be
+explained. I do think you're taking this thing pretty hard, my dear.
+What can you possibly suppose? There might be a hundred girls----"
+
+His voice fell. Alice was watching him expectantly.
+
+"Mama felt it--saw it--as I do," she said. "You may be very sure that
+Mama wouldn't have almost lost her mind, as she did, unless something
+had given her cause!"
+
+They looked at each other in silence, in the utter silence of the
+lovely, cool-toned room.
+
+"Alice," Chris said in a puzzled voice after awhile, "you suspect me of
+keeping something from you. But on my honour you know all that your
+mother told me--all that I know!"
+
+"Oh, Chris," she said, with a sort of wail. "If I don't know more!"
+
+Her husband's slow colour rose.
+
+"How could you know more?" he asked, bewilderedly.
+
+Alice was unhappily silent.
+
+"Chris, if I tell you what I'm afraid of--what I fear," she said,
+presently, after anxious thought, "will you promise me never, never to
+speak of it--never even to think of it!--if it--if it proves not to be
+true?"
+
+"I don't have to tell you that, Alice," he said.
+
+"No, of course you don't--of course you don't!" she echoed with a
+nervous laugh. "I'll tell you what I think, Chris--what has been almost
+driving me mad--and you can probably tell me a thousand reasons why it
+can't be so! You see, I've never understood Mama's feverish distress
+these last weeks. She's been to see me, she's done what had to be done
+about Leslie's engagement, but she's not herself--you can see that!
+Yesterday she began to cry, almost for nothing, and when I happened to
+mention--or rather when I mentioned very deliberately--that Miss
+Sheridan was coming here, she almost shrieked. Well, I didn't know what
+to make of it, and even then I rather wondered----
+
+"Even then," Alice began again, after a painful pause, and with her own
+voice rising uncontrollably, "I suspected something. But not this! Oh,
+Chris, if I'm wrong about this, I shall be on my knees for gratitude for
+the rest of my life; I would die, I would die to have it just--just my
+wretched imagination!--A thing like this--to us--the Melroses--who have
+always been so straight--so respected!"
+
+"Now, Alice--now, Alice!"
+
+"Yes, I know!" she said, quickly. "I know!" And for a moment she lay
+back quietly, stroking his hand. "Chris," she resumed, composedly, after
+a moment, "you know the tragedy of Annie's life?"
+
+Chris, taken by surprise, frowned.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so," he admitted, unwillingly.
+
+"Chris, did it ever occur to you that she might have had a child--by
+that fiend?"
+
+Chris looked at his wife a moment, and his eyes widened, and his mouth
+twitched humorously.
+
+"Oh, come now, Alice--come now!"
+
+"You think it's folly!" she asked, eagerly.
+
+"Worse!" he answered, briefly, his eyes smiling reproach.
+
+Alice's whole tense body relaxed, and she stared at him with light
+dawning in her eyes.
+
+"Well, probably it is," she said, very simply.
+
+"Of course it is," Chris said. "Now, you are dead tired, dear, and you
+have let the thing mill about in your head until you can't see anything
+normally. I confess that I don't understand your mother's mysterious
+nervousness, but then I am free to say that I don't by any means always
+understand your mother! You remember the pearl episode, and the time
+that she had Annie and Hendrick cabling from Italy--because Hendrick
+Junior had a rash! And then there was Porter--a boy nineteen years old,
+and she actually had everyone guessing exactly what she felt toward
+him----"
+
+"Oh, Chris, no, she didn't! She simply felt that he was a genius, and he
+hadn't a penny," Alice protested, reproachful and hurt.
+
+"Well, she had him there at the house until his mother came after him,
+and then, when he finally was sent abroad, she asked me seriously if I
+thought two hundred dollars a month was enough for his musical
+education!"
+
+"Yes, I know!" Alice said, ruefully, shaking her head.
+
+"Now this comes along," said Christopher, encouraged by the effect of
+his words, "and you begin to fret your poor little soul with all sorts
+of wild speculations. I wish to the Lord that your mother was a little
+bit more trusting with her confidences, but when it all comes out it'll
+prove to be some sister of your grandfather who married a tailor or
+something, and left a line of pretty girls to work in Biretta's----"
+
+"But, Chris, she reminded me so of Annie to-day I almost felt _sick_,"
+Alice said, still frightened and dubious.
+
+"Well, that merely shows that you're soft-hearted; it's no reflection on
+Annie!" Chris said, giving her her paper, and opening his own. But
+Alice did not open her paper.
+
+A maid came in, and moved about noiselessly setting chairs and rugs in
+order. Another soft light was lighted and the little square table set
+before the fire. The cool fresh air drifted in at the half-open window,
+and sent a delicate breath, from Alice's great bowl of freesia lilies,
+through the peaceful room. The fire snapped smartly about a fresh log,
+and Alice's great tortoise-shell cat came to make a majestic spring into
+her lap.
+
+"Chris--I'm so worried!" said his wife.
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Christopher, quietly, after a while,
+"did----Annie was very ill, I know, but was there--was there any reason
+to suppose that there might have been--that such a situation as to-day's
+might have arisen?"
+
+Alice looked at him with apprehension dawning afresh.
+
+"Oh, yes--that is, I believe so. I didn't know it then, of course."
+
+"I never knew that," Christopher said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Well, I didn't at the time, you know. It was--of course it was
+sixteen--eighteen years ago," Alice said. And in a whisper she added,
+"Chris, that girl is eighteen!"
+
+Christopher pursed his lips to whistle, but made no sound, and looked
+into the fire.
+
+"You see I was only about thirteen or fourteen," Alice said. "I was
+going to Miss Bennet's school, and we were all living in the Madison
+Avenue house. Papa had been dead only a year, or less, for I remember
+that Annie was eighteen, and wasn't going out much, because of mourning.
+Theodore had been worrying Mama to death, and had left the house then,
+and Mama was sending him and his wife money, I believe, but of course
+lots of that was kept from me. Annie was terribly wild and excitable
+then, always doing reckless things; I can remember when she and Belle
+Duer dressed up as boys and had their pictures taken, and once they put
+a matrimonial advertisement in the papers--of course they were just
+silly--at least that was. But then she began to rave about this man
+Mueller----"
+
+"The acrobat!" Christopher, who was listening intently, supplied.
+
+"No, dearest! He was their riding master--I suppose that isn't much
+better, really. But he was an extremely handsome man--really stunning.
+Carry Winchester's mother forbade her taking any more lessons because
+_she_ was so wild about him, and Annie told me once that that was why
+Ida Burnett was popped into a boarding school. He was big, and dark, and
+he had a slight foreign accent, and he was ever so much older than
+Annie--forty, at least. She began to spend all her time at the riding
+club; it used to make Mama wild--especially as Annie was so headstrong
+and saucy about it! Poor Mama, I remember her crying and complaining!"
+
+"And how long did this go on?" Christopher asked.
+
+"Oh, weeks! Well, and then one hot day, just before Easter vacation it
+was, I remember, I came home early from school with a headache, and when
+I reached the upper hall I could hear Mama crying, and Annie shouting
+out loud, and this Kate--this very same Kate Sheridan!--trying to quiet
+Mama, and everything in an uproar! Finally I heard Annie sobbing--I was
+frightened to death of course, and I sat down on the stairs that go up
+to the nursery--and I heard Annie say something about being
+eighteen--and she was eighteen the very day before; and she ran by me,
+in her riding clothes, with the derby hat that girls used to wear then,
+and her hair clubbed on her neck, and she ran downstairs, and I could
+hear her crying, and saying to herself: 'I'll show them; I'll show
+them!' And that was the last I saw of her," Alice finished sadly, "for
+almost two years."
+
+"She went out?" Christopher asked.
+
+"Yes; she slammed the door. Mama fainted."
+
+"Of course!"
+
+"Oh, Chris," said his wife, half crying, "wasn't that enough to make any
+one faint?--let alone Mama. Anyway, she was dreadfully ill, and they
+rather shut me up about it, and told everyone that Annie had gone
+abroad. We had been living very quietly, you know, and nobody cared much
+what Annie did, then. And she really had gone abroad, she wrote Mama
+from Montreal, and she had been married to Emil Mueller in Albany. They
+had taken a train there, and were married that same afternoon. They went
+to London, and they were in Germany, and then--then it all broke up, you
+know about that!"
+
+"How much later was that?"
+
+Alice considered.
+
+"It was about Christmas time. Don't you remember that I went to your
+mother, and Acton and I got measles? Mama was abroad then."
+
+"And this Kate went with her?"
+
+"Yes. That was--that was one of the things I was--just thinking about!
+Annie wrote Mama that she was very ill, in Munich, and poor Mama just
+flew. Mueller had left her; indeed there was a woman and two quite big
+girls that had a claim on him, and if Mama hadn't been so anxious to
+shut it all up, she might have proved that he was a bigamist--but I
+don't know that she was ever sure. Judge Lee put the divorce through for
+Annie, and Mama took her to the Riviera and petted her, and pulled her
+through. But all her hair came out, and for weeks they didn't think she
+would live. She had brain fever. You see, Annie had had some money
+waiting for her on her eighteenth birthday, and your own father, who was
+her guardian, Chris, had given her the check--interest, it was, about
+seven or eight thousand dollars. And he told her to open her own
+account, and manage her own income, from then on. And we thought--Mama
+and I--that in some way Mueller must have heard of it. Anyway, she never
+deposited the check, and when her money gave out he just left her."
+
+"But what makes you think that her illness didn't commence--or wasn't
+entirely--brain fever?"
+
+"That she might have had a baby?" Alice asked, outright.
+
+Christopher nodded, the point almost insufferably distasteful to him.
+
+"Oh, I know it!" Alice said.
+
+"You _know_ it?" the man echoed, almost in displeasure.
+
+"Yes, she told me herself! But of course that was years later. At the
+time, all I knew was that Kate Sheridan came home, and came to see me at
+school, and told me that Mama and Annie were very well, but that Annie
+had been frightfully sick, and that Mama wouldn't come back until Annie
+was much stronger. As a matter of fact, it was nearly two
+years--Theodore took me over to them a year from that following summer,
+and then Annie stayed with some friends in England; she was having a
+wonderful time! But years afterward, when little Hendrick was coming, in
+fact, she was here one day, and she seemed to feel blue, and finally I
+happened to say that if motherhood seemed so hard to a person like
+herself, whose husband and whose whole family were so mad with joy over
+the prospect of a baby, what on earth must it be to the poor girls who
+have every reason to hate it. And she looked at me rather oddly, and
+said: 'Ah, I know what _that_ is!' Of course I guessed right away what
+she meant, and I said: 'Annie--not really!' And she said: 'Oh, yes, that
+was what started my illness. I had been so almost crazy--so blue and
+lonesome, and so sick with horror at the whole thing, that it all
+happened too soon, the day after Mama and Kate got there, in fact!' And
+then she burst out crying and said: 'Thank God it was that way! I
+couldn't have faced _that_.' And she said that she had been too
+desperately ill to realize anything, but that afterward, at Como, when
+she was much better, she asked Mama about it, and Mama said she must
+only be glad that it was all over, and try to think of it as a terrible
+dream!"
+
+"Well, there you are," said Chris, "she herself says that no child was
+born!"
+
+"Yes, but, Chris, mightn't it be that she didn't know?" Alice submitted,
+timidly.
+
+Her husband eyed her with a faint and thoughtful frown.
+
+"It seems to me that that is rather a fantastic theory, dear! Where
+would this child be all this time?"
+
+"Kate" Alice said, simply.
+
+"Kate!" he echoed, struck. And Alice saw, with a sinking heart, that he
+was impressed. After a full moment of silence he said, simply: "You
+think this is the child?"
+
+"Chris," his wife cried, appealingly, "I don't say I think so! But it
+occurred to me that it might be. I hope, with all my soul, that you
+don't think so!"
+
+"I'm afraid," he answered, thoughtfully, "that I do!"
+
+Alice's eyes filled with tears, and she tightened her fingers in his
+without speaking.
+
+"The idea being," Christopher mused, "that Mrs. Sheridan brought the
+baby home, and has raised her. That makes Miss Sheridan--Norma--the
+child of Annie and that German blackguard!"
+
+"I suppose so!" Alice admitted, despairingly.
+
+"But why has it been kept quiet all this time!"
+
+"Well, that," Alice said, "I don't understand. But this I _am_ sure of:
+Annie hasn't the faintest suspicion of it! She supposes that the whole
+thing ended with her terrible illness. She was only eighteen, and
+younger and more childish even than Leslie is! Oh, Chris," said Alice,
+her eyes watering, "isn't it horrible! To come to us, of all people!
+Will everybody know?"
+
+"Well, it all depends. It's a nasty sort of business, but I suppose
+there's no help for it. How much does Hendrick know?"
+
+"About Annie? Oh, everything that she does; I know that. Annie told him,
+and Judge Lee told him about Mueller and the divorce, or nullification,
+or whatever it was! There was nothing left unexplained there. But if the
+child lived, she didn't know that--only Mama did, and Kate. Oh, poor
+Annie, it would kill her to have all that raked up now! Why Kate kept it
+secret all these years----"
+
+"I must say," Christopher exclaimed, "that----By George, I hate this
+sort of thing! No help for it, I suppose. But if it gets out we shall
+all be in for a sweet lot of notoriety. We shall just have to make terms
+with these Sheridans, and keep our mouths shut. I didn't get the idea
+that they were holding your mother up. I believe it's more that she
+wants justice done; she would, you know, for the sake of the family. The
+girl herself, this Norma, evidently hasn't been raised on any
+expectations--probably knows nothing about it!"
+
+"Oh, I'm sure of that!" Alice agreed, eagerly. "And if she has Melrose
+blood in her, you may be sure she'll play the game. But, Chris, I can't
+stand the uncertainty. Mama's coming to have luncheon with me to-morrow,
+and I'm going to ask her outright. And if this Norma is really--what we
+fear, what do you think we ought to do?"
+
+"Well, it's hard to say. It's all utterly damnable," Christopher said,
+distressed. "And Annie, who let us all in for it, gets off scot free! I
+wish, since she let it go so long, that your mother had forgotten it
+entirely. But, as it is, this child isn't, strictly speaking,
+illegitimate. There was a marriage, and some sort of divorce, whether
+Mueller deceived Annie as to his being a bachelor or not!"
+
+A maid stood in the doorway.
+
+"Mrs. Melrose, Mrs. Liggett."
+
+"Oh," Alice said, in an animated tone of pleasure, "ask her to come
+upstairs!" But the eyes she turned to her husband were full of
+apprehension. "Chris, here's Mama now! Shall we----? Would you dare?"
+
+"Use your own judgment!" he had time to say hastily, before his wife's
+mother came in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Mrs. Melrose frequently came in to join Alice for dinner, especially
+when she was aware, as to-night, that Christopher had an evening
+engagement. She was almost always sure of finding Annie alone, and
+enjoying the leisurely confidences that were crowded out of the daytime
+hours.
+
+She had had several weeks of nervous illness now, but looked better
+to-night, looked indeed her handsome and comfortable self, as she
+received Chris's filial kiss on her forehead, and bent to embrace her
+daughter. Freda carried away her long fur-trimmed cloak, and she pushed
+her veil up to her forehead, and looked with affectionate concern from
+husband to wife.
+
+"Now, Chris, I'm spoiling things! But I thought Carry Pope told me that
+you were going to her dinner before the opera!"
+
+"I'm due there at eight," he said, reassuringly. "And by the same token,
+I ought to be dressing! But Alice and I have been loafing along here
+comfortably, and I'd give about seven dollars to stay at home with my
+wife!"
+
+"He always says that!" Alice said, smilingly. "But he always has a nice
+time; and then the next night he plays over the whole score, and tells
+me who was there, and so I have it, too!"
+
+Chris had walked to the white mantelpiece, and was lighting a
+cigarette.
+
+"Alice had that little protegee of yours here, to-day, Aunt Marianna,"
+he said, casually.
+
+There was no mistaking the look of miserable and fearful interest that
+deepened instantly in the older woman's eyes.
+
+"Miss Sheridan?" she said.
+
+"Mama," Alice exclaimed, suddenly, clasping a warm hand over her
+mother's trembling one, and looking at her with all love and
+reassurance, "you know how Chris and I love you, don't you?"
+
+Tears came into Mrs. Melrose's eyes.
+
+"Of course I do, lovey," she faltered.
+
+"Mama, you know how we would stand behind you--how anxious we are to
+share whatever's worrying you!" Alice went on, pleadingly. "Can't
+you--I'm not busy like Annie, or young like Leslie, and Chris is your
+man of business, after all! Can't you tell us about it? Two heads--three
+heads," said Alice, smiling through a sudden mist of tears, "are better
+than one!"
+
+"Why," Mrs. Melrose stammered, with a rather feeble attempt at
+lightness, "have I been acting like a person with something on her mind?
+It's nothing, children, nothing at all. Don't bother your dear, generous
+hearts about it another second!"
+
+And she looked from one to another with a gallant smile.
+
+Chris eyed his wife with a faint, hopeless movement of the head, and
+Alice correctly interpreted it to mean that the situation was worse
+instead of better.
+
+"You remember the night you sent for me, some weeks ago, Aunt Marianna?"
+he ventured. Mrs. Melrose moistened her lips, and swallowed with a dry
+throat, looking at him with a sort of alert defiance.
+
+"I confess that I was all upset that night," she admitted, bravely. "And
+to tell you children the truth, Kate Sheridan coming upon me so
+unexpectedly----"
+
+"Joseph quite innocently told me that evening that you had anticipated
+her coming!" Christopher said, quietly, as she paused.
+
+"Joseph was mistaken!" Mrs. Melrose said, warmly, with red colour
+beginning to burn in her soft, faded old face. "Kate had been associated
+with a terrible time in my life," she went on, almost angrily. "And it
+was quite natural--or at least it seems so to me!--I don't know what
+other people would feel, but to _me_----But what are you two
+cross-examining me for?" she interrupted herself to ask, with a sudden
+rush of tears, as Chris looked unconvinced, and Alice still watched her
+sorrowfully. "Little do you know, either of you, what I have been
+through----"
+
+"Mama," entreated Alice, earnestly, "will you answer me one question? I
+promise you that I won't ask another. You know how anxious we are only
+to help you, to make everything run smoothly. You know what the family
+is--to us. Don't you _see_ we are?" Alice asked suddenly, seeing that
+the desire for sympathy and advice was rapidly breaking up the ice that
+had chilled her mother's heart for long weeks. "Won't you tell me just
+this--it's about Annie, Mama. When she was so ill in Munich. Was--was
+her little baby born there?"
+
+"Yes!" Mrs. Melrose whispered, with fascinated eyes fixed on her
+daughter's face.
+
+Alice, ashen faced, fell back against her pillows without speaking.
+
+"Kate Sheridan brought the child home," Christopher stated, rather than
+asked, very quietly. His mother-in-law looked at him apathetically.
+
+"Kate--yes!"
+
+"Does Annie know it, Mama?" Alice whispered, after a silence.
+
+"Annie? Oh, my God, no!" The mother's voice rose almost to a wail. "Oh,
+Chris--Alice--if you love me, Annie must not know! So proud, so happy;
+and she would never bear it! I know her--I know her! She would kill
+herself before----"
+
+"Darling, you must be quiet!" Alice said, commandingly. "No one shall
+know it. What we do for this child shall be done for--well, our cousin.
+Chris will help you manage everything, and no one shall ever suspect it
+from me. It will all work out right, you'll see. Other people aren't
+watching us, as we always think they are; it's nobody's business if a
+cousin of ours suddenly appears in the family. No one would dare whisper
+one word against the Melroses. Only be quiet, Mama darling, and don't
+worry. Now that we know it, we will never, never allude to it again,
+will we, Chris? You can trust us."
+
+Mrs. Melrose had sunk back into her chair; her face was putty-coloured,
+beads of water stood on her forehead.
+
+"Oh, the relief--the relief!" she kept whispering, as she clung to
+Alice's hand. "Alice, for the sake of the name--dear--for all our
+sakes!----"
+
+"Now, if you two girls will take my advice!" Christopher suggested,
+cheerfully, "you'll stop talking about all this, and let it wait until
+to-morrow. Then we'll consult, and see just what proposition we can make
+to little Miss Sheridan, and what's best to be done. Alice, why don't
+you go over that wedding list of Leslie's with your mother? And ring for
+dinner. I'm going to dress."
+
+"We will!" Alice agreed, sensibly. "As a family we've always faced
+things courageously. We're fighters--we Melroses--and we'll stand
+together!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+This was on Friday, and it was on the following Monday that Wolf and
+Rose Sheridan came home to find news awaiting them. The day before had
+been surprisingly sunny and sweet, and Wolf and Harry Redding had taken
+the girls to Newark, where Wolf's motor-car had been stored all winter,
+and they had laughed, and joked, and chattered all the way like the
+care-free young things they were. Mrs. Sheridan, urged to join them, had
+pleaded business: she had promised old Mrs. Melrose to go and see her.
+So she had left them at the church door, after Mass, and they had gone
+their way rejoicing in sunshine and warm breezes, a part of the
+streaming holiday crowds that were surging and idling along the drying
+pavements.
+
+Wolf was neither of an age nor type for piety, but to-day he had prayed
+that this little Norma kneeling beside him, with the youth and fire and
+audacity shining in her face even while she prayed, might turn that same
+mysterious and solemn smile upon him again some day, as his wife. And
+all day long, as she danced along by his side, as she eagerly debated
+the question of luncheon, as she enslaved the aged coloured man in the
+garage, the new thrill of which he had only recently become so
+pleasantly conscious, stirred in his heart, and whatever she touched, or
+said, or looked, was beautified almost beyond recognition.
+
+He had thought, coming home Monday night, that he and she would take a
+little walk, in the lingering dusk of the cool spring evening, and
+perhaps see the twelfth installment of "The Stripe-Faced Terror," which
+was playing in the near-by moving-picture house.
+
+But he found her in a new mood, almost awed with an unexpected ecstasy
+in which he had no part--would never have a part. She and Aunt Kate had
+been to see Mrs. Melrose again.
+
+"And, Wolf, what do you think! They want me to go live there--with the
+Liggetts, to help with lists and things for Leslie's wedding. Mrs.
+Melrose kissed me, Wolf, and said--didn't she, Aunt Kate?--that I must
+try to feel that I belong to them; and she was so sweet--she put her arm
+about me, and said that I must have some pretty clothes! And the car is
+coming for me on Wednesday; isn't it like a dream? Oh, Rose, if I'm
+thankful enough! And I'm to come back here for dinner once a week, and
+of course you and Rose are to come there! Oh, Rose, but I wish it was us
+both--I wish it was you, you're so good!"
+
+"I wouldn't have it, Norma," Rose said, in her honest, pleasant voice.
+"You know I'd feel like a fool."
+
+"Oh, but I am so happy!" And Norma, who had gotten into Aunt Kate's lap,
+as the marvellous narrative progressed, dug her face into Aunt Kate's
+motherly soft shoulder, and tightened her arms about her neck, and cried
+a little, for sheer joy.
+
+But Wolf said almost nothing, and when he went to wash his hands for
+supper he went slowly, and found himself staring absently at the towel,
+and stopping short in the hall, still staring. He seemed himself at
+dinner, and his mother, at first watching him anxiously, could resume
+her meal, and later, could fall asleep, in the confident hope that it
+would all come right, after all. But Wolf slipped from the house after
+awhile, and walked the streets until almost dawn.
+
+It was almost dawn, too when the old mistress of the Melrose mansion
+fell asleep. She had called Regina more than once, she had tried the
+effect of reading, and of hot milk, and of a cold foot-bath. But still
+the crowded, over-furnished room was filled with ghosts, and still she
+watched them, pleaded with them, blamed them.
+
+"I've done all I could!" she whispered at last, into the heavy dark
+before the dawn. "It isn't my fault if they think she's Annie's child!
+I've never said so--it was Alice and Chris who said so. Annie and Leslie
+will never know anything more, and the girl herself need never know
+anything at all. Perhaps, as Kate said yesterday, it will all work out
+right, this way! At least it's all we can do now!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+So it came about quite naturally that the little unknown cousin of the
+Melroses was made a familiar figure in their different family groups,
+and friends of the house grew accustomed to finding pretty little Norma
+Sheridan lunching with Leslie, reading beside Alice's couch in the late
+summer afternoons, or amusing and delighting the old head of the family
+in a hundred charming ways. Norma called Mrs. Melrose "Aunt Marianna"
+now, as Chris and Acton did. She did not understand the miracle, it
+remained a marvel still, but it was enough that it continued to deepen
+and spread with every enchanted hour.
+
+She had longed--what girl in Biretta's Bookstore did not?--to be rich,
+and to move and have her being "in society." And now she had her wish, a
+hundred times fulfilled, and of course she was utterly and absolutely
+happy.
+
+That is, except for the momentary embarrassments and jealousies and
+uncertainties, and for sometimes being bored, she thought that she might
+consider herself happy. And there were crumpled rose-leaves everywhere!
+she reminded herself sternly. She--Norma Sheridan--could spend more
+money upon the single item of shoes, for example, than Miss Smith, head
+of Biretta's Bookshop, could earn in a whole long year of hot months and
+cold, of weary days and headachy days.
+
+That part of it was "fun", she admitted to herself. The clothes were
+fun, the boxes and boxes and boxes that came home for her, the
+petticoats and stockings, the nightgowns heavy with filet lace, and the
+rough boots for tramping and driving, and the silk and satin slippers
+for the house. Nothing disappointing there! Norma never would forget the
+ecstasies of those first shopping trips with Aunt Marianna. Did she want
+them?--the beaded bag, the woolly scarf, the little saucy hat, were all
+to be sent to Miss Sheridan, please. Norma lost her breath, and laughed,
+and caught it again and lost it afresh. They had so quickly dropped the
+little pretence that she was to make herself useful, these wonderful and
+generous Melroses; they had so soon forgotten everything except that she
+was Leslie's age, and to be petted and spoiled as if she had been
+another Leslie!
+
+And now, after more than half a year, she knew that they liked her; that
+all of them liked her in their varying degrees. Old Mrs. Melrose and
+Alice--Mrs. Christopher Liggett--were most warmly her champions,
+perhaps, but Leslie was too unformed a character to be definitely
+hostile, and the little earlier jealousies and misunderstandings were
+blown away long ago, and even the awe-inspiring Annie had shown a real
+friendliness of late. Acton Liggett and Hendrick von Behrens were always
+kind and admiring, and Norma had swiftly captivated Annie's little boys.
+But of them all, she still liked Chris Liggett the best, and felt
+nearest Chris even when he scolded her, or hurt her feelings with his
+frank advice. And she knew that Chris thoroughly liked her, in spite of
+the mistakes that she was continually making, and the absurd ways in
+which her ignorance and strangeness still occasionally betrayed her.
+
+It had been a time full of mistakes, of course. Chris often told her
+that she had more brains in her little finger than most of the girls of
+her set had in their whole bodies, but that had not saved her. If she
+was pretty, they were all pretty, too. If she wore beautiful clothes,
+they wore clothes just as beautiful, and with more assurance. If her wit
+was quick, and her common sense and human experience far greater than
+theirs, these were just the qualities they neither needed nor trusted.
+They spoke their own language, the language of youthful arrogance and
+ignorance, the language of mutual compliments and small personalities,
+and Norma could not speak this tongue any more than she could join them
+when they broke easily into French or German or Italian. She could ride,
+because she was not afraid of the mild-mannered cobs that were used at
+the riding school and in the park, but she knew little of correct
+posture and proper handling of reins. She could swim, as Wolf had taught
+her, in the old river years ago, but she knew nothing of the terms and
+affectations of properly taught swimming. When she went to see Aunt
+Kate, she was almost ashamed of the splendour of her clothing and the
+utter luxury of the life she led, but with Leslie and her friends she
+often felt herself what perhaps they thought her, an insignificant
+little poor relation of the Melroses, who had appeared from nobody knew
+where, and might return unchallenged at any moment to her original
+obscurity.
+
+This phase of the new life was disappointing, and Norma realized herself
+that she spent a quite disproportionate amount of time in thinking about
+it. Wasn't it enough, she would ask herself impatiently, to be one of
+them at all, to see one's picture in the fashionable weeklies, as a
+member of the family, at the Liggett-Melrose wedding; to have clothes
+and motor-cars, and a bedroom that was like a picture; to know Newport
+at first-hand; to have cruised for a week in the Craigies' yacht, and
+have driven to Quebec and back in the Von Behrens' car? A year ago, she
+reminded herself, it would have seemed Paradise to have had even a
+week's freedom from the bookshop; now, she need never step into
+Biretta's again!
+
+But it was not enough, and Norma would come impatiently to the end of
+her pondering with the same fretted sense of dissatisfaction. It was not
+enough to be tremulously praised by old Aunt Marianna, to be joked by
+Chris, greeted by Alice, his wife, with a friendly smile. Norma wanted
+to belong to this life, to be admired and sought by Leslie, rather than
+endured; to have the same easy familiarity with Duers, and Alexanders,
+and Rutgers that Leslie had.
+
+As was quite natural, she and Leslie had eyed each other, from the very
+beginning, somewhat as rivals. But Leslie, even then preparing for her
+marriage, had so obviously held all the advantages, that her vague
+resentment and curiosity concerning the family's treatment of the
+unknown newcomer were brief. If Aunt Alice liked Norma to come in and
+talk books and write notes, if Chris chose to be gallant, if Grandma
+lavished an unusual affection upon this new protegee, well, it robbed
+Leslie of nothing, after all.
+
+But with Norma it was different. She was brought into sharp contact with
+another girl, only slightly her senior, who had everything that this new
+turn of fortune had given Norma herself, and a thousand times more.
+Norma saw older women, the important and influential matrons of the
+social world, paying court to the promised wife of Acton Liggett. Norma
+knew that while Alice and Chris were always attentive to her own little
+affairs, the solving of Leslie's problems they regarded as their own
+sacred obligation. Norma had hours and hours of this new enchanting
+leisure to fill; she could be at anybody's beck and call. But Leslie,
+she saw, was only too busy. Everybody was claiming Leslie; she was
+needed in forty places at once; she must fly from one obligation to
+another, and be thanked for sparing just a few minutes here and there
+from her crowded days.
+
+Mrs. Melrose had immediately made Norma an allowance, an allowance so
+big that when Norma first told Aunt Kate about it, it was with a sense
+of shame. Norma had her check-book, and need ask nobody for spending
+money. More than that her generous old patron insisted that she use all
+the family charge accounts freely: "You mustn't think of paying in any
+shop!" said Aunt Marianna and Aunt Alice, earnestly.
+
+But Leslie was immensely rich in her own right. The hour in which Norma
+realized this was one of real wretchedness. Chris was her innocent
+informant.
+
+It was only two or three days before the wedding, a warm day of rustling
+leaves and moving shadows, in late May. The united families were still
+in town, but plans for escape to the country were made for the very day
+after the event. Norma had been fighting a little sense of hurt pride
+because she was not to be included among Leslie's wedding attendants.
+She knew that Aunt Marianna had suggested it to Leslie, some weeks
+before, and that the bride had quite justifiably reminded her
+grandmother that the eight maids, the special maid and matron of honour,
+and the two little pages, had all been already asked to perform their
+little service of affection, and that a readjustment now would be
+difficult. So Norma had been excluded from the luncheons, the
+discussions of frocks and bouquets, and the final exciting rehearsals in
+the big Park Avenue church.
+
+She had chanced to be thinking of all these things on the day when Chris
+made a casual allusion to "needing" Leslie.
+
+"The poor kid has got a stupid morning coming to-morrow, I'm afraid!" he
+had said, adding, in answer to Norma's raised eyebrows, "Business. She
+has to sign some papers, and alter her will--and I want all that done
+before they go away!"
+
+"Has Leslie a will?" Norma had asked.
+
+"My child, what did you suppose she had? Leslie inherited practically
+all of her Grandfather Melrose's estate. At least, her father, Theodore,
+did, and Leslie gets it direct through him. Of course your Aunt Annie
+got her slice, and my wife hers, but the bulk was left to the son. Poor
+Teddy! he didn't get much out of it. But during her minority the
+executors--of which I happen to be one--almost doubled it for Leslie.
+And to-morrow Judge Lee and I have got to go over certain matters with
+her."
+
+He had been idling at the piano, while Alice dozed in the heat, and
+Norma played with a magazine. Now he had turned back to his music, and
+Norma had apparently resumed her reading. But she really had been shaken
+by a storm of passionate jealousy.
+
+Jealousy is in its nature selfish, and the old Norma of Aunt Kate's
+little group had not been a selfish girl. But Norma had had a few weeks
+now of a world governed by a different standard. There was no necessity
+here, none of the pure beauty of sacrifice and service and
+insufficiency. This was a world of superfluities, a standard of excess.
+To have merely meals, clothing, comfort, and ease was not enough here.
+All these must be had in superabundance, and she was the best woman and
+the happiest who had gowns she could not wear, jewels lying idle, money
+stored away in banks, and servants standing about uselessly for hours,
+that the momentary needs of them might be instantly met.
+
+The poison of this creed had reached Norma, in spite of herself. She was
+young, and she had always been beloved in her own group for what she
+honestly gave of cheer and service and friendship. It hurt her that
+nobody needed what she could give now, and she hated the very memory of
+Leslie's wedding.
+
+But when that was over, Mrs. Melrose had taken her to Newport, whither
+Alice was carefully moved every June. Leslie was gone now, and Norma
+free from pricking reminders of her supremacy, and as old friends of
+Mrs. Melrose began to include her in the summer's merrymaking, she had
+some happy times. But even here the cloven hoof intruded.
+
+Norma had always imagined this group as being full of friendly women and
+admiring men, as offering her a hundred friendships where the old life
+had offered one. She discovered slowly, and with pained surprise, that
+although there were plenty of girls, they were not especially anxious
+for intimacy with her, and that the men she met were not, somehow,
+"real." They were absorbed in amusement, polo and yachting, they moved
+about a great deal, and they neither had, nor desired to have, any
+genuine work or interest in life. She began to see Leslie's wisdom in
+making an early and suitable marriage. As a matron, Leslie was
+established; she could entertain, she had dignified duties and
+interests, and while Norma felt awkward and bashful in asking young men
+to dine with Aunt Marianna, Acton brought his friends to his home, and
+Leslie had her girl friends there, and the whole thing was infinitely
+simpler and pleasanter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Norma had indeed chanced to make one girl friend, and one of whom Leslie
+and Alice, and even Annie, heartily approved. Caroline, the
+seventeen-year-old daughter of the Peter Craigies, was not a debutante
+yet, but she would be the most prominent, because the richest, of them
+all next winter. Caroline was a heavy-lidded, slow-witted girl, whose
+chief companions in life had been servants, foreign-born governesses,
+and music-masters. Norma had been seated next to her at the
+international tennis tournament, and had befriended the squirming and
+bashful Caroline from sheer goodness of heart. They had criticized the
+players, and Caroline had laughed the almost hysteric, shaken laugh that
+so worried her mother, and had blurted confidences to Norma in her
+childish way.
+
+The next day there had been an invitation for Norma to lunch with
+Caroline, and Mrs. von Behrens had promptly given another luncheon for
+both girls. Norma was pleased, for a few weeks, with her first social
+conquest, but after that Caroline became a dead weight upon her. She
+hated the flattery, the inanities, the utter dulness of the great
+Craigie mansion, and she began to have a restless conviction that time
+spent with Caroline was time lost.
+
+The friendship had cost her dear, too. Norma hated, even months later to
+remember just what she had paid for it.
+
+In August a letter from Rose had reached her at Newport, announcing
+Rose's approaching marriage. Harry Redding's sister Mary was engaged to
+a most satisfactory young man of Italian lineage, one Joe Popini, and
+Mrs. Redding would hereafter divide her time between the households of
+her daughter and her son. Harry, thus free to marry, had persuaded Rose
+to wait no longer; the event was to be on a Monday not quite two weeks
+ahead, and Norma was please, _please_, PLEASE to come down as soon as
+she could.
+
+Norma had read this letter with a sensation of pain at her heart. She
+felt so far away from them nowadays; she felt almost a certain
+reluctance to dovetail this life of softness and perfume and amusement
+in upon the old life. But she would go. She would go, of course!
+
+And then she had suddenly remembered that on the Monday before Rose's
+wedding, the Craigies' splendid yacht was to put to sea for a four- or
+five-days' cruise, and that Caroline had asked her to go--the only other
+young person besides the daughter of the house. And great persons were
+going, visiting nobility from England, a young American Croesus and his
+wife, a tenor from the Metropolitan. Annie had been delighted with this
+invitation; even Leslie, just returned from California and Hawaii, had
+expressed an almost surprised satisfaction in the Craigies'
+friendliness.
+
+If they got back Friday night, then Norma could go down to the city
+early Saturday morning, and have two days with Rose and Aunt Kate. But
+if the yacht did not return until Saturday--well, even then there would
+be time. She and Rose could get through a tremendous lot of talking in
+twenty-four hours. And the voyage certainly would not be prolonged over
+Saturday, for had not Mrs. Craigie said, in Norma's hearing, that
+Saturday was the very latest minute to which she could postpone the
+meeting for the big charity lawn party?
+
+So Norma and the enslaved Caroline continued to plan for their sea trip,
+and Norma commissioned Chris to order Rose's wedding present at
+Gorham's.
+
+Mrs. von Behrens had been a trifle distant with the newcomer in the
+family until now, but the day before the cruise began she extended just
+a little of her royal graciousness toward Norma. Like Leslie, Norma
+admired her Aunt Annie enormously, and hungered for her most casual
+word.
+
+"You've plenty of frocks, Kiddie?" asked Annie. "One uses them up at the
+rate of about three a day!"
+
+"Oh!"--Norma widened her innocent eyes--"I've a wardrobe trunk full of
+them: white skirts and white shoes and hats!"
+
+"Well, I didn't suppose you had them tied in a handkerchief!" Annie had
+responded, with her quiet smile. "See if that fits you!"
+
+They had been up in Mrs. von Behrens's big bedroom, where that lady was
+looking at a newly arrived box of gowns. "That" was the frail,
+embroidered coat of what Norma thought the prettiest linen suit she had
+ever seen.
+
+"It's charming on you, you little slender thing," Annie had said. "The
+skirt will be too long; will you pin it, Keating? And see that it goes
+at once to my mother's house."
+
+Keating had pinned, admired. And Norma, turning herself before the
+mirror, with her eyes shy with pleasure and gratitude, had known that
+she was gaining ground.
+
+So they had started radiantly on the cruise. But after the first few
+miraculous hours of gliding along beneath the gay awnings that had all
+been almost astonishingly disappointing, too. Caroline, to begin with,
+was a dreadful weight upon her young guest. Caroline for breakfast,
+luncheon, and dinner; Caroline retiring and rising, became almost
+hateful. Caroline always wanted to do something, when Norma could have
+dreamed and idled in her deck chair by the hour. It must be deck golf or
+deck tennis, or they must go up and tease dignified and courteous
+Captain Burns, "because he was such an old duck," or they must harass
+one or two of the older people into bridge. Norma did not play bridge
+well, and she hated it, and hated Caroline's way of paying for her
+losses almost more than paying them herself.
+
+Norma could not lie lazily with her book, raising her eyes to the
+exquisite beauty of the slowly tipping sea, revelling in coolness and
+airiness, because Caroline, fussing beside her, had never read a book
+through in her life. The guest did not know, even now, that Caroline had
+been a mental problem for years, that Caroline's family had consulted
+great psycho-analysts about her, and had watched the girl's
+self-centredness, her odd slyness, her hysteric emotions, with deep
+concern. She did not know, even now, that the Cragies were anxious to
+encourage this first reaching out, in Caroline, toward a member of her
+own sex, and that her fancies for members of the opposite sex--for
+severely indifferent teachers, for shocked and unresponsive
+chauffeurs--were among the family problems, a part of the girl's
+unfortunate under-development. Caroline's family was innocently
+surprised to realize that her mind had not developed under the care of
+maids who were absorbed in their own affairs, and foreigners who would
+not have been free to attend her had they not been impecunious and
+unsuccessful in more lucrative ways. They had left her to Mademoiselles
+and Fraeuleins quite complacently, but they did not wish her to be like
+these too-sullen or too-vivacious ladies.
+
+So they welcomed her friendship with Norma, and Caroline's passionate
+desire to be with her friend was not to find any opposition on the part
+of her own family. Little Miss Sheridan had an occasional kindly word
+from Caroline's mother, a stout woman, middle-aged at thirty-five, and
+good-natured smiles from Caroline's father, a well-groomed young man.
+And socially, this meant that the Melroses' young protegee was made.
+
+But Norma did not realize all this. She only knew that all the charm and
+beauty of the yacht were wasted on her. Everyone ate too much, talked
+too much, played, flirted, and dressed too much. The women seldom made
+their appearance until noon; in the afternoons there was bridge until
+six, and much squabbling and writing of checks on the forward deck, with
+iced drinks continually being brought up from the bar. At six the women
+loitered off to dress for dinner, but the men went on playing for
+another half hour. The sun sank in a blaze of splendour; the wonderful
+twilight fell; but the yacht might have been boxed up in an armoury for
+all that her passengers saw of the sea.
+
+After the elaborate dinner, with its ices and hot rolls, its warm wines
+and chilled champagne, cards began again, and unless the ocean was so
+still that they might dance, bridge continued until after midnight.
+
+Norma's happiest times had been when she arose early, at perhaps seven,
+and after dressing noiselessly in their little bathroom, crept upstairs
+without waking Caroline. Sunshine would be flooding the ocean, or
+perhaps the vessel would be nosing her way through a luminous fog--but
+it was always beautiful. The decks, drying in the soft air, would be
+ordered, inviting, deserted. Great waves of smooth water would flow
+evenly past, curving themselves with lessening ripples into the great
+even circle of the sea. A gentle breeze would stir the leaves of the
+potted plants on the deck and flap the fringes of the awnings.
+
+Norma, hanging on the railing, would look down upon a group of maids and
+stewards laughing and talking on the open deck below. These were happy,
+she would reflect, animated by a thousand honest emotions that never
+crept to the luxurious cabins above. They would be waiting for
+breakfast, all freshly aproned and brushed, all as pleased with the
+_Seagirl_ as if they had been her owners.
+
+On the fifth day, Friday, she had been almost sick with longing to hear
+some mention of going back. Surely--surely, she reasoned, they had all
+said that they must get back on Friday night! If the plan had changed,
+Norma had determined to ask them to run into harbour somewhere, and put
+her on shore. She was so tired of Caroline, so tired of wasting time, so
+headachy from the heavy meals and lack of exercise!
+
+Late on Friday afternoon some idle remark of her hostess had assured her
+that the yacht would not make Greble light until Monday. They were
+ploughing north now, to play along the Maine coast; the yachting party
+was a great success, and nobody wanted to go home.
+
+Norma, goaded out of her customary shyness, had pleaded her cousin's
+marriage. Couldn't they run into Portland--or somewhere?--and let her go
+down by train? But Caroline had protested most affectionately and
+noisily against this, and Caroline's mother said sweetly that she
+couldn't think of letting Norma do that alone--Annie von Behrens would
+never forgive her! However, she would speak to Captain Burns, and see
+what could be done. Anyway, Mrs. Craigie had finished, with her
+comfortable laugh, Norma had only to tell her cousin that she was out
+with friends on their yacht, and they had been delayed. Surely that was
+excuse enough for any one?
+
+It was with difficulty that Norma had kept the tears out of her eyes.
+She had not wanted an excuse to stay away from Rose's wedding. Her heart
+had burned with shame and anger and helplessness. She could hardly
+believe, crying herself to sleep on Friday night, that two whole days
+were still to spare before Monday, and that she was helpless to use
+them. Her mind worked madly, her thoughts rushing to and fro with a
+desperation worthy an actual prisoner.
+
+On Saturday evening, after a day of such homesickness and
+heavy-heartedness as she had never known before in her life, she had
+realized that they were in some port, lying a short half mile from
+shore.
+
+It was about ten o'clock, warm and star-lighted; there was no moon.
+Norma had slipped from the deck, where Caroline was playing bridge, and
+had gone to the lowered gang-plank. Captain Burns was there, going over
+what appeared to be invoices, with the head steward.
+
+"Captain," Norma had said, her heart pounding, "can't you put me on
+shore? I must be in New York to-morrow--it's very important! If I get a
+coat, will you let me go in when you go?"
+
+He had measured her with his usual polite, impersonal gaze.
+
+"Miss Sheridan, I really could not do it, Miss! If it was a telegram, or
+something of that sort----But if anything was to happen to you, Miss, it
+would be--it really would be most unfortunate!"
+
+Norma had stood still, choking. And in the starlight he had seen the
+glitter of tears in her eyes.
+
+"Couldn't you put it to Mrs. Craigie, Miss? I'm sure she'd send
+someone--one of the maids----"
+
+But Norma shook her head. It would anger Caroline, and perhaps
+Caroline's mother, and Annie, too, to have her upset the cruise by her
+own foolish plans. There was no hope of her hostess's consent.
+What!--send a girl of eighteen down to New York for dear knows what
+fanciful purpose, without a hint from parent or guardian? Mrs. Craigie
+knew the modern girl far too well for that, even if it had not been
+personally extremely inconvenient to herself to spare a maid. They were
+rather short of maids, for two or three of them had been quite ill.
+
+The launch had put off, with Captain Burns in the stern. Norma had stood
+watching it, with her heart of lead. Oh, to be running away--flying--on
+the train--in the familiar streets! They could forgive her later--or
+never----
+
+"Norma, aren't you naughty?" Caroline had interrupted her thoughts, and
+had slipped a hand through her arm. "Buoso is going to sing--do come in!
+My dear, you know that last hand? Well, we made it----!"
+
+The next two days were the slowest, the hardest, the bitterest of
+Norma's life. She felt that nobody had ever had to bear so aching a
+heart as hers, as the most beautiful yacht in the world skimmed over the
+blue ocean, and the sun shone down on her embroidered linen suit, and
+her white shoes, and the pearl ring that Caroline had given her for her
+birthday.
+
+What were they doing at Aunt Kate's? What were they saying as the hours
+went by? At what stage was the cake--and the gown? Was Rose really to be
+married to-morrow--to-day?
+
+In New Brunswick she had managed to send a long wire, full of the
+disappointment and affection and longing she truly felt, and after that
+she had been happier. But it was a very subdued little Norma who had
+come quietly into Aunt Kate's kitchen three weeks later, and had
+relieved her over-charged heart with a burst of tears on Aunt Kate's
+shoulder.
+
+Aunt Kate had been kind, kind as she always was to the adored
+foster-child. And Norma had stayed to dinner, and made soft and penitent
+eyes at Wolf until the agonized resolutions of the past lonely months
+had all melted out of his heart again, and they had all gone over to
+Rose's, for five minutes of kissing and crying, before the big car came
+to carry Norma away.
+
+So the worst of that wound was healed, and life could become bright and
+promising to Norma once more. Autumn was an invigorating season, anyway,
+full of hope and enchantment, and Caroline Craigie, by what Norma felt
+to be a special providence, was visiting her grandmother in Baltimore
+for an indefinite term. The truth was that there was a doctor there
+whose advice was deemed valuable to Caroline, but Norma did not know
+that. Norma did not know the truth, either, about Mrs. von Behrens's
+sudden graciousness toward her, but it made her happy. Annie had become
+friendly and hospitable toward the newcomer in the family for only one
+reason. As a social dictator, she was accustomed to be courted and
+followed by scores of women who desired her friendship for the prestige
+it gave them. Annie was extremely autocratic in this respect, and could
+snub, chill, and ignore even the most hopeful aspirants to her favour,
+with the ease of long practice. It made no difference to Annie that
+dazzling credentials were produced, or that past obscurity was more than
+obliterated by present glory.
+
+"One truly must be firm," Annie frequently said. "It devolves upon a few
+of us, as an actual duty, to see that society is maintained in its true
+spirit. Let the bars down once----!"
+
+Norma, a negligible factor in Annie's life when she first appeared, had
+quite innocently become a problem during that first summer. While not a
+Melrose, she was a member of the Melrose family, making her home with
+one of the daughters of the house. Annie might ignore Norma, but there
+were plenty of women, and men, too, who saw in the girl a valuable
+social lever. To become intimate with little Miss Sheridan meant that
+one might go up to her, at teas and dinners, while she was with Mrs.
+Melrose, or young Mrs. Liggett, or even Mrs. von Behrens herself, in a
+casual, friendly manner that indicated, to a watching world, a
+comfortable footing with the family. Norma was consequently selected
+for social attention.
+
+Annie saw this immediately, and when all the families were settled in
+town again, she decided to take Norma's social training in hand, as she
+had done Leslie's, and make sure that no undesirable cockle was sown
+among the family fields. She would have done exactly the same if Norma
+had been the least attractive of girls, but Norma fancied that her own
+qualities had won Annie's reluctant friendship, and was accordingly
+pleased.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Eight months later, in the clear sunshine of a late autumn morning, a
+slender young woman came down the steps of the Melrose house, after an
+hour's call on the old mistress, and turned briskly toward Fifth Avenue.
+In figure, in carriage, and even in the expression of her charming and
+animated face, she was different from the girl who had come to that same
+house to make a call with Aunt Kate, on the day after the big blizzard,
+yet it was the same Norma Sheridan who nodded a refusal to the driver of
+the big motor-car that was waiting, and set off by herself for her walk.
+
+The old Norma, straight from Biretta's Bookshop, had been pretty in
+plain serge and shabby fur. But this Norma--over whose soft thick belted
+coat a beautiful silver-fox skin was linked, whose heavy, ribbed silk
+hose disappeared into slim, flat, shining pumps that almost caressed the
+slender foot, whose dark hair had the lustre that comes from intelligent
+care, and whose handsome little English hat was the only one of its
+special cut in the world--was a conspicuously attractive figure even in
+a world of well-groomed girls, and almost deserved to be catalogued as a
+beauty. From the hat to the shoes she was palpably correct, and Norma
+knew, and never could quite sufficiently revel in the knowing, that the
+blouse and the tailored skirt that were under the coat were correct,
+too, and that under blouse and skirt were cobwebby linens and perfumed
+ribbons and sheerest silks that were equally perfect in their way.
+Leslie's bulldog, pulling on his strap, kept her moving rapidly, and
+girl and dog exacted from almost all the passers-by that tribute of
+glances to which Norma was now beginning to be accustomed.
+
+She was walking to Mrs. von Behrens's after an unusually harmonious
+luncheon with old Mrs. Melrose. This was one of Norma's happy times, and
+she almost danced in the crisp November air that promised snow even now.
+Leslie had asked her to come informally to tea; Annie had sent a message
+that she wished to see Norma; and Alice, who, like all invalids, had
+dark moods of which only her own household was aware, had been her
+nicest self for a week. Then Christopher was coming home to-night, and
+Norma had missed him for the three weeks he had been away, duck-shooting
+in the South, and liked the thought that he was homeward bound.
+
+She found Leslie with Annie to-day, in Annie's big front bedroom. Leslie
+was in a big chair by the bed where Annie, with some chalky preparation
+pasted in strips on those portions of her face that were most inclined
+to wrinkle, was lying flat. Her hair, rubbed with oils and packed in
+tight bands, was entirely invisible, and over her arms, protruding from
+a gorgeous oriental wrap, loose chamois gloves were drawn. Annie had
+been to a luncheon, and was to appear at two teas, a dinner, and the
+theatre, and she was making the most of an interval at home. She looked
+indescribably hideous, as she stretched a friendly hand toward Norma,
+and nodded toward a chair.
+
+"Look at the child's colour--Heavens! what it is to be young," said
+Annie. "Sit down, Norma. How's Alice?"
+
+"Lovely!" Norma said, pulling off her gloves. "She had a wire from
+Chris, and he gets back to-night. I had luncheon with your mother, and I
+am to go to stay with her for two or three nights, anyway. But Aunt
+Alice said that she would like to have me back again next week for her
+two teas."
+
+"How old are you, Norma?" Annie asked, suddenly. Any sign of interest on
+her part always thrilled the girl, who answered, flushing:
+
+"Nineteen; twenty in January, Aunt Annie."
+
+"I'm thinking, if you'd like it, of giving you a little tea here next
+month," Annie said, lazily. "You know quite enough of the youngsters now
+to have a thoroughly nice time, and afterward we'll have a dinner here,
+and they can dance!"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Annie--if I'd like it!" Norma exclaimed, rosy with pleasure.
+
+"You would?" Annie asked, looking at a hand from which she had drawn the
+glove, and smiling slightly. "It means that you don't go anywhere in the
+meantime. You're not out until then, you know!"
+
+"Oh, but I won't be going anywhere, anyway," Norma conceded,
+contentedly.
+
+"You'll have a flood of invitations fast enough after the tea," Annie
+assured her, pleased at her excitement, "and until then, you can simply
+say that you are not going out yet."
+
+"Chris said he might take me to the opera on the first night; I've never
+been," Norma said, timidly. "But I can explain to him!"
+
+"Oh, that won't count!" Annie assured her, carelessly. "We'll all be
+there, of course! Have you worn the corn-coloured gown yet?"
+
+"Oh, no, Aunt Annie!"
+
+"Well, keep it for that night. And you and Chris might----No, he'll want
+to dine with Alice, and she'll want to see you in your new gown. I was
+going to say that you might dine here, but you'd better not."
+
+"I think Leslie and Acton are going to be asked to dine with us," Norma
+said. "Aunt Alice said something about it!"
+
+"Well," Annie agreed indifferently. "Ring that bell, Norma--I've got to
+get up! Where are you girls going now?"
+
+"Some of the girls are coming to my house for tea," Leslie answered,
+listlessly. "I've got the car here. Come on, Norma!"
+
+"But you're not driving, Kiddie?" her aunt asked, quickly.
+
+Leslie, who neither looked nor felt well, raised half-resentful eyes.
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not driving, and I'm lying in bed mornings, and I don't
+play squash, or ride horseback, or go in for tennis!" she drawled, half
+angrily. "I'm having a perfectly _lovely_ time! I wish Acton had a
+little of it; he wouldn't be so pleased! Makes me so mad," grumbled
+Leslie, as she wandered toward the door, busily buttoning her coat.
+"Grandma crying with joy, and Aunt Alice goo-gooing at me, and
+Acton----"
+
+"Come, now, be a little sport, Leslie!" her aunt urged, affectionately,
+with her arm about her. "It's rotten, of course, but after all, it does
+mean a lot to the Liggetts----"
+
+"Oh, now, don't _you_ begin!" Leslie protested, half-mollified, with her
+parting nod. "Don't--for pity's sake!--talk about it," she added,
+rudely, to Norma, as Norma began some consolatory murmur on the stairs.
+But when they were before her own fire, waiting for the expected girls,
+she made Norma a rather ungracious confidence.
+
+"I don't want Aunt Alice or any one to know it, but if Acton Liggett
+thinks I am going to let him make an absolute fool of me, he's
+mistaken!" Leslie said, in a sort of smouldering resentment.
+
+"What has Acton done?" Norma asked, flattered by the intimation of trust
+and not inclined to be apprehensive. She had seen earlier differences
+between the young married pair, and now, when Leslie was physically at a
+disadvantage, she and Alice had agreed that it was not unnatural that
+the young wife should grow exacting and fanciful.
+
+"Acton is about the most selfish person I ever knew," Leslie said,
+almost with a whimper. "Oh, yes, he is, Norma! You don't see it--but I
+do! Chris knows it, too; I've heard Chris call him down a thousand times
+for it! I am just boiling at Acton; I have been all day! He leaves
+everything to me, everything; and I'm not well, now, and I can't stand
+it! And I'll tell him I can't, too."
+
+"I suppose a man doesn't understand very well," Norma ventured.
+
+"_He_ doesn't!" Leslie said, warmly. "All Acton Liggett thinks of is his
+own comfort--that's all! I do everything for him--I pay half the
+expenses here, you know, more than half, really, for I always pay for my
+own clothes and Milly, and lots of other things. And then he'll do some
+_mean_, ugly thing that just makes me furious at him--and he'll walk out
+of the house, perfectly calm and happy!"
+
+"He's always had his own way a good deal," Norma who knew anything
+except sympathy would utterly exasperate Leslie conceded, mildly.
+
+"Yes," Leslie agreed, flushing, and stiffening her jaw rather ominously,
+"and it's just about time that he learned that he isn't always going to
+have it, too! It's very easy for him to have me do anything that is hard
+and stupid----Do you suppose," she broke off, suddenly, "that _I'm_ so
+anxious to go to the Duers' dinner? I wouldn't care if I never saw one
+of them again!"
+
+Norma gathered that a dinner invitation from the Duers had been the main
+cause of the young Liggetts' difference, and framed a general question.
+
+"That's Saturday night?"
+
+"Friday," Leslie amended. "And what does he do? He meets Roy Duer at the
+club, and says oh, no, he can't come to the dinner Friday, but _Leslie_
+can! He has promised to play bridge with the Jeromes and that crowd. But
+Leslie would _love_ to go! So there I am--old lady Duer called me up the
+next morning, and was so sorry Acton couldn't come! But she would expect
+me at eight o'clock. It's for her daughter, and she goes away again on
+Tuesday. And then"--Leslie straightened herself on the couch, and fixed
+Norma with bright, angry eyes;--"then Spooky Jerome telephoned here, and
+said to tell Acton that if he couldn't stir up a bridge party for
+Friday, he'd stir up something, and for Acton to meet him at the club!"
+
+Norma laughed.
+
+"And did you give Acton that message?" she inquired.
+
+"No, indeed, I didn't--that was only this morning!" Leslie said, in
+angry satisfaction. "I telephoned Mrs. Duer right away, and said that
+Acton would be so glad to come Friday, and if Acton Liggett doesn't like
+it, he knows what he can do! You laugh," she went on with a sort of
+pathetic dignity, "but don't you think it's a rotten way for a man to
+treat his wife, Norma? Don't you, honestly? There's nothing--nothing
+that I don't give way in--absolutely nothing! And I don't believe most
+men----Oh, hello, Doris," Leslie broke off, gaily, as there was a stir
+at the door; "come in! Come in, Vera--aren't you girls angels to come in
+and see the poor old sick lady!"
+
+Norma was still lingering when Acton came home, an hour later. She heard
+his buoyant voice in the hall, and began to gather her wraps and gloves
+as he came to the tea table.
+
+"Acton," Leslie said, firmly, "the bridge party is off for Friday, and
+you're going to Mrs. Duer's with me, and you ought to be ashamed of
+yourself!"
+
+"Whew! I can see that I'm popular in the home circle, Norma!" Acton
+said, leaning over the big davenport to kiss his wife. "How's my baby?
+All right, dear, anything you say goes! I was going to cancel the game,
+anyway. Look what Chris brought you, Cutey-cute! Say, Norma, has she
+been getting herself tired?"
+
+Leslie, instantly mollified, drew his cold, firm cheek against hers, and
+looked sidewise toward Norma.
+
+"Isn't he the nice, big, comfy man to come home to his mad little old
+wife?" she mumbled, luxuriously.
+
+"Yes," Acton grumbled, still half embracing her, "but you didn't talk
+that way at breakfast, you little devil!"
+
+"Am I a devil?" Leslie asked, lazily. And looking in whimsical penitence
+at Norma, she added, "I _am_ a devil. But you were just as mean as you
+could be," she told him, widening her eyes and shaking her head.
+
+"I know it. I felt like a dog, walking down town," her husband admitted
+promptly. "I tried to telephone but you weren't here!"
+
+"I was at Aunt Annie's," Leslie said, softly. Her husband had slipped in
+beside her on the wide davenport, and she was resting against his
+shoulder, and idly kissing the little rebel lock of hair that fell
+across one temple. "He's a pretty nice old husband!" she murmured,
+contentedly.
+
+"And she's a pretty nice little wife, if she did call me some mean
+names!" Acton returned, kissing the top of her head without altering her
+position. Norma looked at them with smiling contempt.
+
+"You're a great pair!" she conceded, indulgently.
+
+Leslie now was free to examine, with a flush and a laugh, the
+microscopic pair of beaded Indian moccasins that Chris had brought from
+Florida. Norma asked about Chris.
+
+"Oh, he's fine," Acton answered, "looks brown and hard; he had a
+gorgeous time! He said he might be round to see Grandma to-morrow
+morning!"
+
+"I'll tell her," Norma said, getting up to go. She left them still
+clinging together, like a pair of little love-birds, with peace fully
+restored for the time being.
+
+Mrs. Melrose's car had been waiting for some time, and she was whirled
+home through the dark and wintry streets without the loss of a second.
+Lights were lighted everywhere now, and tempered radiance filled the old
+hall as she entered it. It was just six o'clock, but Norma knew that she
+and the old lady were to be alone to-night, and she went through the
+long drawing-room to the library beyond it, thinking she might find her
+still lingering over the teacups. Dinner under these circumstances was
+usually at seven, and frequently Mrs. Melrose did not change her gown
+for it.
+
+There was lamplight in the library, but the old lady's chair was empty,
+and the tea table had been cleared away. Norma, supposing the room
+unoccupied, gave a little gasp of surprise and pleasure as Chris
+suddenly got to his feet among the shadows.
+
+She was so glad to see him, so much more glad than she would have
+imagined herself, that for a few minutes she merely clung tight to the
+two hands she had grasped, and stood laughing and staring at him. Chris
+back again! It meant so much that was pleasant and friendly to Norma.
+Chris advised her, admired her, sympathized with her; above all, she
+knew that he liked her.
+
+"Chris; it's so nice to see you!" she exclaimed.
+
+The colour came into his face, and with it an odd expression that she
+had never seen there before. Without speaking he put his arm about her,
+and drew her to him, and kissed her very quietly on the mouth.
+
+"Hello, you dear little girl!" he said, freeing her, and smiling at her,
+somewhat confusedly. "You're not half so glad to see me as I am to be
+back! You're looking so well, Norma," he went on, with almost his usual
+manner, "and Alice tells me you are making friends everywhere. What's
+the news?"
+
+He threw himself into a large leather chair, and, hardly knowing what
+she was doing, in the wild hurrying of her senses, Norma sat down
+opposite him. Her one flurried impulse was not to make a scene. Chris
+was always so entirely master of a situation, so utterly unemotional and
+self-possessed, that if he kissed her, upon his return from a
+three-weeks' absence, it must be a perfectly correct thing to do.
+
+Yet she felt both shaken and protestant, and it was with almost
+superhuman control that she began to carry on a casual conversation,
+giving her own report upon Alice and Leslie, Acton and the world in
+general.
+
+When Mrs. Melrose, delighted at the little attention from her
+son-in-law, came smilingly in, five minutes later, Norma escaped
+upstairs. She had Leslie's old room here when she spent the night, but
+it was only occasionally that Alice spared her, for her youth and high
+spirits, coupled with the simplicity and enthusiasm with which she was
+encountering the new world, made her a really stimulating companion for
+the sick woman.
+
+Regina came in to hook her into a simple dinner gown, but Norma did not
+once address her, except by a vague smile of greeting. Her thoughts were
+in a whirl. Why had he done that? Was it just brotherly--friendliness?
+He was much older than she--thirty-seven or eight; perhaps he had felt
+only an older man's kindly----
+
+But her face blazed, and she flung this explanation aside angrily. He
+had no business to do it! He had no right to do it! She was furious at
+him!
+
+She stood still, staring blankly ahead of her, in the centre of the
+room. The memory came over her in a wave; the odd, half-hesitating,
+half-confident look in his eyes as his arms enveloped her, the faint
+aroma of talcum powder and soap, the touch of his smoothly shaven cheek.
+
+It was almost an hour later that she went cautiously downstairs. He was
+gone--had been gone since half-past six o'clock, Joseph reported. Norma
+went in to dinner with Mrs. Melrose, and they talked cheerfully of
+Chris's return, of Leslie and Annie.
+
+By eight o'clock, reading in Mrs. Melrose's upstairs sitting-room, that
+first room that she had seen in this big house, eight months ago, Norma
+began to feel just a trifle flat. Chris Liggett was one of the most
+popular men in society, in demand everywhere, spoiled by women
+everywhere. He had quite casually, and perhaps even absent-mindedly,
+kissed his wife's young protegee upon meeting her after an absence, and
+she had hastily leaped to conclusions worthy of a schoolgirl! He would
+be about equally amused and disgusted did he suspect them.
+
+"He likes you, you little fool," Norma said to herself, "and you will
+utterly spoil everything with your idiocy!"
+
+"What did you say, lovey?" the old lady asked, half closing her book.
+
+"Nothing!" Norma said, laughing. She reopened her novel, and tried to
+interest herself in it. But the thought of that quarter hour in the
+study came back over and over again. She came finally to the conclusion
+that she was glad Chris liked her.
+
+The room was very still. A coal fire was glowing pink and clear in the
+grate, and now and then the radiators hissed softly. Norma had one big
+brilliant lamp to herself, and over the old lady's chair another
+glowed. Everything was rich, soft, comfortable. Regina was hovering in
+the adjoining room, folding the fat satin comforters, turning down the
+transparent linen sheets with their great scroll of monogram, and behind
+Regina were Joseph and Emma, and all the others, and behind them the
+great city and all the world, eager to see that this old woman, who had
+given the world very little real service in her life, should be shielded
+and warmed and kept from the faintest dream of need.
+
+Money was a strange thing, Norma mused. What should she do, if--as her
+shamed and vague phrase had it--if "something happened" to Aunt
+Marianna, and she was not even mentioned in her will? Of course it was a
+hateful thing to think of, and a horrible thing, sitting here opposite
+Aunt Marianna in the comfortable upstairs sitting-room, but the thought
+would come. Norma wished that she knew. She would not have shortened the
+old lady's life by a single second, and she would have died herself
+rather than betray this thought to any one, even to Wolf--even to Rose!
+But it suddenly seemed to her very unjust that she could be picked out
+of Biretta's bookstore to-day, by Aunt Marianna's pleasure, and perhaps
+put back there to-morrow through no fault of her own. They were all
+kind, they were all generous, but this was not just. She wanted the
+delicious and self-respecting feeling of being a young woman with
+"independent means."
+
+Such evenings as this one, even in the wonderful Melrose house, were
+undeniably dull. She and Rose had often grumbled, years ago, because
+there were so many of these quiet times, in between the Saturday and
+Sunday excitements. But Norma, in those days, had never supposed that
+dulness was ever compatible with wealth and ease.
+
+"Cards?" said old Mrs. Melrose, hopefully, as the girl made a sudden
+move. She loved to play patience, but only when she had an audience.
+Norma, who had just decided to give her French verbs a good hour's
+attention, smiled amiably, and herself brought out the green table. She
+sat watching the fall of kings and aces, reminding her companion of at
+least every third play. But her thoughts went back to Chris, and the
+faint odour of powder and soap, and the touch of his shaved cheek.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Norma met Chris again no later than the following afternoon. It was
+twilight in Alice's room, and she and Norma were talking on into the
+gloom, discussing the one or two guests who had chanced to come in for
+tea, and planning the two large teas that Alice usually gave some time
+late in November.
+
+Chris came in quietly, kissed his wife, and nodded carelessly to Norma.
+The girl's sudden mad heartbeats and creeping colour could subside
+together unnoticed, for he apparently paid no attention to her, and
+presently drifted to the piano, leaving the women free to resume their
+conference.
+
+Alice was a person of more than a surface sweetness; she loved harmony
+and serenity, and there was almost no inclination to irritability or
+ugliness in her nature. Her voice was always soothing and soft, and her
+patience in the unravelling of other people's problems was
+inexhaustible. Alice was, as all the world conceded, an angel.
+
+But Norma had not been a member of her household for eight months
+without realizing that Alice, like other household angels, did not wish
+an understudy in the role. She did not quite enjoy the nearness of
+another woman who might be all sweet and generous and peace-making, too.
+That was her own sacred and peculiar right. She could gently and
+persistently urge objections and find inconsistencies in any plan of
+her sister or of Norma, no matter how advantageous it sounded, and she
+could adhere to a plan of her own with a tenacity that, taken in
+consideration with Alice's weak body and tender voice, was nothing less
+than astonishing.
+
+Norma, lessoned in a hard school, and possessing more than her share of
+adaptability and common sense, had swiftly come to the conclusion that,
+since it was not her part to adjust the affairs of her benefactors, she
+might much more wisely constitute herself a sort of Greek chorus to
+Alice's manipulations. Alice's motives were always of the highest, and
+it was easy to praise them in all honesty, and if sometimes the younger
+woman had mentally arrived at a conclusion long before Alice had
+patiently and sweetly reached it, the little self-control was not much
+to pay toward the comfort of a woman as heavily afflicted as Alice.
+
+For Norma knew in her own heart that Alice was heavily afflicted,
+although the invalid herself always took the attitude that her
+helplessness brought the best part of life into her room, and shut away
+from her the tediousness and ugliness of the world.
+
+"'Aida' two weeks from to-night!" Alice said this evening, with her
+sympathetic smile.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Alice--if you could go! Didn't you love it?"
+
+"Love the opera? Do you hear her, Chris? But I didn't love people
+talking all about me--and they will do it, you know! And that makes one
+furious!"
+
+"I see you getting furious," Norma observed, incredulously.
+
+"You don't know me! But I was a bashful, adoring sort of little person,
+on my first night----"
+
+"Yes, you were," Chris teased her, over a lazy ripple of thirds. "She
+was such a bashful little person at the Mardi Gras dance she promised
+Artie Peyton her first cotillion the following season."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Alice--you didn't!"
+
+Alice's rather colourless face flushed happily, and she half lowered her
+lids.
+
+"Chris thinks that is a great story on me. As a matter of fact, I did do
+that; I was just childish enough. But I can't think how the story got
+out, for I was desperately ashamed of it."
+
+"I told Aunt Annie and Leslie to-day that you wanted the Liggetts to
+dine here that night," Norma said, suddenly. Instantly she realized that
+she had made a mistake. And there was no one in the world whose light
+reproof hurt her as Alice's did.
+
+"You--you gave my invitation to Leslie?" Alice asked, quietly.
+
+"Well--not quite that. But I told her that you had said that you meant
+to ask them," Norma replied, uncomfortably.
+
+"But, Norma, I did not ask you to mention it." Alice was even smiling,
+but she seemed a little puzzled.
+
+"I'm so sorry--if you didn't want me to!"
+
+"It isn't that. But one feels that one----"
+
+"What is Norma sorry about?" Chris asked, coming back to the fire.
+"Norma, you're up against a terrible tribunal, here! Alice has been
+known--well, even to give new hats to the people who make her angry!"
+
+This fortunate allusion to an event now some months old entirely
+restored Alice's good humour. Norma had accepted a certain almost-new
+hat from Leslie just before the wedding, and Alice, burning with her
+secret suspicion as to Norma's parentage, and in the first flush of her
+affection for the girl, had told Norma that in her opinion Leslie should
+not have offered it. It was not for Norma to take any patronage from her
+cousin, Alice said to herself. But Norma's distress at having
+disappointed Alice was so fresh and honest that the episode had ended
+with Alice's presenting her with a stunning new hat, to wipe out the
+terrible effect of her mild criticism.
+
+"You're a virago," said Chris, seating himself near his wife. "Tell me
+what you've been doing all day. Am I in for that dinner at Annie's
+to-night? I wish I could stay here and gossip with you girls."
+
+"Dearest, you'd get so stupid, tied here to me, that you wouldn't know
+who was President of the United States!" Alice smiled. "Yes, I promised
+you to Annie two weeks ago. To-morrow night Norma goes to Leslie, and
+you and I have dinner all alone, so console yourself with that."
+
+"_Tres bien_," Christopher agreed. And as if the phrase suggested it, he
+went on to test Norma's French. Norma was never self-conscious with him,
+and in a few seconds he and Alice were laughing at her earnest
+absurdities. When husband and wife went on into a conversation of their
+own, Norma sat back idly, conscious that the atmosphere was always easy
+and pleasant when Chris was at home, there were no petty tensions and no
+sensitive misconstructions while Chris was talking. Sometimes with Annie
+and Alice, and even with Leslie, Norma could be rapidly brought to the
+state of feeling prickly all over, afraid to speak, and equally
+uncomfortable in silence. But Chris always smoothed her spirit into
+utter peace, and reestablished her sense of proportion, her sense of
+humour.
+
+Neither he nor Alice noticed her when she presently went away to change
+her gown for dinner, but when she came out of her room, half an hour
+later, Chris was just coming up to his. Their rooms were on the same
+floor--his the big front room, and hers one of the sunny small ones at
+the back of the house. Norma's and that of Miss Slater, Alice's nurse,
+were joined by a bathroom; Chris had his own splendid dressing-room and
+bath, fitted, like his bedroom, with rugs and chests and highboys worthy
+of a museum.
+
+"Aren't you going to be late, Chris?" Norma asked, when they met at the
+top of the stairs. Fresh from a bath, with her rich dark hair pushed
+back in two shining wings from her smooth forehead, and her throat
+rising white and soft from the frills of a black lacy gown, she was the
+incarnation of youth and sweetness as she looked up at him. "Seven
+o'clock!" she reminded him.
+
+For answer he surprised her by catching her hand, and staring gravely
+down at her.
+
+"Were you angry at me, Norma?" he asked, in a quiet, businesslike voice.
+
+"Angry?" she echoed, surprised. But her colour rose. "No, Chris. Why
+should I be?"
+
+"There is no reason why you should be, of course," he answered, simply,
+almost indifferently. And immediately he went by her and into his room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+On the memorable night of her first grand opera Norma and Chris dined at
+Mrs. von Behrens's. It was Alice who urged the arrangement, urged it
+quite innocently, as she frequently did the accidental pairing of Norma
+and Chris, because her mother was going for a week to Boston, the
+following day, and they wanted an evening of comfortable talk together.
+
+Norma, with Freda and Miss Slater as excited accomplices, laid out the
+new corn-coloured gown at about five o'clock in the afternoon, laid
+beside it the stockings and slippers that exactly matched it in colour,
+and hung over the foot of her bed the embroidered little stays that were
+so ridiculously small and so unnecessarily beautiful. On a separate
+chair was spread the big furred wrap of gold and brown brocade, the high
+carriage shoes, and the long white gloves to which the tissue paper
+still was clinging. The orchids that Annie had given Norma that morning
+were standing in a slender vase on the bureau, and as a final touch the
+girl, regarding these preparations with a sort of enchanted delight,
+unfurled to its full glory the great black ostrich-feather fan. Norma
+amused Alice and Mrs. Melrose by refusing tea, and disappeared long
+before there was need, to begin the great ceremony of robing.
+
+Miss Slater manicured her hands while Freda brushed and dressed the dark
+thick hair. Between Norma and the nurse there had at first been no
+special liking. Both were naturally candidates for Alice's favour. But
+as the months went by, and Norma began to realize that Miss Slater's
+position was not only far from the ideally beautiful one it had seemed
+at first, but that the homely, elderly, good-natured woman was actually
+putting herself to some pains to make Norma's own life in the Liggett
+house more comfortable than it might have been, she had come genuinely
+to admire Alice's attendant, and now they were fast friends. It was
+often in Norma's power to distract Alice's attention from the fact that
+Miss Slater was a little late in returning from her walk, or she would
+make it a point to order for the invalid something that Miss Slater had
+forgotten. They stood firmly together in many a small domestic
+emergency, and although the nurse's presence to-night was not, as Norma
+thought with a little pang, like having Rose or Aunt Kate with her,
+still it was much, much better than having no one at all.
+
+She sat wrapped luxuriously in a brilliant kimono, while Freda brushed
+and rolled busily, and Miss Slater polished and clipped. Then ensued a
+period of intense concentration at the mirror, when the sparkling pins
+were put in her hair, and the little pearl earrings screwed into her
+ears, and when much rubbing and greasing and powdering went on, and even
+some slight retouching of the innocent, red young mouth.
+
+"Shall I?" Norma asked, dubiously eyeing the effect of a trace of rouge.
+
+"Don't be an idiot, Miss Sheridan!" Miss Slater said. "You've got a
+lovely colour, and it's a shame to touch it!"
+
+"Oh, but I think I look so pale!" Norma argued.
+
+"Well, when you've had your dinner----Now, you take my advice, my dear,
+and let your face alone."
+
+"Well, all the girls do it," Norma declared, catching up the little
+girdle, and not unwilling to be over-persuaded. She gave an actual
+shiver of delight as Freda slipped the gown over her head.
+
+It fell into shape about her, a miracle of cut and fit. The little
+satiny underskirt was heavy with beads, the misty cloud of gauze that
+floated above it was hardly heavy enough to hold its own embroideries.
+Little beaded straps held it to the flawless shoulders, and Norma made
+her two attendants laugh as she jerked and fussed at the gold lace and
+tiny satin roses that crossed her breast.
+
+"Leave it alone!" Miss Slater said.
+
+"Oh, but it seems so low!"
+
+"Well, you may be very sure it isn't--Lenz knows what he's doing when he
+makes a gown.... Here, now, what are you going to do with your flowers?"
+
+"Oh, I'm going to wrap the paper round them, and carry them until just
+before I get to Aunt Annie's. Wouldn't you?"
+
+"Wouldn't I? I like that!" said Miss Slater, settling her eyeglasses on
+the bridge of her nose with a finger and thumb. Norma had a momentary
+pang of sympathy; she could never have been made to understand that a
+happy barnyard duck may look contentedly up from her pool at the peacock
+trailing his plumes on the wall.
+
+"Norma--for the love of Allah!" Chris shouted from downstairs.
+
+Norma gave a panicky laugh, snatched her fan, wrap, and flowers, and
+fled joyously down to be criticized and praised. On the whole, they were
+pleased with her: Alice, seizing a chance for an aside to tell her not
+to worry about the lowness of the gown, that it was absolutely correct
+she might be very sure, and Mrs. Melrose quite tremulously delighted
+with her ward. Chris did not say much until a few minutes before they
+planned to start, when he slipped a thin, flat gold watch from his vest
+pocket, and asked speculatively:
+
+"Norma, has your Aunt Kate ever seen you in that rig?"
+
+"No!" she answered, quickly. And then, with less sparkle, "No."
+
+"Well, would you like to run in on her a moment?--she'd probably like it
+tremendously!" said Chris.
+
+"Oh, Chris--I would love it!" Norma exclaimed, soberly, over a disloyal
+conviction that she would rather not. "But have we time?"
+
+"Tons of time. Annie's dinners are a joke!"
+
+Norma glanced at the women; Mrs. Melrose looked undecided, but Alice
+said encouragingly:
+
+"I think that would be a sweet thing to do!"
+
+So it was decided: and Norma was bundled up immediately, and called out
+excitedly laughing good-byes as Chris hurried her to the car.
+
+"You know, it means a lot to your own people, really to see you this
+way, instead of always reading about it, or hearing about it!" Chris
+said, in his entirely prosaic, big-brotherly tone, as the car glided
+smoothly toward the West Sixties.
+
+"I know it!" Norma agreed. "But I don't know how you do!" she added, in
+shy gratitude.
+
+"Well, I'm nearly twice your age, for one thing," he replied,
+pleasantly. And as the car stopped unhesitatingly at the familiar door
+he added: "Now make this very snappy!"
+
+She protested against his getting out, but he accompanied her all the
+way upstairs, both laughing like conspirators as they passed somewhat
+astonished residents of the apartment house on the way.
+
+Aunt Kate and Wolf, and Rose and Harry, as good fortune would have it,
+were all gathered under the dining-room lamp, and there was a burst of
+laughter and welcome for Norma and "Mister Chris." Norma's wrap was
+tossed aside, and she revolved in all her glory, waving her fan at arm's
+length, pleasantly conscious of Wolf's utter stupefaction, and
+conscious, too, a little less pleasantly, that Aunt Kate's maternal eye
+did not agree with Aunt Annie's in the matter of _decolletage_.
+
+Then she and Chris were on their way again, and the legitimate delights
+of being young and correctly dressed and dining with the great Mrs. von
+Behrens, and going to Grand Opera at the Metropolitan, might begin.
+Norma had perhaps never in her life been in such wild spirits as she was
+to-night. It was not happiness, exactly, not the happiness of a serene
+spirit and a quiet mind, for she was too nervous and too much excited to
+be really happy. But it was all wonderful.
+
+She was the youngest person at the long dinner table, at which eighteen
+guests sat in such stately and such separated great carved chairs as
+almost to dine alone. Everyone was charmingly kind to the little Melrose
+protegee, who was to be introduced at a formal tea next week. The men
+were all older than Leslie's group and were neither afraid nor too
+selfishly wrapped up in their own narrow little circle to be polite.
+Norma had known grown young men, college graduates, and the sons of
+prominent families, who were too entirely conventional to be addressed
+without an introduction, or to turn to a strange girl's rescue if she
+spilled a cup of tea. But there was none of that sort of thing here.
+
+To be sure, Annie's men were either married, divorced, or too old to be
+strictly eligible in the eyes of unsophisticated nineteen, but that did
+not keep them from serving delightfully as dinner partners. Then Aunt
+Annie herself was delightful to-night, and joined in the general, if
+unexpressed, flattery that Norma felt in the actual atmosphere.
+
+"Heavens--do you hear that, Ella?" said Annie, to an intimate and
+contemporary, when Norma shyly asked if the dress was all as it should
+be--if the--well, the neck, wasn't just a little----? "Heavens!" said
+Mrs. von Behrens, roundly, "if I had your shoulders--if I were nineteen
+again!--you'd see something a good deal more sensational than that!"
+
+This was not the sort of thing one repeated to Aunt Kate. It was, like
+much of Annie's conversation, so daring as to be a little shocking. But
+Annie had so much manner, such a pleasant, assured voice, that somehow
+Norma never found it censurable in her.
+
+To-night, for the first time, Hendrick von Behrens paid her a little
+personal attention. Norma had always liked the big, blond, silent man,
+with his thinning fair hair, and his affection for his sons. It was of
+his sons that he spoke to her, as he came up to her to-night.
+
+"There are two little boys up in the nursery that don't want to go to
+sleep until Cousin Norma comes up to say good-night," said Hendrick,
+smiling indulgently. Norma turned willingly from Chris and two or three
+other men and women; it was a privilege to be sufficiently at home in
+this magnificent place to follow her host up to the nursery upstairs,
+and be gingerly hugged by the little silk-pajamed boys.
+
+Chris watched her go, the big fan and the blue eye and the delightful
+low voice all busy as she and Hendrick went away, and an odd thought
+came to him. That was her stepfather upon whom she was turning the
+battery of those lovely eyes; those little boys who were, he knew,
+jumping up and down in their little Dutch colonial beds, and calling
+"Norma--Norma--Norma!" were her half-brothers.
+
+He glanced toward Annie; her beautiful figure wrapped in a sparkling
+robe that swept about her like a regal mantle, her fair hair scalloped
+like waves of carved gold, her fingers and throat and hair and ears
+sparkling with diamonds. Annie had on the famous Murison pearls, too,
+to-night; she was twisting them in her fingers as her creditable Italian
+delighted the ears of the Italian ambassador. Her own daughter to-night
+sat among her guests. Chris liked to think himself above surprise, but
+the strangeness of the situation was never absent a second from his
+thoughts. He drifted toward his hostess; he was proud of his own
+languages, and when Norma came back she came to stand wistfully beside
+them, wondering if ever--ever--ever--she would be able to do that!
+
+It was all thrilling--exhilarating--wonderful! Norma's heart thumped
+delightfully as the big motor-cars turned into Broadway and took their
+place in the slowly moving line. She pressed her radiant face close to
+the window; snow was fluttering softly down in the darkness, and men
+were pushing it from the sidewalks, and shouting in the night. There
+was the usual fringe of onlookers in front of the opera house, and it
+required all Norma's self-control to seem quite naturally absorbed in
+getting herself safely out of the motor-car, and quite unconscious that
+her pretty ankles, and her pretty head, and the great bunched wrap, were
+not being generally appraised.
+
+Women were stepping about gingerly in high heels; lights flashed on
+quivering aigrettes, on the pressed, intense faces of the watchers, and
+on the gently turning and falling snow, against the dark street. Norma
+was caught in some man's protecting arm, to push through into the
+churning crowd in the foyer; she had a glimpse of uniformed ushers and
+programme boys, of furred shoulders, of bared shoulders, of silk hats,
+of a sign that said: "Footmen Are Not Allowed in This Lobby."
+
+Then somehow through, criss-crossed currents in the crowd, they reached
+the mysterious door of the box, and Norma saw for the first time the
+great, dimly lighted circle of the opera house, the enormous rise of
+balcony above balcony, the double tiers of boxes, and the rows of seats
+downstairs, separated by wide aisles, and rapidly filling now with the
+men and women who were coming down to their places almost on a run.
+
+The orchestra was already seated, and as Norma stood awed and ecstatic
+in the front of the Von Behrens box, the conductor came in, and was met
+with a wave of applause, which had no sooner died away than the lights
+fanned softly and quickly down, there was the click of a baton on wood,
+and in the instantly ensuing hush the first quivering notes of the opera
+began.
+
+"Sit down, you web-foot!" Acton Liggett whispered, laughing, and Norma
+sank stiffly upon her chair, risking, as the curtain had not yet risen,
+a swift, bewildered smile of apology toward the dim forms that were
+rustling and settling behind her.
+
+"Oo--oo--ooo!" was all that she could whisper when presently Chris
+murmured a question in her ear. And when the lights were on again, and
+the stars taking their calls, he saw that her face was wet, and her
+lashes were caught together with tears.
+
+"It _is_ wonderful music; the best of Verdi!" he said to Annie; and
+Annie, agreeing, sent him off with "that baby," to have her dry her
+eyes. Norma liked his not speaking to her, on her way to the great
+parlour where women were circling about the long mirrors, but when she
+rejoined him she was quite herself, laughing, excited, half dancing as
+he took her back to the box.
+
+She sat down again, her beautiful little head, with its innocent sweep
+of smooth hair, visible from almost every part of the house, her
+questions incessant as the blue eyes and the great fan swept to and fro.
+Once, when she turned suddenly toward him, in the second entr'acte, she
+saw a look on Chris's face that gave her an odd second of something like
+fear, but the house darkened again before she could analyze the emotion,
+and Norma glued her eyes to the footlights.
+
+What she did not see was a man, not quite at ease at his own first grand
+opera, not quite comfortable in his own first evening dress, lost--and
+willingly lost, among the hundreds who had come in just to stand far at
+the back, behind the seats, edging and elbowing each other, changing
+feet, and resting against any chair-back or column that offered itself,
+and sitting down, between acts, on the floor.
+
+Wolf was not restless. He was strong enough to stand like an Indian, and
+tall enough to look easily over the surrounding heads. More than that,
+"Aida" did not interest him in itself, and at some of its most brilliant
+passages he was guilty of slipping away to pace the hallways in
+solitude, or steal to the foyer for a brief cigarette. But when the
+house was lighted again, he went back into the auditorium, and then his
+eyes never left the little dark head of the girl who sat forward in one
+of the lower tier of boxes, waving her big fan, and talking over her
+bare shoulder to one or another of the persons beside or behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+It was long afterward that Norma dated from the night of "Aida" a new
+feeling in herself toward Chris, and the recognition of a new feeling in
+Chris toward her. She knew that a special sort of friendship existed
+between them from that time on.
+
+He had done nothing definite that night; he had never done or said
+anything that could be held as marking the change. But Norma felt it,
+and she knew that he did. And somehow, in that atmosphere of fragrant
+flowers and women as fragrant, of rustling silks and rich furs, of music
+and darkness, and the old passion of the story, it had come to her for
+the first time that Chris was not only the Chris of Alice's room, Aunt
+Marianna's son-in-law and Leslie's brother-in-law, but her own Chris,
+too, a Chris who had his special meaning for her, as well as for the
+rest.
+
+She liked him, it was natural that she should especially and truly like
+him. Almost all women did, for he was of the type that comes closest to
+understanding them, and he had made their favour an especial study.
+Chris could never be indifferent to any woman; if he did not actively
+dislike her, he took pains to please her, and, never actively disliking
+Norma, he had from the first constituted himself her guide and friend.
+
+Long before he was conscious that there was a real charm to this little
+chance member of their group, Norma had capitulated utterly. His
+sureness, his pleasant suggestions, his positive approval or kindly
+protests, had done more to make her first months among the Melroses
+happy than any other one thing. Norma loved him, and was grateful to
+him, even when he hurt her. In the matter of a note of acceptance, of a
+little act of thanks, of a gown or hat, his decision was absolute, and
+she had never known it mistaken.
+
+Besides this, she saw him everywhere welcome, everywhere courted and
+admired, and everywhere the same Chris--handsome, self-possessed,
+irreproachably dressed whether for golf or opera, adequate to the claims
+of wife, mother, family, or the world. She had heard Acton turn to him
+for help in little difficulties; she knew that Leslie trusted him with
+all her affairs, and he was as close as any man could be to an intimacy
+with Hendrick von Behrens. Quietly, almost indifferently, he would
+settle his round eyeglasses on their black ribbon, narrow his fine, keen
+eyes and set his firm jaw, and take up their problems one by one, always
+courteous, always interested, always helpful.
+
+Then Chris had charm, as visible to all the world as to Norma. He had
+the charm of race, of intelligence and education, the charm of a man who
+prides himself upon his Italian and French, upon his knowledge of books
+and pictures, and his capacity for holding his own in any group, on any
+subject. He was quite frankly a collector, a connoisseur, a dilettante
+in a hundred different directions, and he had had leisure all his life
+to develop and perfect his affectations. In all this new world Norma
+could not perhaps have discovered a man more rich in just what would
+impress her ignorance, her newness, to the finer aspects of
+civilization.
+
+For a few weeks after "Aida," as other operas and Annie's tea, and the
+opening social life of the winter softened the first impression, Norma
+tried to tell herself that she had imagined a little tendency, on
+Chris's part, too--well, to impress her with his friendliness. She had
+seen him flirt with other women, and indeed small love affairs of all
+sorts were constantly current, not only in Annie's, but in Leslie's
+group. A certain laxity was in the air, and every month had its
+separation or divorce, to be flung to the gossips for dissection.
+
+Norma was not especially flattered at first, and rather inclined to
+resent the assurance with which Chris carried his well-known tendency
+for philandering into his own family, as it were. But as the full days
+went by, and she encountered in him, wherever they met, the same grave,
+kindly attention, the same pleasant mouth and curiously baffling eyes,
+in spite of herself she began to experience a certain breathless and
+half-flattered and half-frightened pride in his affection.
+
+He never kissed her again, never tried to arrange even the most casual
+meeting alone with her, and never let escape even a word of more than
+brotherly friendliness. But in Leslie's drawing-room at tea time, or at
+some studio tea or Sunday luncheon in a country house, he always quietly
+joined her, kept, if possible, within the sound of her voice, and never
+had any plan that would interfere with possible plans of hers. If she
+was ready to go, he would drive her, perhaps to discourse impersonally
+upon the quality of the pictures, or the countryside mantled with snow,
+upon the way. If she wanted a message telephoned, a telegram sent, even
+a borrowed book returned, it was "no trouble at all"; Chris would of
+course attend to it.
+
+At dinner parties he was rarely placed beside her; hers was naturally
+the younger set. But he found a hundred ways to remind her that he was
+constantly attentive. Norma would feel her heart jump in her side as he
+started toward her across a ball-room floor, handsome, perfectly poised,
+betraying nothing but generous interest in her youthful good times as he
+took his place beside her.
+
+So Christmas came and went, and the last affairs of the brief season
+began to be announced: the last dances, the last dinners, the
+"pre-Lenten functions" as the papers had it. Norma, apologizing, in one
+of her flying calls on Aunt Kate, for the long intervals between visits,
+explained that she honestly did not know where the weeks flew!
+
+"And are you happy, Baby?" her aunt asked, holding her close, and
+looking anxiously into her eyes.
+
+"Oh--happy!" the girl exclaimed, with a sort of shallow, quick laugh
+that was quite new. "Of course I am. I never in my life dreamed that I
+could be so happy. I've nothing left to wish for. Except, of course,
+that I would like to know where I stand; I would like to have my own
+position a little more definite," she added. But the last phrases were
+uttered only in her own soul, and Mrs. Sheridan, after a rather
+discontented scrutiny of the face she loved so well, was obliged to
+change the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+In mid-Lent, when an early rush of almost summery warmth suddenly poured
+over the city, Chris and Norma met on the way home from church. Norma
+walked every Sunday morning to the big cathedral, but Chris went only
+once or twice a year to the fashionable Avenue church a few blocks away.
+This morning he had joined her as she was quietly leaving the house, and
+instantly it flashed into her mind that he had deliberately planned to
+do so, knowing that Miss Slater, who usually accompanied her, was away
+for a week's vacation.
+
+Their conversation was impersonal and casual, as always, as they walked
+along the drying sidewalks, in the pleasant early freshness, but as
+Chris left her he asked her at about what time she would be returning,
+and Norma was not surprised, when she came out of the cathedral, a
+little later than the great first tide of the outpouring congregation,
+to see him waiting for her.
+
+The thought of him had been keeping her heart beating fast, and her mind
+in confusion, even while she tried to pray. And she had thought that she
+might leave the church by one of the big side doors, and so at least run
+a fair risk of missing him. But Norma half feared an act that would
+define their deepening friendship as dangerous, and half longed for the
+fifteen minutes of walking and chatting in the sunshine. So she came
+straight to him, and with no more than a word of greeting they turned
+north.
+
+It was an exquisite morning, and the clean, bare stretches of the Avenue
+were swimming in an almost summerlike mist of opal and blue. Such
+persons as were visible in the streets at all were newsboys, idle
+policemen, or black-clad women hurrying to or from church, and when they
+reached the Park, it was almost deserted. The trees, gently moving in a
+warm breeze, were delicately etched with the first green of the year;
+maples and sycamores were dotted with new, golden foliage, and the grass
+was deep and sweet. A few riders were ambling along the bridle-path, the
+horses kicking up clods of the damp, soft earth.
+
+Norma and Christopher walked slowly, talking. The girl was hardly
+conscious of what they said, realizing suddenly, and almost with terror,
+that just to be here, with Chris, was enough to flood her being with a
+happiness as new and miraculous as the new and miraculous springtime
+itself. There was no future and no past to this ecstasy, no Alice, no
+world; it was enough, in its first bloom, that it existed.
+
+"You've had--what is it?--a whole year of us, Norma," Chris said, "and
+on the whole, it's been happy, hasn't it?"
+
+"Fourteen months," she corrected him. "Fourteen months, at least, since
+Aunt Kate and I called on Aunt Marianna. Yes, it's been like a miracle,
+Chris. I never will understand it. I never will understand why a
+friendless girl--unknown and having absolutely no claim--should have
+been treated so wonderfully!"
+
+"And you wouldn't want to go back?" he mused, smiling.
+
+"No," she said, quickly. "I am afraid, when I think of ever going back!"
+
+"I don't see why you should," Chris said. "You will inherit, through
+your grandmother's will----"
+
+He had been following a train of thought, half to himself. Norma's round
+eyes, as she stopped short in the path, arrested him.
+
+"My _grandmother_!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Your Aunt Marianna," he amended, flushing. But their eyes did not move
+as they stared at each other.
+
+A thousand remembered trifles flashed through Norma's whirling brain; a
+thousand little half-stilled suspicions leaped to new life. She had
+accepted the suggested kinship in childish acquiescence, but doubt was
+aflame now, once and for all. The man knew that there was no further
+evading her.
+
+"Chris, do you know anything about me?" she asked, directly.
+
+"Yes, I think--I know everything," he answered, after a second's
+hesitation.
+
+Norma looked at him steadily. "Did you know my father and mother?" she
+demanded, presently, in an odd, tense voice.
+
+There was another pause before Chris said, slowly:
+
+"I have met your father. But I knew--I know--your mother."
+
+"You _know_ her?" The world was whirling about Norma. "Is Aunt Kate my
+mother?" she asked, breathing hard.
+
+"No. I don't know why you should not know. You call her Aunt Annie,"
+Chris said.
+
+Norma's hands dropped to her sides. She breathed as if she were
+suffocating.
+
+"_Aunt Annie!_" she whispered, in stupefaction.
+
+And she turned and walked a few steps blindly, her eyes wide and vacant,
+and one hand pressed to her cheek. "My God!--my God!" he heard her say.
+
+"Annie eloped when she was a girl," Chris began presently, when she was
+dazedly walking on again. "She was married, and the man deserted her.
+She was ill, in Germany----But shall I talk now? Would you rather not?"
+
+"Oh, no--no! Go on," Norma said, briefly.
+
+"Alice was the first to guess it," Christopher pursued. "Her sister
+doesn't know it, or dream it!"
+
+"Aunt Annie doesn't! She does not know that I'm her own daughter!... But
+what _does_ she think?"
+
+"She supposes that her baby died, dear. I'm sorry to tell you, Norma,
+but I couldn't lie to you! You'll understand everything, now--why your
+grandmother wants to make it all up to you----"
+
+"Does Leslie know?" Norma demanded, suddenly, from a dark moment of
+brooding.
+
+"Nobody knows! Your Aunt Kate, your grandmother, Alice, and I, are
+absolutely the only people in the world! And Norma, _nobody else must
+know_. For the sake of the family, for everyone's sake----"
+
+"Oh, I see that!" she answered, quickly and impatiently. And for awhile
+she walked on in silence, and apparently did not hear his one or two
+efforts to recommence the conversation. "Aunt Annie!" she said once,
+half aloud. And later she added, absently: "Yes, I should know!"
+
+They had walked well up into the Park, now they turned back; the sun was
+getting hot, first perambulators were making their appearance, and
+Norma loosened her light furs.
+
+"So I am a Melrose!" she mused. And then, abruptly: "Chris, what _is_ my
+name?"
+
+"Melrose," he answered, flushing.
+
+Her eyes asked a sudden, horrified question, and she took the answer
+from his look without a word. He saw the colour ebb from her face,
+leaving it very white.
+
+"You said--they--my parents--were married, Chris?" she asked, painfully.
+
+"Annie supposed they were. But he was not free!"
+
+Norma did not speak again. In silence they crossed the Avenue, and went
+on down the shady side street. Chris, with chosen words and quietly,
+told her the story of Annie's girlhood, who and what her father had
+been, the bitter grief of her grandmother, the general hushing up of the
+whole affair. He watched her anxiously as he talked, for there was a
+drawn, set look to her face that he did not like.
+
+"Why did Aunt Kate ever decide to bring me to my--my grandmother, after
+so many years?" she asked.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know that. Alice and I have fancied that Kate might
+have kept in touch with your father all this time, and that he might be
+dead now, and not likely to--make trouble."
+
+"That is it," Norma agreed, quickly. "Because not long before she came
+to see Aunt Marianna she _had_ had some sort of news--from Canada, I
+think. An old friend was dead; I remember it as if it were yesterday."
+
+"Then that fits in," Chris said, glad she could talk.
+
+"But I can't believe it!" she cried in bewilderment. And suddenly she
+burst out angrily: "Oh, Chris, is it fair? Is it fair? That one girl,
+like Leslie, should have so--so much! The name, the inheritance, the
+husband and position and the friends--and that another, through no fault
+of hers, should be just--just--a nobody?"
+
+She choked, and Christopher made a little protestant sound.
+
+"Oh, yes, I am!" she insisted, bitterly. "Not recognized by my own
+mother--she's _not_ my mother! No mother could----"
+
+"Listen, dear," Chris begged, really alarmed by the storm he had raised.
+"Your grandmother, for reasons of her own, never told Annie there was a
+baby. It is obvious why she kept silent; it was only kindness--decency.
+Annie was young, younger than you are, and poor old Aunt Marianna only
+knew that her child was ill, and had been ill-treated, and most cruelly
+used. You were brought up safely and happily, with good and loving
+people----"
+
+"The best in the world!" Norma said, through her teeth, fighting tears.
+
+"The best in the world. Why, Norma, what a woman they've made you!
+You--who stand alone among all the girls I know! And then," Chris
+continued quickly, seeing her a little quieter, "when you are growing
+up, your aunt brings you to your grandmother, who immediately turns her
+whole world topsy-turvy to make you welcome! Is there anything so unfair
+in that? Annie made a terrible mistake, dear----"
+
+"And everyone but Annie pays!" Norma interrupted, bitterly.
+
+"Norma, she is your mother!" Chris reminded her, in the tone that,
+coming from him, always instantly affected her. Her eyes fell, and her
+tone, when she spoke, was softer.
+
+"Just bearing a child isn't all motherhood," she said.
+
+"No, my dear; I know. And if Annie were ever to guess this, it isn't
+like her not to face the music, at any cost. But isn't it better as it
+is, Norma?"
+
+The wonderful tone, the wonderful manner, the kindness and sympathy in
+his eyes! Norma, with one foot on the lowest step, now raised her eyes
+to his with a sort of childish penitence.
+
+"Oh, yes, Chris! But"--her lips trembled--"but if Aunt Kate had only
+kept me from knowing for ever!" she faltered.
+
+"She wouldn't take that responsibility, dear, and one can't blame her. A
+comfortable inheritance comes from your grandmother; it isn't the
+enormous fortune Leslie inherited, of course, but it is all you would
+have had, even had Annie brought you home openly as her daughter. It is
+enough to make a very pretty wedding-portion for me to give away with
+you, my dear, in a few years," Chris added more lightly. The suggestion
+made her face flame again.
+
+"Who would marry me?" she said, under her breath, with a scornful look,
+under half-lowered lids, into space.
+
+For answer he gave her an odd glance--one that lived in her memory for
+many and many a day.
+
+"Ah, Norma--Norma--Norma!" he said--quickly, half laughingly. Then his
+expression changed, and his smile died away. "I have something to bear,"
+he said, with a glance upward toward Alice's windows. "Life isn't roses,
+roses, all the way for any one of us, my dear! Now, you've got a bad bit
+of the road ahead. But let's be good sports, Norma. And come in now,
+I'm famished; let's have breakfast. My honour is in your hands," he
+added, more gravely, "perhaps I had no right to tell you all this! You
+mustn't betray me!"
+
+"Chris," she responded, warmly, "as if I could!"
+
+He watched her eating her breakfast, and chatting with Alice, a little
+later, and told himself that some of Annie's splendid courage had
+certainly descended to this gallant little daughter. Norma was pale, and
+now and then her eyes would meet his with a certain strained look, or
+she would lose the thread of the conversation for a few seconds, but
+that was all. Alice noticed nothing, and in a day or two Chris could
+easily have convinced himself that the conversation in the spring
+greenness of the Sunday morning had been a dream.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+However, that hour had borne fruit, and in two separate ways had had its
+distinct effect upon Norma's mind and soul. In the first place, she had
+a secret now with Chris, and understanding that made her most casual
+glance at him significant, and gave a double meaning to almost every
+word they exchanged. It was at his suggestion that she decided to keep
+the revelation from Alice, even though she knew what Alice knew, for
+Alice was not very well, and Chris was sure that it would only agitate
+and frighten the invalid to feel that the family's discreditable secret
+was just that much nearer betrayal. So she and Chris alone shared the
+agitation, strain, and bewilderment of the almost overwhelming
+discovery; and Norma, in turning to him for advice and sympathy,
+deepened tenfold the tie between them.
+
+But even this result was not so far-reaching as the less-obvious effect
+of the discovery upon her character. Everything that was romantic,
+undisciplined, and reckless in Norma was fostered by the thought that so
+thrilling and so secret a history united her closely to the Melrose
+family. That she was Leslie's actual cousin, that the closest of all
+human relationships bound her to the magnificent Mrs. von Behrens, were
+thoughts that excited in her every dramatic and extravagant tendency to
+which the amazing year had inclined _her_. With her growing ease in her
+changed environment, and the growing popularity she enjoyed there, came
+also a sense of predestination, the conviction that her extraordinary
+history justified her in any act of daring or of unconventionality.
+There was nothing to be gained by self-control or sanity, Norma might
+tell herself, at least for those of the Melrose blood.
+
+Her shyness of the season before had vanished, and she could plunge into
+the summer gaiety with an assurance that amazed even herself. Her first
+meeting with Annie, after the day of Chris's disclosures, was an ordeal
+at which he himself chanced to be a secretly thrilled onlooker. Norma
+grew white, and her lips trembled; there was a strained look in her
+blue, agonized eyes. But Annie's entire unconsciousness that the
+situation was at all tense, and the presence of three or four total
+outsiders, helped Norma to feel that this amazing and dramatic moment
+was only one more in a life newly amazing and dramatic, and she escaped
+unnoticed from the trial. The second time was much less trying, and
+after that Norma showed no sign that she ever thought of the matter at
+all.
+
+Mrs. von Behrens took Norma to her Maine camp in July, and when the girl
+joined the Chris Liggetts in August, it was for a season of hard tennis,
+golf, polo, dancing, yachting, and swimming. Norma grew lean and tanned,
+and improved so rapidly in manner and appearance that Alice felt,
+concerning her, certain fears that she one day confided to her mother.
+
+It was on an early September day, dry and airless, and they were on the
+side porch of the Newport cottage.
+
+"You see how pretty she's growing, Mama," Alice said. And then, in a
+lower tone, with a quick cautious glance about: "Mama, doesn't she
+often remind you of Annie?"
+
+Mrs. Melrose, who had been contentedly rocking and drowsing in the heat,
+paled with sudden terror and apprehension, and looked around her with
+sick and uneasy eyes.
+
+"Alice--my darling," she stammered.
+
+"I know, Mama--I'm not going to talk about it, truly!" Alice assured
+her, quickly. "I never even _think_ of it!" she added, earnestly.
+
+"No--no--no, that's right!" her mother agreed, hurriedly. Her soft old
+face, under the thin, crimped gray hair, was full of distress.
+
+"Mama, there is no reason why it should worry you," Alice said,
+distressed, too. "Don't think of it; I'm sorry I spoke! But sometimes,
+even though she is so dark, Norma is so like Annie that it makes my
+blood run cold. If Annie ever suspected that she is--well, her own
+daughter----"
+
+Mrs. Melrose's face was ashen, and she looked as if touched by the heat.
+
+"No--no, dear!" she said, with a sort of terrified brevity. "You and
+Chris were wrong there. I can't talk to you about it, Alice," she broke
+off, pleadingly; "you mustn't ask me, dear. You said you wouldn't," she
+pleaded, trembling.
+
+Alice was stupefied. For a full minute she lay in her pillows, staring
+blankly at her mother.
+
+"_Isn't_----!" she whispered at last, incredulous and bewildered.
+
+"No, dear. Poor Annie----! No, no, no; Norma's mother is dead. But--but
+you must believe that Mama is acting as she believes to be for the
+best," she interrupted herself, in painful and hesitating tones, "and
+that I can't talk about it now, Alice; I can't, indeed! Some day----"
+
+"Mama darling," Alice cried, really alarmed by her leaden colour and
+wild eyes, "please--I'll never speak of it again! Why, I know that
+everything you do is for us all, darling! Please be happy about it. Come
+on, we'll talk of something else. When do you leave for
+town--to-morrow?"
+
+"Poole drives us as far as Great Barrington to-morrow, Norma and me,"
+the old lady began, gaining calm as she reviewed her plans. Chris needed
+her for a little matter of business, and Norma was anxious to see her
+Cousin Rose's new baby. The conversation drifted to Leslie's baby, the
+idolized Patricia who was now some four months old.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Two days later found Norma happily seated beside the big bed she and
+Rose had shared less than two years ago, where Rose now lay, with the
+snuffling and mouthing baby, rolled deep in flannels, beside her. Rose
+had come home to her mother, for the great event, and Mrs. Sheridan was
+exulting in the care of them both. Just now she was in the kitchen, and
+the two girls were alone together, Norma a little awed and a little
+ashamed of the emotion that Rose's pale and rapt and radiant face gave
+her; Rose secretly pitying, from her height, the woman who was not yet a
+mother.
+
+"And young Mrs. Liggett was terribly disappointed that her baby was a
+girl," Rose marvelled. "I didn't care one bit! Only Harry is glad it's a
+boy."
+
+"Well, Leslie was sure that hers was going to be a boy," Norma said,
+"and I wish you could have heard Aunt Annie deciding that the Melroses
+usually had sons----"
+
+"She'll have a boy next," Rose suggested.
+
+Norma glanced at her polished finger-tip, adjusted the woolly tan bag
+she carried.
+
+"She says never again!" she remarked, airily. Rose's clear forehead
+clouded faintly, and Norma hastened to apologize. "Well, my dear, that's
+what she _said_," she remarked, laughingly, with quick fingers on Rose's
+hand.
+
+"It's sad that Mrs. Chris Liggett didn't have just one, before her
+accident. It would make such a difference in her life," Rose mused, with
+her eyes fixed thoughtfully on Norma's face. There was something about
+Norma to-day that she did not understand.
+
+"Oh, it's frightfully sad," Norma agreed, easily. And because she liked
+the mere sound of his name, she added: "Chris is fond of children, too!"
+Then, with a sudden change of manner that even unsuspicious Rose thought
+odd, she said, gaily: "Isn't Aunt Kate perfectly delicious about the
+nurse? I knew she would be. Of course, she does everything, and Miss
+Miller simply looks on."
+
+"Well, almost," Rose said, with an affectionate laugh. "She didn't want
+a nurse at all, but Harry and Wolf insisted. And then--night before
+last--when I was so ill, it almost made me laugh in spite of feeling so
+badly, to hear Mother with Miss Miller. 'You'd better get out of here,
+my dear,' I heard her say, 'this is no place for a girl like you----'"
+
+Norma's laugh rang out. But Rose noticed that her face sobered
+immediately almost into sadness, and that there was a bitter line about
+the lovely mouth, and a shadow of something like cynicism in her blue
+eyes.
+
+"Norma," she ventured, suddenly storming the fortress, "what is it,
+darling? Something's worrying you, Nono. Can't you tell me?"
+
+With the old nursery name Norma's gallant look of amusement and
+reassurance faltered. She looked suddenly down at the hand Rose was
+holding, and Rose saw the muscles of her throat contract, and that she
+was pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling.
+
+A tear fell on the locked hands. Norma kept her eyes averted, shook her
+head.
+
+"Is it a man, Nono?"
+
+Norma looked up, dashed away the tears, and managed a rueful smile.
+
+"Isn't it always a man?" she asked, bravely.
+
+Rose still looked at her anxiously, waiting for further light.
+
+"But, dearest, surely he likes you?"
+
+The other girl was silent, rubbing her thumb slowly to and fro across
+Rose's thin hand.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, after a pause.
+
+"But of course he does!" Rose said, confidently. "It'll all come right.
+There's no reason why it shouldn't!" And with all the interest of their
+old days of intimacy she asked eagerly: "Nono, is he handsome?"
+
+"Oh, yes--tremendously."
+
+"And the right age?"
+
+Norma laughed, half protestant.
+
+"Rose, aren't you a little demon for the third degree!" But she liked
+it, in spite of the reluctance in her manner, and presently added: "I
+don't think age matters, do you?"
+
+"Not in the least," Rose agreed. "Norma, does Mrs. Melrose know?"
+
+"Know what?" Norma parried.
+
+"Know that--well, that you like him?"
+
+Norma raised serious eyes, looked unsmilingly into Rose's smiling face.
+
+"Nobody knows. It--it isn't going right, Rose. I can't tell you about
+all of it----" She paused.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't know the people if you did," Rose said, sensibly. And
+suddenly she added, timidly, "Norma, there isn't another girl?"
+
+"Well, yes, there is, in a way," Norma conceded, after thought.
+
+"That he likes better?" Rose asked, quickly.
+
+"No, I don't think he likes her better!" Norma answered.
+
+"Well, then----?" Rose summarized, triumphantly.
+
+But there was no answering flash from Norma, who was looking down again,
+and who still wore a troubled expression, although, as Rose rejoiced to
+see, it was less bitter than it had been.
+
+"Rose," she said, gravely, "if he was already bound in honour; if he
+was--promised, to her?"
+
+Rose's eyes expressed quick sympathy.
+
+"Norma! You mean engaged? But then how did he ever come to care for
+you?" she followed it up anxiously.
+
+"I don't know!" Norma said, with a shrug.
+
+"But, Nono, why do you think he _does_ like you? Has he said so?"
+
+Norma had freed her hand, and pulled on her rough little cream-coloured
+gloves. Now she spread her five fingers, and looked at them with
+slightly raised brows and slightly compressed lips.
+
+"No," she said, briefly and quietly.
+
+Rose's face was full of distress. Again she reached for Norma's fingers.
+
+"Dearest--I'm so sorry! But--but it doesn't make you feel very badly,
+does it, Norma?"
+
+Norma did not answer.
+
+"Ah, it does!" Rose said, pitifully. "Are you so sure you care?"
+
+At this Norma laughed, glanced for a moment into far space, shook her
+head. And for a few minutes there was utter silence in the plain little
+bedroom. Then the baby began to fuss and grope, and to make little
+sneezing faces in his cocoon of blankets.
+
+"Just one more word, dear," Rose said, later, when Aunt Kate had come
+flying in, and carried off the new treasure, and when Norma was standing
+before the mirror adjusting her wide-brimmed summer hat. "If he cares
+for you, it's much, much better to make the change now, Norma, than to
+wait until it's too late! No matter how hard, or how unpleasant it
+is----"
+
+"I know," Norma agreed, quickly, painfully, stooping to kiss her. "We'll
+be down next month, Rose, and then I'll see you oftener!"
+
+"When do you go?" Rose said, clinging to her hand.
+
+"Go back to Newport? To-morrow. Or at least we get to Great Barrington
+to-morrow, and we may stay there with the Richies a few days. Aunt
+Marianna hates to make the trip in one day, so we stayed there last
+night. But she had to come down to sign some papers. Chris has been down
+all the week and he wired for her, so she and I drove down together."
+
+"And is the country lovely now?" Rose asked.
+
+"Well--dry. But it is beautiful, too; so hot and leafy and thunderous."
+
+"And where are you--at the old house?"
+
+"No; at a hotel, up near the Park. I wish you and little Peter Pan could
+get away somewhere, Rose, for we'll have another three weeks of the
+heat!"
+
+"Oh, my dear, Mother Redding and the baby and I are going to the
+Berkshires for at least two whole weeks," Rose announced, happily. "And
+I thought that my bad boy was coming in early August," she added, of
+the baby, "or I would have gone first. Try to come oftener, Norma," she
+pleaded, "for we all love you so!"
+
+And again, Norma's manner worried her. What was there in the sisterly
+little speech to bring the tears again to Norma's eyes?
+
+"I know you do, Rosy," Norma said, very low. "I wish I could go up to
+the Berkshires with you."
+
+"Well, then, why don't you, dear?"
+
+"Oh"--Norma flung back her head--"I don't know!" she said, with an
+attempt at lightness. And two minutes later she had kissed Aunt Kate,
+and greeted Wolf, in the kitchen, and Rose heard their laughter, and
+then the closing of the front door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Wolf walked with her to the omnibus. He had come in tired with the heat
+of the long day, but Norma thought him his sweetest self, brotherly,
+good, unsuspicious, and unaffected. He complimented her on her
+appearance; he had a kind word for Harry Redding, for the baby; he told
+Norma that he and his mother had gone to Portland by water a few weeks
+before and had a great spree. Norma, tired and excited, loved him for
+his very indifference to her affairs and her mood, for the simplicity
+with which he showed her the book he was reading, and the amusement he
+found all along the dry and dusty and dirty street. Everything was
+interesting to Wolf, and he made no apologies for the general wiltedness
+and disorder of the neighbourhood.
+
+Norma looked down at him, from the top of the omnibus, and thought that
+he was a friendly and likable big young man, with his rumpled bare head
+shining reddish-brown in the streaming, merciless sunlight. She had no
+idea that his last look at her was like some precious canvas that a
+collector adds to his treasures, that to the thousands of little-girl
+Normas, and bookshop Normas, and to the memorable picture of a debutante
+Norma at her first opera, Wolf carried away with him to-night one more
+Norma: a brown, self-possessed, prettier-than-ever Norma, in a wide
+English hat and a plain linen suit, and transparent green silk stockings
+that matched her green silk parasol.
+
+She got down from the omnibus, a few blocks farther away, and walked
+slowly along the shady side of the burning cross-streets, thinking,
+thinking, thinking. It was the hottest hour of the afternoon; there
+would be a storm to-night, but just now the air hung motionless, and the
+shadows were almost as dazzling, in their baking dimness, as the
+sunshine. Houses were closed and silent, show windows bare; the
+omnibuses creaked by loaded with passengers, trying to get cool. There
+was an odour of frying potatoes; other odours, stale and lifeless, crept
+through the stale and lifeless air.
+
+Norma was entirely familiar with this phase of city life, for, except
+for Sundays at Coney Island, or picnicking on some beach or in some
+meadow or wood of Connecticut, she and the Sheridans had weathered two
+successive hot seasons very comfortably within two hundred yards of
+Broadway. It held no particular horrors for her; she reflected that in
+another hour or two the sun would quite have died away, and then every
+flight of old brownstone steps would hold its chatting group, and every
+street its scores of screaming and running children.
+
+Wherever her thoughts carried her, they began and ended with
+Christopher. He had never kissed her again after the night of his return
+from Miami; he had hardly touched even her hand, and he had said no word
+of love. But, as the summer progressed, these two had grown steadily to
+live more and more for each other, for just the casual friendly looks
+and words of ordinary intercourse in the presence of other persons, and
+for the chance hours that Fate now and then permitted them alone.
+
+Norma, in every other relationship grown more whimsical and more
+restless, showing new phases of frivolity and shallowness to the world,
+had deepened and developed, under Chris's eyes, into her own highest
+possibility of womanhood. To him she was earnest, honest, only anxious
+to be good and to be true. He knew the viewpoint of that wiser self that
+was the real Norma; he knew how wide open those blue eyes were to what
+was false and worthless in the world around her.
+
+And Norma had seen him change, too, or perhaps more truly become
+himself. Still apparently the old Chris, handsome, poised, cynical, and
+only too ready to be bored, he went his usual course of golf and polo,
+gave his men's dinners, kissed Alice good-bye and departed for yachting
+or motoring trips. Even Alice, shut away from reality in her own world
+of music and sweet airs, flowers and friendship, saw no change.
+
+But Norma saw it. She knew that Chris was no longer ready to respond to
+every pretty woman's idle challenge to a flirtation; she knew that there
+was a Chris of high ideals, a Chris capable even of heroism, a Chris who
+loved simplicity, who loved even service, and who was not too spoiled
+and too proud to give his time as well as his money, to give himself
+gladly where he saw the need.
+
+Their hours alone together were hours of enchanting discovery. Memories
+of the little boy that had been Chris, the little girl that had been
+Norma, their hopes and ambitions and joys and sorrows, all were
+exchanged. And to them both every word seemed of thrilling and absorbing
+interest. To Norma life now was a different thing when Chris merely was
+in the room, however distant from her, however apparently interested in
+someone, or something, else. She knew that he was conscious of her,
+thinking of her, and that presently she would have just the passing
+word, or smile, or even quiet glance that would buoy her hungry soul
+like a fresh and powerful current.
+
+It was not strange to her that she should have come to feel him the most
+vital and most admirable of all the persons about her, for many of the
+men and women who loved Chris shared this view. Norma had not been in
+the Melrose house a month before she had heard him called "wonderful",
+"inimitable", "the only Chris", a hundred times. Even, she told herself
+sometimes, even the women that Chris quite openly disliked would not
+return coldness for coldness. And how much less could she, so much
+younger, resist the generous friendship he offered to her ignorance, and
+awkwardness, and strangeness?
+
+That he saw in her own companionship something to value she had at first
+been slow to believe. Sheer pride had driven her to reluctance, to
+shyness, to unbelief. But that was long ago, months ago. Norma knew now
+that he truly liked her, that the very freshness and unconventionality
+of her viewpoint delighted him, and that he gave her a frankness, a
+simpleness, and an ardour, in his confidences, that would have
+astonished Alice herself.
+
+Alice! Norma was thinking of Alice, now. Just where did Alice come in?
+Alice had always been the most generous of wives. But she could not be
+generous here; no human woman could. She liked Norma, in a sense she
+needed Norma, but Chris was all her world.
+
+"But, good heavens!" Norma mused, as she walked slowly along, "isn't
+there to be any friendship for a man but his men friends, or any for a
+woman except unmarried men? Isn't there friendship at all between the
+sexes? Must it always be sneaking and subterfuge, unless it's marriage?
+I don't want to marry Chris Liggett----"
+
+She stopped short, and the blood left her heart suddenly, and rushed
+back with a pounding that almost dizzied her.
+
+"_I don't want to marry Chris Liggett_," she whispered, aloud. And then
+she widened her eyes at space, and walked on blindly for a little way.
+"Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris!" she said. "Oh, what shall I do?"
+
+An agony almost physical in its violence seized her, and she began to
+move more rapidly, as if to wear it out, or escape it.
+
+"No, no, no; I can't care for him in that way," said Norma, feeling her
+throat dry and her head suddenly aching. "We can't--we cannot--like each
+other that way!"
+
+The rest of the walk was a blank as far as her consciousness was
+concerned. She was swept far away, on a rushing sea of memories,
+memories confused and troubled by a vague apprehension of the days to
+come. That was it; that was it; they loved each other. Not as
+kinspeople, not as friends, not as the Chris and Norma of Alice's and
+Leslie's and Annie's lives, but as man and woman, caught at last in the
+old, old snare that is the strongest in life.
+
+Bewildered and sick, she reached the cool, great colonnaded doorway of
+the hotel. And here she and Christopher came face to face.
+
+He was coming out, was indeed halfway down the stone steps. They stood
+still and looked at each other.
+
+Norma thought that he looked tired, that perhaps the hot week in
+streets and offices had been hard for him. He was pale, and the smile he
+gave her was strained and unnatural. They had not seen each other for
+ten days, and Norma, drinking in every expression of the firm mouth, the
+shrewd, kindly eyes, the finely set head, felt sudden confidence and
+happiness flood her being again. It was all nonsense, this imagining of
+hers, and she and Chris would always be the best friends in the world!
+
+"Alice is perfectly splendid," Norma said, in answer to his first
+questions, "and Leslie's baby is much less fat and solid looking, and
+getting to be so cunning. Where is Aunt Marianna?"
+
+"Upstairs," he answered with a slight backward inclination of his head.
+"We had a most satisfactory day, and you and she can get off to Great
+Barrington to-morrow without any trouble."
+
+"She and I?" Norma said, distressed by something cold and casual in his
+manner. "But aren't you coming, too? Alice depends upon your coming!"
+
+"I can't, I'm sorry to say. I may get up on Friday night," Chris said,
+with an almost weary air of politeness.
+
+"Friday! Why, then--then I'll persuade Aunt Marianna to wait," Norma
+decided, eagerly. "You must come with us, Chris; it's quite lovely up
+through Connecticut!"
+
+"I'm very sorry," the man repeated, glancing beyond her as if in a hurry
+to terminate the conversation. "But I may not get up at all this week.
+And I've arranged with Aunt Marianna that Poole drives you up to-morrow.
+You'll find her," he added, lightly, "enthusiastic over the baby's
+pictures. They're really excellent, and I think Leslie will be
+delighted. And now I have to go, Norma----"
+
+"But you're coming back to have dinner with us?" the girl interrupted,
+thoroughly uneasy at the change in him.
+
+"Not to-night. I have an engagement! Good-bye. I'll see you very soon.
+The hat's charming, Norma, I think you may safely order more of them by
+mail if you have to. Good-bye."
+
+And with another odd smile, and his usually courteous bow, he was gone,
+and Norma was left staring after him in a state almost of stupefaction.
+
+What was the matter with him? The question framed itself indignantly in
+Norma's mind as she automatically crossed the foyer of the hotel and
+went upstairs. Mechanically, blindly, she took off the big hat, flung
+aside the parasol, and went through the uniting bathroom into Mrs.
+Melrose's room. What on earth had been the matter with Chris? What right
+had he--how dared he--treat her so rudely?
+
+Mrs. Melrose was in a flowered chair near a wide-opened window. She had
+put on a lacy robe of thin silk, after the heat and burden of the day,
+and her feet were in slippers. Beside her was a tall glass, holding an
+iced drink, and before her, on a small table, Regina had ranged the
+beautiful photographs of Leslie's baby that were to be the young
+mother's birthday surprise next week.
+
+"Hello, dear!" she said, in the pleasant, almost cooing voice with which
+she almost always addressed the girls of the family, "isn't this just a
+dreadful, dreadful day? Oh, my, so hot! Look here, Norma, just see my
+little Patricia's pictures. Aren't they perfectly lovely? I'm _so_
+pleased with them. I was just----Regina, will you order Miss Norma
+something cool to drink, please. Tea, dear? Or lemonade, like your old
+aunty?--I was just showing them to Chris. Yes. And he thought they were
+just perfectly lovely; see the little fat hand, and how beautifully the
+lace took! There--that one's the best. You'll see, Leslie will like that
+one."
+
+The topic, fortunately for Norma's agitation, was apparently
+inexhaustible and all-absorbing. The girl could sink almost unnoticed
+into an opposite chair, and while her voice dutifully uttered
+sympathetic monosyllables, and her eyes went from the portraits of
+little Patricia idly about the big room, noting the handsome old maple
+furniture, and the costly old scrolled velvet carpet, and the aspect of
+flaming roofs beyond the window in the sunset, her thoughts could turn
+and twist agonizingly over this new mystery and this new pain. What had
+been the matter with Chris?
+
+Anger gave way to chill, and chill to utter heartsickness. The cause of
+the change was unimportant, after all; it was the change itself that was
+significant. Norma's head ached, her heart was like lead. She had been
+thinking, all the way down in the car--all to-day--that she would meet
+him to-night; that they would talk. Now what? Was this endless evening
+to drag away on his terms, and were they to return to Newport to-morrow,
+with only the memory of that cool farewell to feed Norma's starving,
+starving soul?
+
+"Chris couldn't stay and have dinner," Mrs. Melrose presently was
+regretting, "but, after all, perhaps it's cooler up here than anywhere,
+and I am so tired that I'm not going to change! You'll just have to
+stand me as I am."
+
+And the tired, heat-flushed, wrinkled old face, under its fringe of gray
+hair, smiled confidently at Norma. The girl smiled affectionately back.
+
+Five o'clock. Six o'clock. It was almost seven when Norma came forth
+from a cold bath, and supervised the serving of the little meal. She
+merely played with her own food, and the old lady was hardly more
+hungry.
+
+"Oh, no, Aunt Marianna! I think that Leslie was just terribly nervous,
+after Patricia was born. But I think now, especially when they're back
+in their own house, they'll be perfectly happy. No reason in the world
+why they shouldn't be," Norma heard herself saying. So they had been
+talking of Acton and Leslie, she thought. Leslie was spoiled, and Acton
+was extravagant, and the united families had been just a little worried
+about their attitudes toward each other. Mrs. Melrose was sure that
+Norma was right, and rambled along the same topic for some time. Then
+Norma realized that they had somehow gotten around to Theodore, Leslie's
+father. This subject was always good for half hours together, she could
+safely ramble a little herself. The deadly weight fell upon her spirit
+again. What had been the matter with Chris?
+
+At nine o'clock her tired old companion began preparations for bed, and
+Norma, catching up some magazines, went into her own room. She could
+hear Regina and Mrs. Melrose murmuring together, the running of water,
+the opening and shutting of bureau drawers.
+
+Norma went to her open window, leaned out into the warm and brilliant
+night. There was a hot moon, moving between clouds that promised, at
+last, a break in the binding heat. Down the Avenue below her omnibuses
+wheeled and rumbled, omnibuses whose upper seats were packed with thinly
+clad passengers, but otherwise there was little life and movement
+abroad. A searchlight fanned the sky, fell and wavered upward again. A
+hurdy-gurdy, in the side street, poured forth the notes of the
+"Marseillaise."
+
+Suddenly, and almost without volition, the girl snatched the telephone,
+and murmured a number. Thought and senses seemed suspended while she
+waited.
+
+"Is this the Metropolitan Club? Is Mr. Christopher Liggett there?... If
+you will, please. Thank you. Say that it is a lady," said Norma, in a
+hurried and feverish voice. The operator would announce presently, of
+course, that Mr. Liggett was not there. The chance that he was there was
+so remote----
+
+"Chris!" she breathed, all the tension and doubt dropping from her like
+a garment at the sound of his quiet tones. "Chris--this is Norma!"
+
+A pause. Her soul died within her.
+
+"What is it?" Chris asked presently, in a repressed voice.
+
+"Well--but were you playing cards?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You've had your dinner, Chris?"
+
+"No. Yes, I had dinner, of course. I dined with Aunt Marianna--no, that
+was lunch! I dined here."
+
+"Chris," Norma faltered, speaking quickly as her courage ebbed, "I
+didn't want to interrupt you, but you seemed so--so different, this
+afternoon. And I didn't want to have you cross at me; and I
+wondered--I've been wondering ever since--if I have done something that
+made you angry--that was stupid and--and----"
+
+She stopped. The forbidding silence on his part was like a wall that
+crossed her path, was like a veil that blinded and choked her.
+
+"Not at all," he said, quickly. "Where did you get that idea?...
+Hello--hello--are you there, Norma?" he added, when on her part in turn
+there was a blank silence.
+
+For Norma, strangled by an uprising of tears as sudden as it was
+unexpected and overwhelming, could make no audible answer. Why she
+should be crying she could not clearly think, but she was bathed in
+tears, and her heart was heavy with unspeakable desolation.
+
+"Norma!" she heard him say, urgently. "What is it? Norma----?"
+
+"Nothing!" she managed to utter, in a voice that stemmed the flood for
+only a second.
+
+"Norma," Chris said, simply, "I am coming out. Meet me downstairs in ten
+minutes. I want to see you!"
+
+Both telephones clicked, and Norma found herself sitting blankly in the
+sudden silence of the room, her brain filled with a confusion of shamed
+and doubting and fearful thoughts, and her heart flooded with joy.
+
+Five minutes later she stepped from the elevator into the lobby, and
+selected a big chair that faced obliquely on the entrance doors. The
+little stir in the wide, brightly lighted place always interested her
+and amused her; women drifting from the dining-room with their light
+wraps over their arms, messengers coming and going, the far strains of
+the orchestra mingling pleasantly with the nearer sounds of feet and
+voices.
+
+To-night her spirit was soaring. Nothing mattered, nothing of her
+doubts, nothing of his coldness, except that Chris was even now coming
+toward her! Her mind followed the progress of his motor-car, up through
+the hot, deserted streets.
+
+Suddenly it seemed to her that she could not bear the emotion of
+meeting. With every man's figure that came through the wide-open doors
+her heart thumped and pounded.
+
+His voice; she would hear it again. She would see the gray eyes, and
+watch the firm, quick movement of his jaw.
+
+Other men, meeting other women, or parting from other women, came and
+went. Norma liked the big, homely boy in olive drab, who kissed the
+little homely mother so affectionately.
+
+She glanced at her wrist watch, twisted about to confirm its unwelcome
+news by the big clock. Quarter to ten, and no Chris. Norma settled down
+again to waiting and watching.
+
+Ten o'clock. Quarter past ten. He was not coming! No, although her sick
+and weary spirit rose whenever there was the rush of a motor-car to the
+curb or the footstep of a man on the steps outside, she knew now that he
+was not coming. Hope deferred had exhausted her, but hope dead was far,
+far worse. He was not coming.
+
+It was almost half-past ten when a bell-boy approached. Was it Miss
+Sheridan? Mr. Christopher Liggett had been called out of town, and
+would try to see Mrs. Melrose in a day or two.
+
+Norma turned upon him a white face of fatigue.
+
+"Is Mr. Liggett on the telephone?"
+
+"No, Miss. He just telephoned a message."
+
+The boy retired, and Norma went slowly upstairs, and slowly made her
+preparations for sleep. But the blazing summer dawn, smiting the city at
+four o'clock, found her still sitting at the window, twirling a tassel
+of the old-fashioned shade in her cold fingers, and staring with haggard
+eyes into space.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+More than a week later Annie gave a luncheon to a dozen women, and
+telephoned Norma beforehand, with a request that the girl come early
+enough to help her with name cards.
+
+"These damnable engagement luncheons," said Aunt Annie, limping about
+the long table, and grumbling at everything as she went. Annie had
+wrenched her ankle in alighting from her car, and was cross with nagging
+pain. "Here, put Natalie next to Leslie, Norma; no, that puts the
+Gunnings together. I'll give you Miss Blanchard--but you don't speak
+French! Here, give me your pencil--and confound these things
+anyway----Fowler," she said to the butler, "I don't like to see a thing
+like that on the table--carry that away, please; and here, get somebody
+to help you change this, that won't do! That's all right--only I want
+this as you had it day before yesterday--and don't use those, get the
+glass ones----"
+
+And so fussing and changing and criticizing, Annie went away, and Norma
+followed her up to her bedroom.
+
+"I'm wondering when we're going to give _you_ an engagement luncheon,
+Norma," said the hostess, in a whirl of rapid dressing. "Who's ahead
+now?"
+
+"Oh--nobody!" Norma answered, with a mirthless laugh. She had been
+listless and pale for several days, and did not seem herself at all.
+
+"Forrest Duer, is it?"
+
+"Oh, good heavens--Aunt Annie! He's twenty-one!"
+
+"Is that all--he's such a big whale!----Don't touch my hair, Phoebe,
+it'll do very well!" said Annie to the maid. "Well, don't be in too much
+of a hurry, Norma," she went on kindly. "Nothing like being sure!
+That"--Annie glanced at the retiring maid--"that's what makes me nervous
+about Leslie," she confessed. "I'm afraid we hurried the child into it
+just a little bit. It was an understood thing since they were nothing
+but kiddies."
+
+"Leslie is outrageously spoiled," Norma said, not unkindly.
+
+"Leslie? Oh, horribly. Mama always spoils everyone and poor Theodore
+spoiled her, too," Annie conceded.
+
+"She told me herself yesterday," Norma went on, with a trace of her old
+animation, "that they've overdrawn again. Now, Aunt Annie, I do think
+that's outrageous! Chris straightened them all out last--when was
+it?--June, after the baby came, and they have an enormous
+income--thousands every month, and yet they are deep in again!"
+
+"The wretched thing is that they quarrel about that!" Annie agreed.
+
+"Well, exactly! That was what it was about day before yesterday, and
+Leslie told me she cried all night. And you know the other day she took
+Patricia and came home to Aunt Marianna, and it was terrible!"
+
+"How much do you suppose the servants know of that?" Annie asked,
+frowning.
+
+"Oh, they _must_ know!" Norma replied.
+
+"Foolish, foolish child! You know, Norma," Annie resumed, "Leslie comes
+by her temper naturally. She is half French; her mother was a
+Frenchwoman--Louison Courtot."
+
+"It's a pretty name," Norma commented. "Did you know her?"
+
+"Know her? She was my maid when I was about seventeen, a very superior
+girl. I used to practise my French with her. She was extremely pretty.
+After my father died my mother and I went to Florida, and when we came
+back the whole thing broke. I thought it would kill Mama! At first we
+thought Theodore had simply gotten her into 'trouble,' to use the dear
+old phrase. But _pas du tout_; she had 'ze _mar-ri-age_ certificate' all
+safe and sound. But he was no more in love with her than I was--a boy
+nineteen! Mama made her leave the house, and cut off Theodore's
+allowance entirely, and for a while they were together--but it couldn't
+last. Teddy got his divorce when he went with Mama to California, but he
+was ill then, though we didn't know it, poor boy! He lived five years
+after that."
+
+"But he saw Leslie?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes!" Annie said, buffing her twinkling finger-nails, idly.
+"Didn't Mama ever tell you about that?"
+
+"No, she never mentions it."
+
+"Well, that was awful, too--for poor Mama. About four years after the
+divorce, one night when we were all at home--it was just after Mama and
+I came back from Europe, and the year before Hendrick and I were
+married--suddenly there was a rush in the hall, and in came Theodore's
+wife--Louison Courtot! It seems Mama had been in touch with her ever
+since we returned, but none of us knew that. And she had Leslie with
+her, a little thing about four years old--Leslie just faintly remembers
+it. She had fought Mama off, at first, about giving her baby up, but now
+she was going to be married, and she had finally consented to do as Mama
+wanted. Leslie came over to me, and got into my lap, and went to sleep,
+I remember. Theodore was terribly ill, and I remember that Louison was
+quite gentle with him--surprised us all, in fact, she was so mild. She
+had been a wild thing, but always most self-respecting; a prude, in
+fact. She even stooped over Theodore, and kissed him good-bye, and then
+she knelt down and kissed Leslie, and went away. Mama had intended that
+she should always see the child, if she wanted to, but she never came
+again. She was married, I know, a few weeks later, and long afterward
+Mama told me that she was dead. Ted came to adore the baby, and of
+course she's been the greatest comfort to Mama, so it all turns out
+right, after all. But we're a sweet family!" finished Annie, rising to
+go downstairs. "And now," she added, on the stairs, "if there were to be
+serious trouble between Acton and Leslie----Well, it isn't thinkable!"
+
+Leslie herself, charming in a flowered silky dress, with a wide flowery
+hat on her yellow hair, was waiting for them in the big, shaded hallway.
+The little matron was extremely attractive in her new dignities, and her
+babyish face looked more ridiculously youthful than ever as she talked
+of "my husband," "my little girl," "my house," and "my attorney."
+
+Leslie, like Annie and Alice, was habitually wrapped in her own affairs,
+more absorbed in the question of her own minute troubles than in the
+most widespread abuses of the world. When Leslie saw a coat, the
+identity of the wearer interested her far less than the primary
+considerations of the coat's cut and material, and the secondary
+decision whether or not she herself would like such a garment.
+Consequently, she glanced but apathetically at Norma; she had seen the
+dotted blue swiss before, and the cornflower hat; she had seen Aunt
+Annie's French organdie; there was nothing there either to envy or
+admire.
+
+"How's the baby, dear; and how's Acton?" Annie asked, perfunctorily.
+Leslie sighed.
+
+"Oh, they're both fine," she answered, indifferently. "I've been all
+upset because my cook got married--just walked out. I told Acton not to
+pay her, but of course he did; it's nothing to him if my whole house is
+upset by the selfishness of somebody else. He and Chris are going off
+this afternoon with Joe and Denny Page, for the Thousand Islands----"
+
+"I didn't know Chris was here!" Annie said, in surprise.
+
+"I didn't, myself. He came up with Acton, late last night. They'd
+motored all the way; I was asleep when they got in. I didn't know it
+until I found him at breakfast this morning----"
+
+Norma's heart stood still. The name alone was enough to shake her to the
+very soul, but the thought that he was here--in Newport--this minute,
+and that she might not see him, probably indeed would not see him, made
+her feel almost faint.
+
+She had not seen him since the meeting on the hotel steps nearly two
+weeks ago. It had been the longest and the saddest two weeks in Norma's
+life. It was in vain that she reminded herself that her love for him
+was weakness and madness, and that by no possible shift of
+circumstances could it come to happy consummation. It was in vain that
+she pondered Alice's claims, and all the family claims, and the general
+claim of society as an institution. Deep and strong and unconquerable
+above them all rose the tide of love and passion, the gnawing and
+burning hunger for the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the touch
+of his hand.
+
+Life had become for her a vague and changing dream, with his name for
+its only reality. Somewhere in the fog of days was Chris, and she would
+not live again until she saw him. He must forgive her; he must explain
+his coldness, explain the change in him, and then she would be content
+just with the old friendliness, just the old nearness and the occasional
+word together.
+
+Every letter that Joseph brought her, every call to the telephone, meant
+to her only the poignant possibility of a message from him. She sickened
+daily with fresh despair, and fed herself daily with new hopes.
+
+To-day she was scarcely conscious of the hilarious progress of the
+luncheon; she looked at the prospective bride, in whose honour Aunt
+Annie entertained, only with a pang of wonder. What was it like, the
+knowledge that one was openly beloved, the miraculous right to plan an
+unclouded future together? The mere thought of being free to love Chris,
+of having him free to claim her, almost dizzied Norma with its vista of
+utter felicity. She had to drive it resolutely from her mind. Not
+that--never that! But there must at least be peace and friendship
+between them.
+
+At three o'clock the luncheon was over; it was half-past three when
+Leslie and she drove to the Melrose "cottage"--as the fourteen-room,
+three-story frame house was called. Norma had searched the drive with
+her eyes as they approached. The gray roadster was not there. There was
+no sign of Christopher's hat or coat in the hallway. Alice was alone, in
+her downstairs sitting-room. Norma's heart sank like a lump of ice.
+
+"Did you see Chris?" the invalid began, happily. "We had the nicest
+lunch together--just we two. And look at the books the angel brought
+me--just a feast. You saw him, Leslie, didn't you, dear? He said he
+caught you and Acton at breakfast. I was perfectly amazed. Miss Slater
+moved me out here about eleven o'clock, and I heard someone walking
+in----! He's off now, with the Pages; he told you that, of course!"
+
+"He looks rotten, I think," Leslie offered. "I told him he was working
+too hard."
+
+"Well, Judge Lee is sick, and he hasn't been in to the office since
+June," Alice said, "and that makes it very hard for Chris. But he says
+his room at the club is cool, and now he'll have two or three lovely
+days with the Page boys----"
+
+Norma, who had subsided quietly into a chair, was looking at the yellow
+covers of the new French and Italian novels.
+
+"And then does he come back here Monday, for the tennis?" she asked,
+clearing her throat.
+
+"He says not!" Alice answered, regretfully. "He's going straight on down
+to the city. Then next week-end is the cruise with the Dwights; and
+after that, I suppose we'll all be home!"
+
+She went on into a conversation with Leslie, relative to the move. After
+a few moments Norma went out through the opened French window onto the
+wide porch. It was rather a dark, old-fashioned side porch, with an
+elaborate wooden railing, and potted hydrangeas under a striped awning.
+The house had neither the magnificence of Annie's gray-stone mansion or
+the beauty of Leslie's colonial white and green at Glen Cove; it had
+been built in the late eighties, and was inflexibly ornate.
+
+Norma went down slowly through the garden, and walked vaguely toward the
+hot glitter and roll of the blue sea. Her misery was almost unbearable.
+Weeks--it would be weeks before she would see him! He had been here
+to-day--here in the garden--in Alice's room, and she had not had a word
+or a sign.
+
+Children and nurses were on the beach, grouped in the warm shade. The
+season was over, there were yellow leaves in the hedges, Norma's feet
+rustled among the dropped glory of the old trees. The world seemed hot,
+dry, lifeless before her.
+
+"I wish I were dead!" she cried, passionately, for the first time in her
+life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Suddenly and smoothly they were all transported to town again, and the
+vigour and sparkle of the autumn was exhilarating to Norma in spite of
+herself. The Park was a glory of red and gold leaves; morning came late,
+and the dew shone until ten o'clock; bright mists rose smoking into the
+sunlight, and when Norma walked home from a luncheon, or from an hour of
+furious squash or tennis at the club, the early winter dusk would be
+closing softly in, the mists returning, and the lights of the long Mall
+in the park blooming round and blue in the twilight.
+
+She was with Mrs. Melrose this winter, an arrangement extremely welcome
+to the old lady, who was lonely and liked the stir of young life in the
+house. Alice had quite charmingly and naturally suggested the change,
+and Norma's belongings had been moved away from the little white room
+next to Miss Slater's.
+
+One reason for it was that Alice had had two nurses all summer long, and
+found the increased service a great advantage. Then Mama was all alone
+and not so well as she had been; getting old, and reluctant to take even
+the necessary exercise.
+
+"And then you're too young to be shut up with stupid home-loving folk
+like Chris and me," Alice had told Norma, lightly.
+
+"Your stupidity is proverbial, Aunt Alice," Norma had laughed. She did
+not care where she went any more. Chris had greeted her casually, upon
+their meeting in October, and had studiously, if inconspicuously,
+ignored her. But even to see him at all was so great a relief to her
+over-charged heart that for weeks this was enough. She must meet him
+occasionally, she heard his name every day, and she knew where he was
+and what he was doing almost at every moment. She treasured every look,
+every phrase of his, and she glowed and grew beautiful in the conviction
+that, even though he was still mysteriously angry with her, he had that
+old consciousness of her presence, too; he might hate her, but he could
+not ignore her.
+
+And then, in December, the whole matter reached a sudden crisis, and
+Norma came to feel that she would have been glad to have the matter go
+back to this state of doubt and indecision again.
+
+Mrs. von Behrens was on the directorate of a working girls' club that
+needed special funds every winter, and this year the money was to be
+raised by an immense entertainment, at which generous professional
+singers were to be alternated on a brilliant programme with society
+girls and men, in tableaux and choruses. Norma, who had a charming if
+not particularly strong voice, was early impressed into service, because
+she was so good-natured, so dependable, and pretty and young enough to
+carry off a delectable costume. The song she sang had been specially
+written for the affair, and in the quaint dance that accompanied it she
+was drilled by the dance authority of the hour. A chorus of eight girls
+and eight men was added to complete the number, and the gaiety of the
+rehearsals, and the general excitement and interest, carried the matter
+along to the last and dress rehearsal with a most encouraging rush.
+
+Annie had originally selected Chris for Norma's companion in the song,
+for Chris had a pleasant, presentable voice, and Chris in costume was
+always adequate to any role. Theatricals had been his delight, all his
+life long, and among the flattering things that were commonly said of
+Chris was that he had robbed the stage of a great character actor.
+
+But Chris had begged off, to take a minor part in another _ensemble_,
+and Norma had a youth named Roy Gillespie for her partner. Roy was a
+big, fat, blond boy, good-natured and stupid and rather in love with
+Norma, and as the girl was entirely unconscious of Annie's original
+plan, she was quite satisfied with him.
+
+The dress rehearsal was on a dark Thursday afternoon before the Saturday
+of the performance. It took place in the big empty auditorium, where it
+was to drag along from twelve o'clock noon, until the preparations for
+the regular evening performance drove the amateurs, protesting, away.
+Snow was fluttering down over the city when Annie, with Norma, and a
+limousine full of properties, reached the place at noon; motor-cars were
+wheeling and crowding in the side street, and it seemed to Norma
+thrilling to enter so confidently at the big, dirty, sheet-iron door
+lettered:
+
+    "STAGE DOOR. NO ADMITTANCE."
+
+As always to the outsider, the wings, the shabby dressing-rooms, the
+novel feeling of sauntering across the big, dim stage, the gloom of the
+great rising arch of the house, were full of charm. Voices and hammers
+were sounding in the gloom; somebody was talking hard while he fitfully
+played the piano; girls were giggling and fluttering about; footlights
+flashed up and down, in the front rows of seats a few mothers and maids
+had gathered. There was the sweet, strong smell of some spicy
+disinfectant, and obscure figures, up the aisles, were constantly
+sweeping and stooping.
+
+Annie had a chair in a wing. Her small fur hat and trim suit had been
+selected for comfort; her knees were crossed, and she had a sheaf of
+songs, a pencil, and various note-books in her hands. She was alert,
+serious, authoritative; her manner expressed an anxious certainty that
+everything that could possibly go wrong was about to do so. Men
+protested jovially to Annie, girls whimpered and complained, maids
+delivered staggering messages into her ear. Annie frowningly yet
+sympathetically sent them all away, one by one; persisted that the
+rehearsal proceed. Never mind the hat, we could get along without the
+hat; never mind Dixie Jadwin, someone could read her part; never mind
+this, never mind that; go on, go on--we must get on!
+
+At five o'clock she was very tired, and Norma, fully arrayed, was tired,
+too. The girl had been sitting on a barrel for almost an hour, patiently
+waiting for the tardy Mr. Roy Gillespie to arrive, and permit their
+particular song to be rehearsed. Everything that could be done in the
+way of telephoning had been done: Mr. Gillespie had left his office, he
+was expected momentarily at his home, he should be given the message
+immediately. Nothing to do but wait.
+
+Suddenly Norma's heart jumped to her throat, began to hammer wildly. A
+man had come quietly in between her and Annie, and she heard the voice
+that echoed in her heart all day and all night. It was Chris.
+
+He did not see her, perhaps did not recognize her in a casual glance,
+and began to talk to his sister-in-law in low, quick tones. Almost
+immediately Annie exclaimed in consternation, and called Norma.
+
+"Norma! Chris tells me that poor old Mr. Gillespie died this afternoon.
+_That's_ what's been the matter. What on earth are we to do now? I
+declare it's _too_ much!"
+
+Norma got off her barrel. The great lighted stage seemed to be moving
+about her as she went to join them.
+
+What Chris saw strained his tried soul to its utmost of endurance. He
+had not permitted himself to look at her squarely for weeks. Now there
+was a new look, a look a little sad, a little wistfully expectant, in
+the lovely face. Her eyes burned deeply blue above the touch of rouge
+and the crimson lips. Her dark, soft hair fell in loose ringlets on her
+shoulders from under the absurd little tipped and veiled hat of the late
+seventies. Her gown, a flowered muslin, moved and tilted with a gentle,
+shaking majesty over hoop skirts, and was crossed on the low shoulders
+by a thin silk shawl whose long fringes were tangled in her mitted
+fingers. The white lace stockings began where the loose lace pantalettes
+stopped, and disappeared into flat-heeled kid slippers. Norma carried a
+bright nosegay in lace paper, and on her breast a thin gold locket hung
+on a velvet ribbon.
+
+She herself had been completely captivated by the costume when Madame
+Modiste had first suggested it, and when the first fittings began. But
+that was weeks ago, and she was accustomed to it now, and conscious in
+this instant of nothing but Chris, conscious of nothing but the
+possibility that he would have a word or a smile, at last, for her.
+
+"Stay right here, both of you--don't move a step--while I telephone
+Lucia Street!" said the harassed Annie, her eyes glittering with some
+desperate hope. She hurried away; they were alone.
+
+"Poor old Roy--he adored his father!" Chris said, with dry lips, and in
+a rather unnatural voice. Norma, for one second, simulated mere
+sympathy. Then with a rush the pride and hurt that had sustained her
+ever since that weary September evening in the hotel lobby vanished, and
+she came close to Chris, so that the fragrance and sweetness of her
+enveloped him, and caught his coat with both her mitted hands, and
+raised her face imploringly, commandingly to his.
+
+"Chris--for God's sake--what have I done? Don't you know--don't you know
+that you're killing me?"
+
+He looked down at her, wretchedly. And suddenly Norma knew. Not that he
+liked her, not that she fascinated and interested him, not that they
+were friends. But that he loved her with every fibre of his being, even
+as she loved him.
+
+The revelation carried her senses away with it upon a raging sea of
+emotion and ecstasy. He drew her into a dim corner of the wings, and put
+his arms about her, and her whole slender body, in its tilting hoops,
+strained backward under the passion and fury of his first embrace. Again
+and again his lips met hers, and she heard the incoherent outpouring of
+murmured words, and felt the storm that shook him as it was shaking her.
+Norma, after the first kiss, grew limp, let herself rest almost without
+movement in his arms, shut her eyes.
+
+Reason came back to them slowly; the girl almost rocking upon her feet
+as the vertigo and bewilderment passed, and the man sustaining her with
+an arm about her shoulders, neither looking at the other. So several
+seconds, perhaps a full minute, went by, while the world settled into
+place about them; the dingy, unpainted wood of the wings, the near-by
+stage where absorbed groups of people were still coming and going, the
+distant gloom of the house.
+
+"So now you know!" Chris said, breathlessly, panting, and looking away
+from her, with his hands hanging at his sides. "Now you know! I've tried
+to keep it from you! But now--now you know!"
+
+Norma, also breathing hard, did not answer for a little space.
+
+"I've known since that time we were in town, in September!" she said,
+almost defiantly. Chris looked toward her, surprised, and their eyes
+met. "I've known what was the matter with _me_," she added,
+thoughtfully, even frowning a little in her anxiety to make it all
+clear, "but I couldn't imagine what it was with _you_!"
+
+But this brought him to face her, so close that she felt the same sense
+of drowning, of losing her footing, again.
+
+"Chris--please!" she whispered, in terror.
+
+"But, Norma--say it! Say that you love me--that's all that matters now!
+I've been losing my mind, I think. I've been losing my mind. Just
+that--that you do care!"
+
+"I have----" Tears came to her lifted blue eyes, and she brushed them
+away without moving her gaze from him. "I think I have always loved you,
+Chris--from the very first," she whispered.
+
+Instantly she saw his expression change. It was as if, with that
+revelation, a new responsibility began for him.
+
+"Here, dear, you mustn't cry!" he said, composedly. He gave her his
+handkerchief, helped her set the tipped hat and lace veil straight,
+smiled reassurance and courage into her eyes. "I'll see you,
+Norma--we'll talk," he said. "Oh, my God, to talk to you again! Come,
+now, we'll have to be here when Annie comes back--that's right. I--I
+love the little gown--terribly sweet. I haven't seen it before, you
+know; my crowd has done all its rehearsing at Mrs. Hitchcock's. Here's
+Annie now----"
+
+"Christopher," said Annie, in deadly, almost angry earnest, as she came
+up desperate and weary, "you'll have to sing this thing with Norma.
+Burgess Street absolutely refuses. He's in the chorus, and he sings, but
+he simply won't do a solo! His mother says he has a cold, and so on, and
+I swear I'll throw the whole thing up; I will, indeed!--rather than have
+this number ruined. There's no earthly reason why you can't do both--of
+course the poor old man couldn't help dying--but if you knew----"
+
+"My dear girl, of course I'll do it!" All the youth and buoyancy that
+had been missing from his voice for weeks had come back. Christopher
+laughed his old delightful laugh. "I'll have to have Roy's costume cut
+down, but Smithers will do it for me. I'll do my very best----"
+
+"Oh, Chris, God bless you," Annie said. "You'll do it better than he
+ever did. Take my car and stop for his suit, and express whatever's
+decent--the funeral will be Saturday morning and we'll all have to go,
+but there's no help for it. And come to my house for dinner, and you and
+Norma can go over it afterward; you poor girl, you're tired out, but
+it's such a Godsend to have Chris fill in. And it will be the prettiest
+number of all."
+
+Tired out? The radiant girl who was tripping away to change to street
+attire was hardly conscious that her feet touched the ground. The stage,
+the theatre, the fur coat into which she buttoned herself, the fragrance
+of the violets she wore, were all touched with beauty and enchantment.
+
+Snow was still falling softly, when she and Annie went out to the car.
+Annie was so exhausted that she could hardly move, but Norma floated
+above things mortal. The dark sidewalk was powdered with what scrunched
+under their shoes like dry sugar, and up against the lighted sky the
+flakes were twirling and falling. The air was sweet and cold and pure
+after the hot theatre. Chris put them in the motor-car. He would see his
+tailor, have a bite of dinner at home, and be at Annie's at eight
+o'clock for the rehearsal.
+
+"I'll do something for you, for this, Norma!" her aunt assured the girl,
+gratefully. Norma protested in a voice that was almost singing. It was
+nothing at all!
+
+She felt suddenly happy and light. It was all right; there was to be no
+more agony and doubt. Alice should lose nothing, the world should know
+nothing, but Chris loved her! She could take his friendship fearlessly,
+there would be nothing but what was good and beautiful and true between
+them. But what a changed world!
+
+What a changed room it was into which she danced, to brush her hair for
+dinner, and laugh into her mirror, where the happy girl with starry eyes
+and blazing cheeks laughed back. What a changed dinner table, at which
+the old lady drowsed and cooed! Norma's blood was dancing, her head was
+in a whirl, she was hardly conscious that this soaring and singing soul
+of hers had a body.
+
+At eight she and Mrs. Melrose went to Mrs. von Behrens's, and Norma and
+Chris went through the song again and again and again, for the benefit
+of a small circle of onlookers. Hendrick, who had sworn that wild horses
+would not drag him to the entertainment, sat with a small son in his
+lap, and applauded tirelessly. Annie criticized and praised alternately.
+Mrs. Melrose went to sleep, and Annie's new secretary, a small, lean,
+dark girl of perhaps twenty-two, passionately played the music. Norma
+knew exactly how this girl felt, how proud she was of her position, how
+anxious to hold it, and how infinitely removed from her humble struggle
+the beautiful Miss Sheridan seemed! Yet she herself had been much the
+same less than two years ago!
+
+Norma could have laughed aloud. She envied no one to-night. The mystery
+and miracle of Chris's love for her was like an ermine mantle about her
+shoulders, and like a diadem upon her brows. Annie was delighted with
+her, and presently told her she had never before sung so well.
+
+"I suppose practice makes perfect!" the girl answered, innocently. She
+was conscious of no hypocrisy. No actress enjoying a long-coveted part
+could have rejoiced in every word and gesture more than she. Just to
+move, under his eyes, to laugh or to be serious, to listen dutifully to
+Annie and the old lady, to flirt with Baby Piet, was ecstasy enough.
+
+They had small opportunity for asides. But that was of no consequence.
+All the future was their own. They would see each other to-morrow--or
+next day; it did not matter. Norma's hungry heart had something to
+remember, now--a very flood-tide of memories. She could have lived for
+weeks upon this one day's memories.
+
+Norma and Chris were placed toward the centre of the first half of the
+programme on the triumphant Saturday night, and could escape from the
+theatre before eleven o'clock to go home to tell Alice all about it.
+Chris played the song, on his own piano, and Norma modestly and
+charmingly went through it again, to the invalid's great satisfaction.
+Alice, when Norma and her mother were gone, tried to strike a spark of
+enthusiasm from her husband as to the girl's beauty and talent, but
+Chris was pleasantly unresponsive.
+
+"She got through it very nicely; they all did!" Chris admitted,
+indifferently.
+
+"When you think of the upbringing she had, Chris, a little nameless
+nobody," Alice pursued. "When you think that until last year she had
+actually never seen a finger-bowl, or spoken to a servant!"
+
+"Exactly!" Chris said, briefly. Alice, who was facing the fire, did not
+see him wince. She was far from suspecting that he had at that moment a
+luncheon engagement for the next day with Norma, and that during the
+weeks that followed they met by appointment almost every day, and
+frequently by chance more often than that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+In the beginning, these were times brimful of happiness for Norma. She
+would meet Chris far down town, among the big, cold, snowbound
+office-buildings, and they would loiter for two hours at some
+inconspicuous table in a restaurant, and come wandering out into the
+cold streets still talking, absorbed and content. Or she would rise
+before him from a chair in one of the foyers of the big hotels, at tea
+time, and they would find an unobserved corner for the murmur that rose
+and fell, rose and fell inexhaustibly. Tea and toast unobserved before
+them, music drifting unheard about them, furred and fragrant women
+coming and going; all this was but the vague setting for their own
+thrilling drama of love and confidence. They would come out into the
+darkness, Norma tucking herself beside him in the roadster, last
+promises and last arrangements made, until to-morrow.
+
+Sometimes the girl even accompanied him to Alice's room, to sit at the
+invalid's knee, and chatter with a tact and responsiveness that Alice
+found an improvement upon her old amusing manner. So free was Norma in
+these days from any sense of guilt that she felt herself nothing but
+generous toward Alice, in sparing the older woman some of the excess of
+joy and companionship in which she was so rich.
+
+But very swiftly the first complete satisfaction in the discovery of
+their mutual love began to wane, or rather to be overset with the
+difficulties by which Norma, and many another more brilliant and older
+woman, must inevitably be worsted. Her meetings with Chris, innocent and
+open as they seemed, were immediately threatened by the sordid danger of
+scandal. To meet him once, twice, half-a-dozen times, even, was safe
+enough. But when each day of separation became for them both only an
+agony of waiting until the next day that should unite them, and when all
+Norma's self-control was not enough to keep her from the telephone
+summons that at least gave her the sound of his voice, then the world
+began to be cognizant that something was in the air.
+
+The very maids at Mrs. Melrose's house knew that Miss Sheridan was never
+available any more, never to be traced to the club, to young Mrs.
+Liggett's, or to Mrs. von Behrens's house, with a telephone message or
+an urgent letter. Leslie knew that Norma hated girls' luncheons; Annie
+asked Hendrick idly why he supposed the child was always taking long
+walks--or saying that she took long walks--and Hendrick, later
+speculating himself as to the inaccessibility of Chris, was perhaps the
+first in the group to suspect the truth.
+
+A quite accidental and innocent hint from Annie overwhelmed Norma with
+shame and terror, and she and Chris, in earnest consultation, decided
+that they must be more discreet. But this was slow and difficult work,
+after the radiant first plunge into danger. Despite their utmost
+resolution, Chris would find her out, Norma would meet him halfway, and
+even under Leslie's very eyes, or in old Mrs. Melrose's actual presence,
+the telephone message, or the quicker signals of eyes and smile, would
+forge the bond afresh.
+
+Even when Norma really did start off heroically upon a bracing winter
+walk, determined to shake off, in solitude and exercise, the constant
+hunger for his presence, torturing possibilities would swarm into her
+mind, and weaken her almost while she thought them banished. She could
+catch him at his club; she might have just five minutes of him did she
+choose to telephone.
+
+Perhaps she would resist the temptation, and go home nervous,
+high-strung, excitable--the evening stretching endlessly before
+her--without him. Aunt Annie and Hendrick coming, Leslie and Acton
+coming, the prospect of the decorous family dinner would drive her
+almost to madness. She would dress in a feverish dream, answer old Mrs.
+Melrose absently or impatiently, speculating all the time about him.
+Where was he? When would they meet again?
+
+And then perhaps Leslie would casually remark that Chris had said he
+would join them for coffee, or Joseph would summon her gravely to the
+telephone. Then Norma began to live again, the effect of the lonely walk
+and the heroic resolutions swept away, nothing--nothing was in the world
+but the sound of that reassuring voice, or the prospect of that ring at
+the bell, and that step in the hall.
+
+So matters went on for several weeks, but they were weeks of increasing
+uneasiness and pain for Norma, and she knew that Chris found them even
+less endurable than she. The happy hours of confidence and happiness
+grew fewer and fewer, and as their passion strengthened, and the
+insuperable obstacles to its natural development impressed them more and
+more forcibly, miserable and anxious times took their place. Their love
+was no sooner acknowledged than both came to realize how mad and
+hopeless it was, and that no reiteration of its intensity and no
+argument could ever give them a gleam of hope.
+
+If Norma had drifted cheerfully and recklessly into this situation, she
+paid for it now, when petty restrictions and conventions stung her like
+so many bees, and when she could turn nowhere for relief from constant
+heartache and the sickening monotony of her thoughts. She could not have
+Chris; she could not give him up. Hours with him were only a degree more
+bearable than hours without him.
+
+When he spoke hopefully of a possible change, of "something" making
+their happiness possible, she would turn on him like a little virago.
+Yet if he despaired, tears would come to Norma's eyes, and she would beg
+him almost angrily to change his tone, or she would disgrace them both
+by beginning to cry.
+
+Norma grew thin and fidgety, able to concentrate her mind on
+nothing, and openly indifferent to the society she had courted so
+enthusiastically a year ago. It was a part of her suffering that she
+grew actually to dislike Alice, always so suave and cheerful, always so
+serenely sure of Chris's devotion. What right had this woman, who had
+been rich and spoiled and guarded all her life, to hold him away from
+the woman he loved? Chris had been chained to this couch for years,
+reading, playing his piano, infinitely solicitous and sympathetic. But
+was he to spend all his life thus? Was there to be no glorious
+companionship, no adventure, no deep and satisfying love for Chris, ever
+in this world? Norma wished no ill to Alice, but she hated a world that
+could hold Alice's claim legitimate.
+
+"Why should it be so?" she said to Chris one day, bitterly. "Why, when
+all my life was going so happily, did I have to fall in love with you, I
+wonder? It could so easily have been somebody else!"
+
+"I don't know!" Chris answered, soberly, flinging away his half-finished
+cigarette, and folding his arms over his chest, as he stared through a
+screen of bare trees at the river. It was a March day of warm airs and
+bursting buds; the roads were running water, and every bank and meadow
+oozed the thawing streams, but there was no green yet. Chris had come
+for the girl at three o'clock, just as she was starting out for one of
+her aimless, unhappy tramps, and had carried her off for a
+twenty-five-mile run to the quiet corner of the tavern's porch in
+Tarrytown where they were having tea. "I suppose that's just life.
+Things go so rottenly, sometimes!"
+
+Norma's eyes watered as she pushed the untasted toast away from her,
+cupped her chin in her hands, and stared at the river in her turn.
+
+"Chris, if I could go back, I think I'd never speak to you!" she said,
+wretchedly.
+
+"You mustn't say that," he reproached her. "My darling; surely it's
+brought you some happiness?"
+
+"I suppose so," Norma conceded, lifelessly, after a silence. "But I
+can't go on!" she protested, suddenly. "I can't keep this up! I suppose
+I've done something very wicked, to be punished this way. But, Chris, I
+loved you from the very first day I ever saw you, in Biretta's
+Bookstore, I think. I can't sleep," she stammered, piteously, "and I am
+so afraid all the time!"
+
+"Afraid of what?" the man asked, very low.
+
+She faced him, honestly.
+
+"You know what! Of you--of me. It can't go on. You know that. And
+yet----" And Norma looked far away, her beautiful weary eyes burning in
+her white face. "And yet, I can't stop it!" she whispered.
+
+"Oh, Chris, don't let's fool ourselves!" she interrupted his protest
+impatiently. "Weeks ago, _weeks_ ago!--we said that we would see each
+other less, that it would taper off. We tried. It's no use! If we were
+in different cities--in different families, even! I tell myself that it
+will grow less and less," she added presently, as the man watched her in
+silence, "but oh, my God!--how long the years ahead look!"
+
+And Norma put her head down on the table, pressed her white fingers
+suddenly against her eyes with a gesture infinitely desolate and
+despairing, and he knew that she was in tears. Then there was a long
+silence.
+
+"Look here, Norma," said Chris, suddenly, in a quiet, reasonable tone.
+"I am thirty-eight. I've had affairs several times in my life, two or
+three before I married Alice, two or three since. They've never been
+very serious, never gone very deep. When we were married I was
+twenty-four. I know women like to pretend that I'm an awful killer when
+I get going," he interrupted himself to say boyishly, "but there was
+really never anything of that sort in my life. I liked Alice, I remember
+my mother talking to me a long time, and telling me how pleased everyone
+would be if we came to care for each other, and--upon my honour!--I was
+more surprised than anything else, to think that any one so pretty and
+sweet would marry me! I don't think there's a woman in the world that I
+admire more. But, Norma, I've lived her life for ten years. I want my
+own now! I want my companion--my chum--my wife. I've played with women
+since I was seventeen. But I never loved any woman before. Norma,
+there's no life ahead for me, without you. And there's no place so
+far--so lonely--so strange--but what it would be heaven for me if you
+were there, looking at me as you are now, and with this little hand
+where it belongs! My dear, the city is a blank--the men I meet might
+just as well be wooden Indians; I can't breathe and I can't eat or
+sleep. Get better? It gets worse! It can't go on!"
+
+She was crying again. They were almost alone now. A red spring sun was
+sinking, far down the river, and all the world--the opposite shores, the
+running waters of the Hudson--was bathed in the exquisite glow. Norma
+fumbled with her left hand for her little handkerchief, her right hand
+clinging tight to Chris's hand.
+
+"Now, Norma, I've been thinking," the man said, in a matter-of-fact
+tone, after a pause. "The first consideration is, that this sort of
+thing can't go on!"
+
+"No; this can't go on!" she agreed, quickly. "Every day makes it more
+dangerous, and less satisfying! I never"--her eyes watered again--"I
+never have a happy second!" she said.
+
+Chris looked at her, looked thoughtfully away.
+
+"The great trouble with the way I feel to you, Norma," he said, quietly,
+"is that it seems to blot every other earthly consideration from view. I
+see nothing, I think nothing, I hear nothing--but you!"
+
+"And is that so terrible?" Norma asked, touched, and smiling through
+tears.
+
+"No, it is so wonderful," he answered, gravely, "that it blinds me. It
+blinds me to your youth, my dear, your inexperience--your faith in me!
+It makes me only remember that I need you--and want you--and that I
+believe I could make you the happiest woman in the world!"
+
+The faint shadow of a frown crossed her forehead, and she slowly shook
+her head.
+
+"Not divorce!" she said, lightly, but inflexibly. They had been over
+this ground before. "No, there's no use in thinking of that! Even if it
+were not for Aunt Alice, and Aunt Marianna, other things make it
+impossible. You see that, Chris? Yes, I know!"--she interrupted herself
+quickly, as Chris protested, "I know what plenty of good people, and the
+law, and society generally think. But of course it would mean that we
+could not live here for awhile, anyway! No--that's not thinkable!"
+
+"No, that's not thinkable," he agreed, slowly; "I am bound hand and
+foot. It isn't only what Alice--as a wife--claims from me. But there are
+Acton and Leslie; there is hardly a month that my brother doesn't
+propose some plan that would utterly wreck their affairs if I didn't put
+my foot down. They're both absolute children in money matters; Judge Lee
+is getting old--there's no one to take my place. Your Aunt Marianna,
+too; I've always managed everything for her. No; I'm tied."
+
+His voice fell. For awhile they sat silent, in the lingering, cool
+spring twilight, while the red glow faded slowly from the river, and
+from the opposite banks where houses and roofs showed between the bare
+trees.
+
+"But what can we do, Norma? I've tried--I've tried a thousand times, to
+see the future, without you. But I simply can't go on living on those
+terms. There's nothing--nothing--nothing! I go to the piano, and before
+I touch a note, the utter blank futility of it comes over me and sickens
+me! It's the same in the office, and at the club; I seem to be only half
+alive. If it could be even five years ahead--or ten years ahead--I would
+wait. But it's never--never. No hope--nothing to live for! Life is
+simply over--only one doesn't die."
+
+The girl had never heard quite this note of despair from him before, and
+her heart sank.
+
+"You are young," he said, after a minute, and in a lighter tone, "and
+perhaps--some day----"
+
+"No, don't believe that, Chris," Norma said, quietly. And with a gesture
+full of pain she leaned her elbow on the table, and pressed her hand
+across her eyes. "There will never be anybody else!" she said. "How
+could there be? You are the only person--like yourself!--that I have
+ever known!"
+
+The simplicity of her words, almost their childishness, made Chris's
+eyes smart. He bit his lips, trying to smile.
+
+"It's too bad, isn't it?" he said, whimsically.
+
+Norma flung back her head, swallowing tears. She gathered gloves and
+hand-bag, got to her feet. He followed her as she walked across the
+darkening porch. They went down to the curving sweep of driveway where
+the car waited, the big lighted eyes of other cars picking it out in the
+gloom. The saturated ground gave under Norma's feet, the air was soft
+and full of the odorous promise of blossom and leaf. A great star was
+trembling in the opal sky, which still palpitated, toward the horizon,
+with the pale pink and blue of the sunset. Dry branches clicked above
+their heads, in a sudden soft puff of breeze.
+
+Norma, as she tucked herself in beside Chris, felt emotionally
+exhausted, felt a sudden desperate need for solitude and silence. The
+world seemed a lonely and cruel place.
+
+Almost without a word he drove her home, to the old Melrose house, and
+came in with her to the long, dim drawing-room for a brief good-night.
+He had not kissed her more than two or three times since the memorable
+night of the dress rehearsal, but he kissed her to-night, and Norma felt
+something solemn, something renunciatory, in the kiss.
+
+They had but an unsatisfactory two or three minutes together; Mrs.
+Melrose might descend upon them at any second, was indeed audible in the
+hall when Chris said suddenly:
+
+"You are not as brave--as your mother, Norma!"
+
+She met his eyes with something like terror in her own; standing still,
+a few feet away from him, with her breath coming and going stormily.
+
+"No," she said in a sharp whisper. "Not _that_!"
+
+A moment later she was flying upstairs, her blue eyes still dilated with
+fright, her face pale, and her senses rocking. Unseeing, unhearing, she
+reached her own room, paced it distractedly, moving between desk and
+dressing-table, window and bed, like some bewildered animal. Sometimes
+she put her two hands over her face, the spread fingers pressed against
+her forehead. Sometimes she stood perfectly still, arms hanging at her
+sides, eyes blankly staring ahead. Once she dropped on her knees beside
+the bed, and buried her burning cheeks against the delicate linen and
+embroideries.
+
+Regina came in; Norma made a desperate attempt to control herself. She
+saw a gown laid on the bed, heard bath water running, faced her own
+haggard self in the mirror, as she began dressing. But when the maid was
+gone, and Norma, somewhat pale, but quite self-possessed again, was
+dressed for dinner, she lifted from its place on her book-shelf a little
+picture of Chris and herself, taken the summer before, and studied it
+with sorrowful eyes.
+
+He had been teaching her to ride, and Norma was radiant and sun-browned
+in her riding-trousers and skirted coat, her cloud of hair loosened, and
+her smart little hat in one hand. Chris, like all well-built men, was
+always at his best in sports clothes; the head of his favourite mare
+looked mildly over his shoulder. Behind the group stretched the
+exquisite reaches of bridle-path, the great trees heavy with summer
+foliage and heat.
+
+Norma touched her lips to the glass.
+
+"Chris--Chris--Chris!" she said, half aloud. "I love you so--and I have
+brought you, of all men, to this! To the point when you would throw it
+all aside--everything your wonderful and generous life has stood
+for--for me! God," said Norma, softly, putting the picture down, and
+covering her face with her hands, "don't let me do anything that will
+hurt him and shame him; help me! Help us both!"
+
+A few minutes later she went down to dinner, which commenced
+auspiciously, with the old lady in a gracious and expansive mood, and
+her guests, old Judge Lee and his wife, and old Doctor and Mrs. Turner,
+sufficiently intimate, and sufficiently reminiscent, to absolve Norma
+from any conversational duty. The girl could follow her own line of
+heroic and resolute thought uninterruptedly.
+
+But with the salad came utter rout again, and Norma's colour, and heart,
+and breath, began to fluctuate in a renewed agony of hope and fear. It
+was only Joseph, leaning deferentially over Judge Lee's shoulder, who
+said softly:
+
+"Mr. Christopher Liggett, Judge. He has telephoned that he would like to
+see you for a moment after dinner, and will be here at about nine
+o'clock."
+
+The dinner went on, for Norma, in a daze. At a quarter to nine she went
+upstairs; she was standing in the dark upper hallway at the window when
+Chris came, saw him leave his car, and come quickly across the sidewalk
+under the bare, moving boughs of the old maples. She was trembling with
+the longing just to speak to him again, just to hear his voice.
+
+She went to her room, rang for Regina, meditating a message of
+good-night that should include a headache as excuse. But before the maid
+came she went quickly downstairs, and into his presence, as
+instinctively as a drowning man might cling to anything that meant
+air--just the essential air. They could not exchange a word alone, but
+that was not important. The one necessity was to be together.
+
+Before ten o'clock Norma went back to her room. She undressed, and put
+on a loose warm robe, and seated herself before the old-fashioned
+fireplace. When Regina came, she asked the girl to put out all the
+lights.
+
+Voices floated up from the front hall: the great entrance door closed,
+the motors wheeled away. The guests were gone--Chris was gone. Norma
+heard old Mrs. Melrose come upstairs, heard her door shut, then there
+was silence.
+
+Silence. Eleven struck from Madison Tower; midnight struck. Even the
+streets were quieter now. The squares of moonlight shifted on Norma's
+floor, went away. The fire died down, the big room was warm, and dim,
+and very still.
+
+Hugged in her warm wrap, curled into her big chair, the girl sat like
+some tranced creature, thinking--thinking--thinking.
+
+At first her thoughts were of terror and shame. In what fool's paradise
+had she been drifting, she asked herself contemptuously, that she and
+Chris, reasonable, right-thinking man and woman, could be reduced to
+this fearful and wretched position, could even consider--even name--what
+their sane senses must shrink from in utter horror! Norma was but
+twenty-two, but she knew that there was only one end to that road.
+
+So that way was closed, even to the brimming tide that rose up in her
+when she thought of it, and flooded her whole being with the ecstatic
+realization of her love for Chris, and of what surrender to him would
+mean.
+
+That way was closed. She must tell herself over and over. For her own
+sake, for the sake of Aunt Kate and Aunt Marianna, for Rose even, she
+must not think of that. Above all, for his sake--for Chris, the fine,
+good, self-sacrificing Chris of her first friendship, she must be
+strong.
+
+And Norma, at this point in her circling and confused thoughts, would
+drop her face in the crook of her bent arm, and the tears would brim
+over again and again. She was not strong. She could not be strong. And
+she was afraid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Regina, coming through the hallway at seven o'clock, was amazed to
+encounter Miss Sheridan, evidently fresh from a bath, a black hat tipped
+over her smiling eyes, and her big fur coat belted about her. Norma's
+vigil had lasted until after two o'clock, but then she had had four
+hours of restful sleep, for she knew that she had found the way.
+
+She left a message with Regina for Mrs. Melrose; she was going to Mrs.
+Sheridan's, and would telephone in a day or two. Smiling, she slipped
+out into the quiet street, where the autumn sunlight was just beginning
+to strike across the damp pavements, and smilingly she disappeared into
+the great currents of men and women who were already pouring to and fro
+along the main thoroughfares.
+
+But she did not go quite as far as her aunt's, after all. For perhaps
+fifteen minutes she waited on the corner of the block, walking slowly to
+and fro, watching the house closely.
+
+Then Wolf Sheridan came out, and set off at his usual brisk walk toward
+the subway. Norma stepped before him, trembling and smiling.
+
+"Nono--for the Lord's sake! Where did you come from?"
+
+He took her suit-case from her as she caught his arm, drew him aside,
+and looked up at him with her old childish air of coaxing.
+
+"Wolf----! I've been waiting for you. Wolf, I'm in trouble!" She laughed
+at his concern. "Not real trouble!" she reassured him, quickly.
+"But--but----"
+
+And suddenly tears came, and she found she could not go on.
+
+"Is it a man?" Wolf asked, looking down at her with everything that was
+brotherly and kind in his young face.
+
+"Yes," Norma answered, not raising her eyes from the overcoat button
+that she was pushing in and out of its hold. "Wolf," she added, quickly,
+"I'm afraid of him, and afraid of myself! You--you told me months
+ago----" She looked up, suffocating.
+
+"I know what I told you!" Wolf said, clearing his throat.
+
+"And--do you still feel--that way?"
+
+"You know I do, Norma," Wolf said, more concerned for her emotion than
+his own. "Do you--do you want me to send this--this fellow about his
+business?"
+
+"Oh, no!" she said, laughing nervously. "I don't want any one to know
+it; nobody must dream it! I can't marry him, I shall never marry him.
+But--he won't let me alone. Wolf----" She seemed to herself to be
+getting no nearer her point, and now she seized her courage in both
+hands, and looked up at him bravely. "Will you--take care of me?" she
+faltered. "I mean--I mean as your wife?"
+
+"Do you mean----" Wolf began. Then his expression changed, and his
+colour rose. "Norma--you don't mean that!"
+
+"Yes, but I do!" she said, exquisite and flushed and laughing, in the
+sweet early sunlight.
+
+"You mean that you will marry me?" Wolf asked, dazedly.
+
+"To-day!" she answered, fired by his look of awe and amazement and
+rapture all combined. "I want to be safe," she added, quickly. "I trust
+you more than any other man I know--I've loved you like a little sister
+all my life."
+
+"Ah--Norma, you darling--you darling!" he said. "But are you sure?"
+
+"Oh, quite sure!" Norma turned him toward Broadway, her little arm
+linked wife-fashion in his. "Don't we go along together nicely?" she
+asked, gaily.
+
+"Norma--my God! If you knew how I love you--how I've longed for you! But
+I can't believe it; I never will believe it! What made you do it?"
+
+Her face sobered for a second.
+
+"Just needing you, I suppose! Wolf"--her colour rose--"I want you to
+know who it is; it's Chris."
+
+"Who--the man who annoys you?" Wolf asked in healthy distaste.
+
+"The man I'm afraid of," she answered, honestly.
+
+"But--Lord!" Wolf exclaimed, simply, "he has a wife!"
+
+"I know it!" the girl said, quickly. "But I wanted you to know. I want
+you to know why I'm running away from them all." Relief rang in her
+voice as his delighted eyes showed no cloud. "That's all!" she said.
+
+"Norma, I can't--my God!--I can't tell whether I'm awake or dreaming!"
+Wolf was all joy again. "We'll--wait a minute!--we'll get a taxi; I'll
+telephone the factory later----" He paused suddenly. "Mother's in East
+Orange with Rose. Shall we go there first?"
+
+"No; you're to do as I say from now on, Wolf!"
+
+"Ah, you darling!"
+
+"And I say let's be married first, and then go and see Rose."
+
+"Norma----" He stopped in the street, and put his two hands on her
+shoulders. "I'll be a good husband to you. You'll never be sorry you
+trusted me. Dearest, it's--well, it's the most wonderful thing that ever
+happened in my whole life! Here's our taxi--wait a minute; what day is
+this?"
+
+"Whatever else it is," she said, half-laughing and half-crying, "I know
+it is my wedding day!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+To Rose and her mother, Wolf's and Norma's marriage remained one of the
+beautiful surprises of life; one of the things that, as sane mortals,
+they had dared neither to dream nor hope. Life had been full enough for
+mother and daughter, and sweet enough, that March morning, even without
+the miracle. The baby had been bathed, in a flood of dancing sunshine,
+and had had his breakfast out under the budding bare network of the
+grape arbour. The little house had been put into spotless order while he
+slept, and Rose had pinned on her winter hat, and gone gaily to market,
+with exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents in her purse. And she had
+come back to find her mother standing beside the shabby baby-coach, in
+the tiny backyard, looking down thoughtfully at the sleeping child, and
+evidently under the impression that she was peeling the apples, in the
+yellow bowl that rested on her broad hip. Rose had also studied her son
+for a few awed seconds, and then, reminding her mother that it was past
+twelve o'clock, had led the way toward tea-making, and the general
+heating and toasting and mincing of odds and ends for luncheon. And they
+had been in the kitchen, talking over the last scraps of this meal,
+when----
+
+When there had been laughter and voices at the open front doorway, and
+when Mrs. Sheridan's startled "Wolf!" had been followed by Rose's
+surprised "Norma!" Then they had come in, Wolf and Norma, laughing and
+excited and bubbling with their great news. And in joy and tears,
+confused interruptions and exclamations, explanations that got nowhere,
+and a plentiful distribution of kisses, somehow it got itself told. They
+had been married an hour ago--Norma was Wolf's wife!
+
+The girl was radiant. Never in her life had these three who loved her
+seen her so beautiful, so enchantingly confident and gay. Rose and her
+mother had some little trouble, later on, in patching the sequence of
+events together for the delighted but bewildered Harry, Rose's husband.
+But there could be no doubt, even to the shrewd eyes of her Aunt Kate,
+that Norma was ecstatically happy. Her mad kisses for Rose, the laughter
+with which she described the expedition to bank and jeweller, the
+license bureau and the church in Jersey City--for in order to have the
+ceremony performed immediately it had been necessary to be married in
+New Jersey--her delicious boldness toward the awed and rapturous and
+almost stupefied Wolf, were all proof that she entertained not even the
+usual girlish misgivings of the wedding day.
+
+"You see, I've not been all tired out with trousseau and engagement
+affairs and photographers and milliners and all that," she explained,
+gaily. "I've only got what's in my bag there, but I've wired Aunt
+Marianna, and told her to tell them all. And we'll be back on
+Monday--wait until I ask my husband; Wolftone, dear, shall we be back on
+Monday?"
+
+She had the baby in her lap; they were all in the dining-room. Rose had
+been assured that the bride and groom were not hungry; they had had
+sandwiches somewhere--some time--oh, down near the City Hall in Jersey
+City. But Rose had made more tea, and more toast, and she had opened her
+own best plum jam, and they were all eating with the heartiness of
+children. Presently Norma went to get in Aunt Kate's lap, and asked her
+if she was glad, and made herself so generally engaging and endearing,
+with her slender little body clasped in the big motherly arms and her
+soft face resting against the older, weather-beaten face, that Wolf did
+not dare to look at her.
+
+They were going to Atlantic City; neither had ever been there, and if
+this warm weather lasted it would be lovely, even in early spring. It
+was almost four o'clock when the younger women went upstairs for the
+freshening touches that Norma declared she needed, and then Wolf and his
+mother were left alone.
+
+He knelt down beside the big rocker in which she was ensconced with the
+baby, and she put one arm about him, and kissed the big thick crest of
+his brown hair.
+
+"You're glad, aren't you, Mother?"
+
+"Glad! I've prayed for it ever since she came to me, years ago," Mrs.
+Sheridan answered. But after a moment she added, gravely: "She's pure
+gold, our Norma. They've sickened her, just as I knew they would! But,
+Wolf, she may swing back for a little while. She's like that; she always
+has been. She was no more than a baby when she'd be as naughty as she
+could be, and then so good that I was afraid I was going to lose her. Go
+gently with her, Wolf; be patient with her, dear. She's going to make a
+magnificent woman, some day."
+
+"She's a magnificent woman, now," the man said, simply. "She's too good
+for me, I know that. She's--you can't think how cunning she is--how
+wonderful she's been, all day!"
+
+"Go slowly," his mother said again. "She's only a baby, Wolf; she's
+excited and romantic and generous because she's such a baby! Don't make
+her sorry that she's given herself to you so--so trusting----"
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"I'll take care of her!" Wolf asserted, a little gruffly.
+
+There was time for no more; they heard her step on the stairs, and she
+came dancing back with Rose. Her cheeks were burning with excitement;
+she gave her aunt and cousin quick good-bye kisses, and caught the
+baby's soft little cheek to her own velvety one. She and Wolf would be
+back on Sunday night, they promised; as they ran down the path the sun
+slipped behind a leaden cloud, and all the world darkened suddenly. A
+brisk whirl of springtime wind shook the rose bushes in Rose's little
+garden, and there was a cool rushing in the air that promised rain.
+
+But Norma was still carried along on the high tide of supreme emotion,
+and to Wolf the day was radiant with unearthly sunshine, and perfumed
+with all the flowers of spring. The girl had flung herself so
+wholeheartedly into her role that it was not enough to bewilder and
+please Wolf, she must make him utterly happy. Dear old Wolf--always
+ready to protect her, always good and big and affectionate, and ready to
+laugh at her silliest jokes, and ready to meet any of her problems
+sympathetically and generously. Her beauty, her irresistible charm as
+she hung on his arm and chattered of what they would do when they
+started housekeeping, almost dizzied him.
+
+She liked everything: their wheeling deep upholstered seats in the
+train; the seaside hotel, with the sea rolling so near in the soft
+twilight; the dinner for which they found themselves so hungry.
+Afterward they climbed laughing into a big chair, and were pushed along
+between the moving lines of other chairs, far up the long boardwalk. And
+Norma, with her soft loose glove in Wolf's big hand, leaned back against
+the curved wicker seat, and looked at the little lighted shops, and
+listened to the scrape of feet and chatter of tongues and the solemn
+roll and crash of the waves, and stared up childishly at the arch of
+stars that looked so far and calm above this petty noise and glare. She
+was very tired, every muscle in her body ached, but she was content.
+Wolf was taking care of her and there would be no more lonely vigils and
+agonies of indecision and pain. She thought of Christopher with a sort
+of childish quiet triumph; she had solved the whole matter for them
+both, superbly.
+
+Wolf was a silent man with persons he did not know. But he never was
+silent with Norma; he always had a thousand things to discuss with her.
+The lights and the stir on the boardwalk inspired him to all sorts of
+good-natured criticism and speculation, and they estimated just the
+expense and waste that went on there day by day.
+
+"Really to have the ocean, Wolf, it would be so much nicer to be even in
+the wildest place--just rocks and coves. This is like having a lion in
+your front parlour!"
+
+"Lord, Norma--when I got up this morning, if somebody had told me that I
+would be married, and down at Atlantic City to-night----!"
+
+"I know; it's like a dream!"
+
+"But you're not sorry, Norma; you're sure that I'm going to make you
+happy?" the man asked, in sudden anxiety.
+
+"You always _have_, Wolf!" she answered, very simply.
+
+He never really doubted it; it was a part of Wolf's healthy normal
+nature to believe what was good and loving. He was not exacting, not
+envious; he had no real understanding of her giddy old desires for
+wealth and social power. Wolf at twenty-five was working so hard and so
+interestedly, sleeping so deeply, eating his meals with such appetite,
+and enjoying his rare idle time so heartily, that he had neither time
+nor inclination for vagaries. He had always been older than his years,
+schooled to feel that just good meals and a sure roof above him marked
+him as one of the fortunate ones of the earth, and of late his work in
+the big factory had been responsible enough, absorbing enough, and more
+than gratifying enough to satisfy him with his prospects. He was liked
+for himself, and he knew it, and he was already known for that strange
+one-sightedness, that odd little twist of mechanical vision, that sure
+knowledge of himself and his medium, that is genius. The joy of finding
+himself, and that the world needed him, had been strong upon Wolf during
+the last few months, and that Norma had come back to him seemed only a
+reason for fresh dedication to his work, an augury that life was going
+to be kind to him.
+
+She was gone when he wakened the next morning, but he knew that the sea
+had an irresistible fascination for her, and followed her quite as
+surely as if she had left footprints on the clear and empty sands. He
+found her with her back propped against a low wooden bulkhead, her
+slender ankles crossed before her, her blue eyes fixed far out at sea.
+
+She turned, and looked up at him from under the brim of her hat, and the
+man's heart turned almost sick with the depth of sudden adoration that
+shook him; so young, so friendly and simple and trusting was the ready
+smile, so infinitely endearing the touch of the warm fingers she slipped
+into his! He sat down beside her, and they dug their heels into the
+sand, and talked in low tones. The sun shone down on them kindly, and
+the waves curved and broke, and came rushing and slithering to their
+feet, and slid churning and foaming noisily under the pier near by.
+Norma buried her husband's big hand in sand, and sifted sand through her
+slender fingers; sometimes she looked with her far-away look far out
+across the gently rocking ocean, and sometimes she brought her blue eyes
+gravely to his. And the new seriousness in them, the grave and noble
+sweetness that he read there, made Wolf suddenly feel himself no longer
+a boy, no longer free, but bound for ever to this exquisite and
+bewildering child who was a woman, or woman who was a child, sacredly
+bound to give her the best that there was in him of love and service and
+protection.
+
+She showed him a new Norma, here on the sunshiny sands, one that he was
+to know better as the days went by. She had always deferred to his
+wisdom and his understanding, but she seemed to him mysteriously wise
+this morning--no longer the old little sister Norma, but a new, sage,
+keen-eyed woman, toward whom his whole being was flooded with humility
+and awe and utter, speechless adoration.
+
+At nine o'clock, when nurses and children began to come down to the
+shore, they got to their feet, and wandered in to breakfast. And here,
+to his delight, she was suddenly the old mad-cap Norma again, healthily
+eager for ham and eggs and hot coffee, interested in everything, and
+bewitchingly pretty in whatever position she took.
+
+"I wish we had the old 'bus, Nono," Wolf said. He usually spoke of his
+motor-car by this name. "They've been overhauling her in that Newark
+place. She was to be ready--by George, she was ready yesterday!"
+
+"We'll go over--I'll come over and meet you next Saturday," his young
+wife promised, busy with rolls and marmalade, "and you'll take me to
+lunch, and then we'll get the car, and go and take Rose and the baby for
+a ride!"
+
+"Norma," the man exclaimed, suddenly struck with a sense of utter
+felicity, and leaning across the table to stop, for the minute, her
+moving fingers with the pressure of his own, "you haven't any idea how
+much I love you--I didn't know myself what it was going to mean! To have
+you come over to the factory, and to have somebody say that Mrs.
+Sheridan is there, and to go to lunch--Dearest, do you realize how
+wonderful and how--well, how _wonderful_ it's going to be? Norma, I
+can't believe it. I can't believe that this is what love means to
+everybody. I can't believe that every man who marries his--his----"
+
+"Girl," she supplied, laughing.
+
+"Girl--but I didn't mean girl. I meant his ideal--the loveliest person
+he ever knew," Wolf said, with a new quickness of tongue that she knew
+was born of happiness. "I can't believe that just going to Childs'
+restaurants, or taking the car out on Sunday, or any other fool thing
+we do, means to any man what it's going to mean to me! I just--well, I
+told you that. I just can't believe it!"
+
+Two days later they came home for Sunday supper, and there was much
+simple joy and laughter in the little city apartment. Aunt Kate of
+course had fried chicken and coffee ice-cream for her four big children.
+Harry Junior, awakening, was brought dewy and blinking to the table,
+where his Aunt Norma kissed the tears from his warm, round little
+cheeks, and gave him crumbs of sponge cake. Rose and Harry left at ten
+o'clock for their country home, leaving the precious baby for his
+grandmother and aunt to bring back the next day, but the other three sat
+talking and planning until almost midnight, and Kate could feast her
+eyes to her heart's content upon the picture of Wolf in his father's old
+leather chair, with Norma perched on the wide arm, one of her own arms
+about her husband's neck and their fingers locked together.
+
+It was settled that they were to find a little house in East Orange,
+near Rose, and furnish it from top to bottom, and go to housekeeping
+immediately. Meanwhile, Norma must see the Melroses, and get her wedding
+announcements engraved, and order some new calling cards, and do a
+thousand things. She and Wolf must spend their evenings writing
+notes--and presents would be arriving----!
+
+She made infinitesimal lists, and put them into her shopping bag, or
+stuck them in her mirror, but Wolf laughed at them all. And instead of
+disposing of them, they developed a demoralizing habit of wandering out
+into Broadway, in their old fashion, after dinner, looking into shop
+windows, drifting into little theatres, talking to beggars and taxi-cab
+men and policemen and strangers generally, mingling with the bubbling
+young life of the city that overflowed the sidewalks, and surged in and
+out of candy and drug stores, and sat talking on park benches deep into
+the soft young summer nights.
+
+Sometimes they went down to the shrill and crowded streets of the lower
+east side, and philosophized youthfully over what they saw there; and,
+as the nights grew heavier and warmer, they often took the car, and
+skimmed out into the heavenly green open spaces of the park, or, on
+Saturday afternoon, packed their supper, and carried it fifty miles away
+to the woods or the shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Before she had been married ten days Norma dutifully went to call upon
+old Mrs. Melrose, being fortunate enough to find Leslie there. The old
+lady came toward Norma with her soft old wavering footsteps, and gave
+the girl a warm kiss even with her initial rebuke:
+
+"Well, I don't know whether I am speaking to this bad runaway or not!"
+she quavered, releasing Norma from her bejewelled and lace-draped
+embrace, and shaking her fluffed and scanty gray hair.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are, Aunt Marianna," the girl said, confidently, with her
+happy laugh. Leslie, coming more slowly forward, laughed and kissed her,
+too.
+
+"But why didn't you tell us, Norma, and have a regular wedding, like
+mine?" she protested. "I didn't know that you and your cousin were even
+engaged!"
+
+"We've worked it out that we were engaged for exactly three hours and
+ten minutes," Norma said, as they all settled down in the magnificent,
+ugly, comfortable old sitting-room for tea. She could see that both
+Leslie and her grandmother were far from displeased. As a matter of
+fact, the old lady was secretly delighted. The girl was most suitably
+and happily and satisfactorily married; justice had been done her, and
+she had solved her own problem splendidly.
+
+"But you knew he liked you," Leslie ventured, diverted and curious.
+
+"Oh, well----" Norma's lips puckered mischievously and she looked down.
+
+"Oh, you _were_ engaged!" Leslie said, incredulously. "He's handsome,
+isn't he, Norma?"
+
+"Yes," the wife admitted, as if casually. "He really is--at least I
+think so. And I think everyone else thinks so. At least, when I compare
+him to the other men--for instance----"
+
+"Oh, Norma, I'll bet you're crazy about him," Leslie said, derisively.
+
+Norma looked appealingly at the old lady, her eyes dancing with fun.
+
+"Well, of _course_ she loves her husband," Mrs. Melrose protested, with
+a little cushiony pat of her hand for the visitor.
+
+"I don't see that it's 'of course'," Leslie argued, airily, with a
+little bitterness in her tone. Her grandmother looked at her in quick
+reproof and anxiety. "The latest," she said, drily, to Norma, "is that
+my delightful husband is living at his club."
+
+"Now, Leslie, that is very naughty," the old lady said, warmly. "You
+shouldn't talk so of Acton."
+
+"Well," Leslie countered, with elaborate innocence, turning to Norma,
+"all I can say is that he walked out one night, and didn't come back
+until the next! Of course," she added, with a suppressed yawn that
+poorly concealed her sudden inclination to tears, "of course _I_ don't
+care. Patsy and I are going up to Glen Cove next week--and he can live
+at his club, for all me!"
+
+"Money?" Norma asked. For Leslie's extravagance was usually the cause of
+the young Liggetts' domestic strife.
+
+Leslie, who had lighted a cigarette, made an affirmative grimace.
+
+"Now, it's all been settled, and Grandma has straightened it all out,"
+old Mrs. Melrose said, soothingly. "Acton was making out their income
+tax," she explained, "and some money was mentioned--how was that,
+dear?--Leslie had sold something--and he hadn't known of it, that was
+all! Of course he was a little cross, poor boy; he had worked it all out
+one way, and he had no idea that this extra--sixteen thousand, was
+it?--had come in at all, and been spent----"
+
+"Most of it for bills!" Leslie interpolated, bitterly. Norma laughed.
+
+"Sixteen thou----! Oh, heavens, my husband's salary is sixty dollars a
+week!" she confessed, gaily.
+
+"But you have your own money," the old lady reminded her, kindly, "and a
+very nice thing for a wife, too! I've talked to Judge Lee about it,
+dear, and it's all arranged. You must let me do this, Norma----"
+
+"I think you're awfully good to me, Aunt Marianna," Norma said,
+thoughtfully. "I told Wolf about it, and he thinks so, too. But
+honestly----"
+
+Even with her secret knowledge of her own parentage, Norma was surprised
+at the fluttered anxiety of the old lady, and Leslie was frankly
+puzzled.
+
+"No, Norma--no, Norma," Mrs. Melrose said, nervously and imploringly. "I
+don't want you to discuss that at all--it's _settled_. The check is to
+be deposited every month, or quarter, or whatever it was----"
+
+"Don't be a fool, Norma, you'll need it, one way or another," Leslie
+assured her. But in her own heart Leslie wondered at her grandmother's
+generosity.
+
+"Everybody needs more money. I'll bet you the King of England----"
+
+"Oh, kings!" Norma laughed. "They're the worst of all. I don't know
+about this one, but they're always appealing for special funds--all of
+them. And that's one thing that makes Wolf so mad--the fact that all
+they have to do, for ridiculous extravagances, is clap on a tax."
+
+But Leslie and her grandmother were not interested in the young
+engineer's economic theories. The old lady followed Norma's spirited
+summary merely with an uneasy: "You mustn't let your husband get any
+socialistic ideas, Norma; there's too much of that now!" and Leslie,
+after a close study of Norma's glowing face, remarked suddenly:
+
+"Norma, I'll bet you a _dollar_ you're rouged!"
+
+Before she left, the visitor managed a casual inquiry about Aunt Alice.
+
+Aunt Alice was fine, Leslie answered carelessly, adding immediately that
+no, Aunt Alice really wasn't extremely well. Doctor Garrett didn't want
+her to go away this summer, thought that move was an unnecessary waste
+of energy, since Aunt Alice's house was so cool, and she felt the heat
+so little. And Chris said that Alice had always really wanted to stay in
+town, in her own comfortable suite. She liked her second nurse
+immensely, and Miss Slater was really running the house now, the third
+nurse coming only at night.
+
+"But Aunt Alice never had a nurse at night," Norma was going to say. But
+she caught the stricken and apprehensive look on the old lady's face,
+and substituted generously: "Well, I remember Aunt Alice told me she had
+one of these wretched times several years ago."
+
+"Yes, indeed she did--frightened us almost to death," Mrs. Melrose
+agreed, thankfully.
+
+"And how is--how is Chris?" Norma felt proud of the natural tone in
+which she could ask the question.
+
+"Chris is fine," Leslie answered. She rarely varied the phrase in this
+relation. "He's hunting in Canada. He had a wire from some man there,
+and he went off about a week ago. They're going after moose, I believe;
+Chris didn't expect to get back for a month. Aunt Alice was delighted,
+because she hates to keep him in town all summer, but Acton told me that
+he thought Chris was sick--that he and Judge Lee just made him go."
+
+Well, her heart would flutter, she could not stop it or ignore it. Norma
+found no answer ready, and though she lifted her cup to her lips, to
+hide her confusion, she could not taste it. The strangeness of Chris's
+sudden departure was no mystery to her; he had been shocked and stunned
+by her marriage, and he had run away from the eyes that might have
+pierced his discomfiture.
+
+Still, her hands were trembling, and she felt oddly shaken and confused.
+Leslie carried the conversation away to safer fields, and shortly
+afterward Norma could say her good-byes. Everybody, Leslie said, walking
+with her to the corner, wanted to know what the bride wanted for a
+wedding-present. Norma told Wolf, over their candle-lighted supper
+table, an hour or two later, that he and she would be bankrupted for
+life returning them.
+
+Yet she loved the excitement of receiving the gifts; naturally enough,
+loved Rose's ecstasies over the rugs and silver and mahogany that made
+the little New Jersey house a jewel among its kind. It was what Norma
+had unhesitatingly pronounced an "adorable" house, a copy of the true
+colonial green-and-white, quaint and prim enough to please even Leslie,
+when Leslie duly came to call. It stood at the end of a tree-shaded
+street, with the rising woods behind it, and Norma recklessly invested
+in brick walks and a latticed green fence, hydrangeas in wooden tubs and
+sunflowers and hollyhocks, until her stretch of side garden looked like
+a picture by Kate Greenaway.
+
+When it was all done, midsummer was upon them, but she and Wolf thought
+that there had never been anything so complete and so charming in all
+the world. The striped awnings that threw clean shadows upon the clipped
+grass; the tea table under the blue-green leaves of an old apple tree;
+the glass doors that opened upon orderly, white-wainscoted rooms full of
+shining dark surfaces and flowered chintzes and gleaming glass bowls of
+real flowers; the smallness and completeness and prettiness of
+everything filled them both with utter satisfaction.
+
+Norma played at housekeeping like a little girl in a doll's house. She
+had a rosy little Finnish maid who enjoyed it all almost as much as she
+did, and their adventures in hospitality were a constant amusement and
+delight. On Saturdays, when Rose and Harry and Aunt Kate usually
+arrived, Wolf could hardly believe that all this ideal beauty and
+pleasure was his to share.
+
+The girls would pose and photograph the baby tirelessly, laughing as he
+toppled and protested, and kissing the fat legs that showed between his
+pink romper and his pink socks. They would pack picnic lunches, rushing
+to and fro breathlessly with thermos bottles and extra wraps for Miggs,
+as Harry Junior was usually called. Once or twice they cleaned the car,
+with tremendous splashing and spattering, assuming Wolf's old overalls
+for the operation, and retreating with shrieks into the kitchen whenever
+the sound of an approaching motor-car penetrated into their quiet road.
+Mrs. Sheridan characterized them variously as "Wild Indians", "Ay-rabs",
+and "poor innocents" but her heart was so filled with joy and gratitude
+for the turn of events that had brought all these miracles about, that
+no nonsense and no noise seemed to her really extravagant.
+
+It was an exceptionally pleasant community into which the young
+Sheridans had chanced to move, and they might have had much more
+neighbourly life than they chose to take. There were about them
+beginners of all sorts: writers and artists and newspaper men, whose
+little cars, and little maids, and great ambitions would have formed a
+strong bond of sympathy in time. But Wolf and Norma saw them only
+occasionally, when a Sunday supper at the country club or a
+Saturday-night dance supplied them with a pleasant stimulating sense of
+being liked and welcomed, or when general greetings on the eight-o'clock
+train in the morning were mingled with comments on the thunderstorm or
+the epidemic of nursery chicken-pox.
+
+When Rose and Harry were gone, on Sunday evenings, Wolf and Norma might
+sit on the side steps of the side porch, looking off across the gradual
+drop descent of tree-tops and shingled roofs, into a distant world
+silvering under the summer moon. These were their happiest times, when
+solitude and quiet spread about them, after the hospitable excitements
+of the day, and they could talk and dream and plan for the years ahead.
+
+She was an older Norma now, even though marriage had not touched her
+with any real responsibility, and even though she was more full of
+delicious childish absurdities than ever. The first months of their
+marriage had curiously reversed their relationship, and it was Norma now
+who gave, and Wolf who humbly and gratefully accepted. It was Norma who
+poured comfort and beauty and companionship into his life, who smiled at
+him over his morning fruit, and who waited for him under the old maple
+at the turn of the road, every night. And as her wonderful and touching
+generosity enveloped him, and her strange wisdom and new sweetness
+impressed him more and more, Wolf marvelled and adored her more utterly.
+He had always loved her as a big brother, had even experienced a
+definite heartache when she grew up and went away, a lovely and
+unattainable girl in the place where their old giddy dear little Norma
+had been.
+
+But now his passion for his young wife was becoming a devouring fire in
+Wolf's heart; she absorbed him and possessed him like a madness. A dozen
+times a day he would take from his pocket-book the thin leather case she
+had given him, holding on one side a photograph of the three heads of
+Rose, his mother, and the baby, and on the other an enchanting shadow of
+the loosened soft hair and the serious profile that was Norma.
+
+And as he stood looking at it, with the machinery roaring about him, and
+the sunlight beating in through steel-barred windows sixty feet high, in
+all the confusion of shavings and oil-soaked wood, polished sliding
+shafts streaked with thick blue grease, stifling odours of creosote and
+oily "wipes", Wolf's eyes would fill with tears and he would shake his
+head at his own emotion, and try to laugh it away.
+
+After awhile he took another little picture of her, this one taken under
+a taut parasol in bright sunlight, and fitted it over the opposite
+faces; and then when he had studied one picture he could turn to the
+other, and perhaps go back to the first before his eyes were satisfied.
+
+And if during the day some thought brought her suddenly to mind, he
+would stop short in whatever he was doing, and remember her little timid
+upglancing look as she hazarded, at breakfast, some question about his
+work, or remember her enthusiasm, on a country tramp, for the chance
+meal at some wayside restaurant, and sheer love of her would overwhelm
+him, and he would find his eyes brimming again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+So the summer fled, and before she fairly realized it Norma saw the
+leaves colouring behind the little house like a wall of fire, and
+rustled them with her feet when she tramped with Wolf's big collie into
+the woods. The air grew clearer and thinner, sunset came too soon, and a
+delicate beading of dew loitered on the shady side of the house until
+almost noon.
+
+One October day, when she had been six months a wife, Norma made her
+first call upon Annie von Behrens. Alice she had seen several times,
+when she had stopped in, late in the summer mornings, to entertain the
+invalid with her first adventures in housekeeping, and chat with Miss
+Slater. But Chris she had quite deliberately avoided. He had written her
+from Canada a brief and charming note, which she had shown Wolf, and he
+and Alice had had their share in the general family gift of silver, the
+crates and bags and boxes of spoons and bowls and teapots that had
+anticipated every possible table need of the Sheridans for generations
+to come. But that was all; she had not seen Chris, and did not want to
+see him.
+
+"The whole thing is rather like a sickness, in my mind," she told Wolf,
+"and I don't want to see him any more than you would a doctor or a nurse
+that was associated with illness. I don't know what we--what I was
+thinking about!"
+
+"But you think he really--loved you--Nono?"
+
+"Well--or he thought he did!"
+
+"And did you like him terribly?"
+
+"I think I thought I did, too. It was--of course it was something we
+couldn't very well discuss----."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry for him." Wolf had dismissed him easily. On her part,
+Norma was conscious of no particular emotion when she thought of Chris.
+The suddenness and violence with which she had broken that association
+and made its resumption for ever impossible, had carried her safely into
+a totally different life. Her marriage, her new husband and new home,
+her new title indeed, made her seem another woman, and if she thought of
+Chris at all it was to imagine what he would think of these changes, and
+to fancy what he would say of them, when they met. No purely visionary
+meeting can hold the element of passion, and so it was a remote and
+spiritualized Chris of whom Norma came to think, far removed from the
+actual man of flesh and blood.
+
+Her call upon Annie she made with a mental reserve of cheerful
+explanation and apology ready for Annie's first reproach. Norma never
+could quite forget the extraordinary relationship in which she stood to
+Annie; and, perhaps half consciously, was influenced by the belief that
+some day the brilliant and wonderful Mrs. von Behrens would come to know
+of it, too.
+
+But Annie, who happened to be at home, and had other callers, rapidly
+dashed Norma's vague and romantic anticipations by showing her only the
+brisk and aloof cordiality with which she held at bay nine tenths of her
+acquaintance. Annie's old butler showed Norma impassively to the little
+drawing-room that was tucked in beyond the big one; two or three
+strangers eyed the newcomer cautiously, and Annie merely accorded her a
+perfunctory welcome. They were having tea.
+
+"Well, how do you do? How very nice of you, Norma. Do you know Mrs.
+Theodore Thayer, and Mrs. Thayer, and Miss Bishop? Katrina, this is--the
+name is still Sheridan, isn't it, Norma?--this is Mrs. Sheridan, who was
+with Mama and Leslie last summer. You have lots of sugar and cream,
+Norma, of course--all youngsters do. And you're near the toast----" And
+Annie, dismissing her, leaned back in her chair, and dropped her voice
+to the undertone that Norma had evidently interrupted. "Do go on,
+Leila," she said, to the older of the three women, "that's quite
+delicious! I heard something of it, but I knew of course that there was
+more----"
+
+A highly flavoured little scandal was in process of construction. Norma
+knew the principals slightly; the divorced woman, and the second husband
+from whom she had borrowed money to loan the first. She could join in
+the laughter that broke out presently, while she tried to identify her
+companions. The younger Mrs. Thayer had been the Miss Katrina Davenport
+of last month's brilliant wedding. Pictures of her had filled the
+illustrated weeklies, and all the world knew that she and her husband
+were preparing to leave for a wonderful home in Hawaii, where the family
+sugar interests were based. They were to cross the continent, Norma
+knew, in the Davenport private car, to be elaborately entertained in San
+Francisco, and to be prominent, naturally, in the island set. Little
+Miss Bishop had just announced her engagement to Lord Donnyfare, a
+splendid, big, clumsy, and impecunious young Briton who had made himself
+very popular with the younger group this winter. They were to be
+married in January and her ladyship would shortly afterward be
+transferred to London society, presented at court, and placed as
+mistress over the old family acres in Devonshire.
+
+They were both nice girls, pretty, beautifully groomed and dressed, and
+far from unintelligent as they discussed their plans; how their
+favourite horses and dogs would be moved, and what instructions had been
+given the maids who had preceded them to their respective homes. Katrina
+Thayer was just twenty, Mary Bishop a year younger; Norma knew that the
+former was perhaps the richest girl in America, and the latter was also
+an heiress, the society papers having already hinted that among the
+wedding gifts shortly to be displayed would be an uncle's casual check
+for one million dollars.
+
+"And of course it'll be charming for Chris, Mary," Annie presently said,
+"if he's really sent to Saint James's."
+
+Norma felt her throat thicken.
+
+"Chris--to England--as Ambassador?" she said.
+
+"Well, there's just a possibility--no, there's more than that!" Annie
+told her. "I believe he'll take it, if it is offered. Of course, he's
+supremely well fitted for it. There's even"--Annie threw out to the
+company at large, with that air of being specially informed in which she
+delighted--"there's even very good reason to suppose that influence has
+been brought to bear by----But I don't dare go into that. However, we
+feel that it will be offered. And the one serious drawback is naturally
+my sister. Alice--poor child! And yet, of us all, Alice is most
+desperately eager for Chris to take it."
+
+"I should think," Norma said, "that Aunt Alice could almost be
+moved----?"
+
+"Oh, she would be!" Annie agreed, with her quick, superior definiteness.
+"That's the very question. Whether the north Atlantic passage, say in
+May, when it oughtn't to be so hard, would be too much for her. Of
+course it would tire her and shake her cruelly, no doubt of that. But
+Hendrick even talks of some sort of balanced bed--on the hammock
+idea--and Miss Slater would see that everything that was humanly
+possible was done. I believe it could be managed. Then she would be met
+by one of those big, comfortable English ambulances, at Southampton, and
+taken right to her apartment, or hotel, or whatever Chris arranges."
+
+"Not so much harder," Norma ventured, "than the trip to Newport, after
+all."
+
+"Well, she didn't go to Newport last summer," Annie said, "but she is
+certainly better now than she was then, and I believe it could be done;
+I really do. We're not talking a great deal about it, because nothing is
+settled, but if it becomes definite, I shall certainly advise it."
+
+Norma drank her tea, and listened, and threw in an occasional word. When
+the other women rose to go, she rose, too, perhaps half-hoping that
+Annie would hold her for a more intimate word. But Annie quite suavely
+and indifferently included her in her general farewells, and Norma had
+cordial good-byes from the two young women, and even a vague invitation
+from the older Mrs. Thayer to come and see her, when Katrina was gone.
+
+Then she was walking down the Avenue, with her head and heart in a
+confused whirl of bitterness and disappointment. The three quarters of
+an hour in Aunt Annie's big, dim, luxurious palace had been like a dose
+of some insidious poison.
+
+The very atmosphere of richness and service and idleness, the beauty of
+wide spaces and rich tones, the massed blossoms and dimmed lights,
+struck sharply upon senses attuned to Aunt Kate's quick voice, Rose's
+little house with its poverty and utility, and Wolf's frank enjoyment of
+his late and simple dinner. The conversation, with its pleasant
+assumption of untold wealth of power and travel and regal luxuriousness,
+burned its memory across Norma's mind like a corroding acid. They were
+not contemptible, they were not robbers or brutes or hideous old
+plutocrats who had grown wealthy upon the wrongs of the poor. No, they
+were normal pleasant girls whose code it was to be generous to maids and
+underlings, to speak well of their neighbours, to pay their bills and
+keep their promises.
+
+"They make me _tired_!" she tried to tell herself, walking briskly, and
+filling her lungs with the sweet fresh air. It was twilight, and the
+north-bound tide of traffic was halting and rushing, halting and
+rushing, up the Avenue; now held motionless at a crossing, now flowing
+on in mad haste, the lumbering omnibuses passing each other, little
+hansoms threading the mass, and foot passengers scampering and
+withdrawing, and risking all sorts of passages between. The distance was
+luminous and blue, and lights pricked against it as against a scarf of
+gauze.
+
+Oh, it was sickening--it was sickening--to think that life was so grim
+and hard for the thousands, and so unnecessarily, so superlatively
+beautiful for the few! What had Mary Bishop and Katrina ever done, that
+they should travel in private cars, fling aside furs that had cost as
+much as many a man's yearly salary, chatter of the plantation near the
+beach at Hawaii, or of reaching Saint James's for the January
+Drawing-Room!
+
+Norma stopped to give twenty-five cents to an old Italian organ grinder,
+and worked him into her theme as she went on. Why _should_ he look so
+grateful for her casual charity, he, seventy years old, Katrina and Mary
+averaging less than twenty!
+
+She reached Aunt Kate's flat in a thorough temper, angry, headachy,
+almost feverish after the rich scones and the rich tea, and the even
+less wholesome talk. The apartment house seemed, as indeed it was, grimy
+and odorous almost to squalor, and Aunt Kate almost hateful in her
+cheerfulness and energy. This was Wednesday, and on Wednesday evenings
+she was always happy, for then Wolf and Norma came to dinner with her.
+To-night, busily manipulating pans and pots, she told Norma that she had
+rented the two extra bedrooms of the apartment to three young trained
+nurses, ideal tenants in every way.
+
+"They'll get their breakfasts here, and--if I'm away--there's no reason
+why they shouldn't cook themselves a little dinner now and then," said
+Aunt Kate, in her rich, motherly voice. "They were tickled to death to
+get the two rooms for twenty dollars, and that makes my own rent only
+seventeen more. I asked them if that was too much, and they said, no,
+they'd expected to pay at least ten apiece."
+
+Norma listened, unsympathetic and gloomy. It was all so petty and so
+poor--trained nurses, and apple pie, and Aunt Kate renting rooms, and
+Wolf eager to be promoted to factory manager.
+
+She wanted to go back--back to the life in which Annie really noticed
+her, gave her luncheons, included her. She wanted to count for something
+with Mary and Katrina and Leslie; she wanted to talk to Chris about his
+possible ambassadorship; she wanted them all to agree that Norma's wit
+and charm more than made up for Norma's lack of fortune. While she
+brushed her hair, in the room that would shortly accommodate two of the
+three little nurses, she indulged in an unsatisfying dream in which she
+went to London with Alice--and that autocratic little Lady Donnyfare.
+
+Lady Donnyfare! She would be "your ladyship!" Nineteen years old, and
+welcomed to the ancestral mansion as her little ladyship!
+
+Norma set the dinner table for three, with jerks and slams that slightly
+relieved her boiling heart. She got the napkins from the sideboard
+drawer, and reached for the hand-painted china sugar bowl that was part
+of a set that Aunt Kate had won at a fair. She set the blue tile that
+she had given Aunt Kate on a long-ago Christmas where the brown Rebecca
+teapot would stand, and cut a square slice of butter from the end of the
+new pound for the blue glass dish. And all the time her heart was
+bursting with grief and discontent, and she was beginning to realize for
+the first time the irrevocable quality of the step she had taken, and
+just how completely it had shut her off from the life for which she
+thirsted.
+
+Wolf came in, hungry, dirty, radiantly happy, with a quick kiss for his
+mother and an embrace for his wife into which her slender figure and
+cloudy brown head almost disappeared. Lord, he was starving; and Lord,
+he was dead; and Lord, it was good to get home, said Wolf, his
+satisfaction with life too great to leave room for any suspicion of his
+wife's entire sympathy.
+
+She told them, over the meal, of Mary and Katrina, in whom their
+interest was of a simple and amazed quality that Norma resented, and of
+Chris's prospect, which did awaken some comment from Mrs. Sheridan.
+They were a clever family, she said.
+
+But now Wolf, bursting with long suppression, suddenly took the floor
+with his own great news. Voorhies, the fifty-year-old manager of the
+California plant, had been drifting about the Newark factory for several
+days, and Wolf had talked with him respectfully, as a man of
+twenty-five, whose income is three thousand a year, may talk to a
+six-thousand-dollar manager, and to-day Voorhies, and Jim Palmer, the
+Newark manager, and Paul Stromberg, the vice-president, had taken Wolf
+to lunch with them, apparently casually, apparently from mere
+friendliness. But Voorhies had asked him if he had ever seen the West;
+and Stromberg had said that he understood Sheridan's family consisted
+merely of a young wife, and Palmer had chanced to drop carelessly the
+fact that Mr. Voorhies was not going back to California----!
+
+That was all. But it was enough to send Wolf back to his work with his
+head spinning. California--and a managership of a mine--and six
+thousand! It must be--it must be--that he had been mentioned for it,
+that they had him in mind! He wasn't going even to think of it--and
+Norma mustn't--but Lord, it meant being picked out of the ranks; it
+meant being handed a commission on a silver platter!
+
+Norma tried not to be cold, tried to rise to the little he asked of her,
+as audience. And she had the satisfaction of knowing that he noticed
+nothing amiss in her manner, and of seeing him go off to sleep, when
+they had made the long trip home, with his head in a whirl of glorious
+hopes. But Norma, for the first time since her marriage, cried herself
+to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+The bitterness stayed with her, and gradually robbed her life of
+everything that was happy and content. Her little household round, that
+had been so absorbing and so important, became tedious and stupid. Rose,
+who was expecting her second confinement, had her husband's mother with
+her, and in care of the old baby, and making preparations for the new,
+was busy, and had small time for the old companionship; the evenings
+were too cold for motoring now, even if Wolf had not been completely
+buried in engineering journals and papers of all sorts.
+
+Norma did not call on Annie again, but a fretted and outraged sense of
+Annie's coolness and aloofness, and a somewhat similar impression from
+Leslie's manner, when they met in Fifth Avenue one day, was always in
+her mind. They could drop her as easily as they had picked her up, these
+high-and-mighty Melroses! She consoled herself, for a few days, with
+spectacular fancies of Annie's consternation should Norma's real
+identity be suddenly revealed to her, but even that poor solace was
+taken away from her at last.
+
+It was Aunt Kate's unconscious hand that struck the blow, on a wild
+afternoon, All Hallow E'en, as it happened, when the older woman made
+the long trip to see Rose, and came on to Norma with a report that
+everything was going well, and Miggs more fascinating than ever.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan found Norma at the close of the short afternoon, moping in
+her unlighted house. She had been to the theatre with Wolf and a young
+couple from the house next door, last night, and had fallen asleep after
+an afternoon walk, and felt headachy, prickly with heat and cold, and
+stupid. Yawning and chilly, she kissed her aunt, and suggested that they
+move to the kitchen. It was Inga's free night and Norma was cook.
+
+"You'll stay and surprise Wolf, he'd love it," Norma said, as the
+visitor's approving eyes noted the general order and warmth, the
+blue-checked towels and blue bowls, the white table and white walls. The
+little harum-scarum baby of the family was proceeding to get her husband
+a most satisfactory and delicious little dinner, and Aunt Kate was proud
+of her.
+
+"Did you make that cake, darling?"
+
+"Indeed I did; she can't make cake!"
+
+"And the ham?"
+
+"Well"--Norma eyed the cut ham fondly--"we did that together, out of the
+book! And I wish you'd taste it, Aunt Kate, it is perfectly delicious. I
+give it to Wolf every other night, but I think he'd eat it three times a
+day and be delighted. And last week we made bread--awfully good,
+too--not hard like that bread we made last summer. Rolls, we
+made--cinnamon rolls and plain. Harry and Rose were here. And
+Thanksgiving I'm going to try mincemeat."
+
+"You're a born cook," Aunt Kate said, paying one of her highest
+compliments with due gravity. But Norma did not respond with her usual
+buoyancy. She sighed impatiently, and her face fell into lines of
+discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs.
+Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding,
+one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar.
+Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have
+an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some
+trouble hideously like infantile paralysis.
+
+Norma knew that Aunt Kate would have liked to have her offer to take at
+least one of the small and troublesome children for two or three days,
+if not to stay with the unfortunate Kitty Barry outright. She knew that
+there was almost no money, that all the household details of washing and
+cooking were piling up like a mountain about the ailing woman, but her
+heart was filled with sudden rebellion and impatience with the whole
+miserable scheme.
+
+"My goodness, Aunt Kate, if it isn't one thing with those people it's
+another!" she said, impatiently. "I suppose you were there, and up with
+that baby all night!"
+
+"Indeed I got some fine sleep," Mrs. Sheridan answered, innocently.
+"Poor things, they're very brave!"
+
+Norma said nothing, but her expression was not sympathetic. She had been
+thinking of herself as to be pitied, and this ruthless introduction of
+the Barry question entirely upset the argument. If Mary Bishop and
+Katrina Thayer were the standard, then Norma Sheridan's life was too
+utterly obscure and insignificant to be worth living. But of course if
+incompetent strugglers like the Barrys were to be brought into the
+question, then Norma might begin to feel the solid ground melting from
+beneath her feet.
+
+She did not offer the cake or the ham to Aunt Kate, as contributions
+toward the small Barrys' lunch next day, nor did she invite any one of
+them to visit her. Her aunt, if she noted these omissions, made no
+comment upon them.
+
+"I declare you are getting to be a real woman, Norma," she said.
+
+"I suppose everyone grows up," Norma assented, cheerlessly.
+
+"Yes, there's a time when a child stops being a baby and you see that
+it's beginning to be a little girl," Mrs. Sheridan mused; "but it's some
+time later before you know _what sort_ of a little girl it is. And then
+at--say fifteen or sixteen--you see the change again, the little girl
+growing into a grown girl--a young lady. And for awhile you sort of lose
+track of her again, until all of a sudden you say: 'Well, Norma's going
+to be sociable--and like people!' or: 'Rose is going to be a gentle, shy
+girl----'"
+
+Norma knew the mildly moralizing tone, and that she was getting a
+sermon.
+
+"You never knew that I was going to be a good housekeeper!" she
+asserted, inclined toward contrariety.
+
+"I think you're going through another change now, Baby," her aunt said.
+"You've become a woman too fast. You don't quite know where you are!"
+
+This was so unexpectedly acute that Norma was inwardly surprised, and a
+little impressed. She sat down at one end of the clean little kitchen
+table, and rested her face in her hands, and looked resentfully at the
+older woman.
+
+"Then you _don't_ think I'm a good housekeeper," she said, looking hurt.
+
+"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma, it'll all be in
+your hands now," Mrs. Sheridan answered, seriously. "You're a woman,
+now; you're Wolf's wife; you've reached an age when you can choose and
+decide for yourself. You can be--you always could be--the best child the
+Lord ever made, or you can fret and brood over what you haven't got."
+
+The shrewd kindly eye seemed looking into Norma's very soul. The girl
+dropped her hard bright stare, and looked sulky.
+
+"I don't see what _I'm_ doing!" she muttered. "I can't help
+wanting--what other people that are no better than I, have!"
+
+"Yes, but haven't you enough, Norma? Think of women like poor Kitty
+Barry----"
+
+"Oh, Kitty Barry--Kitty Barry!" Norma burst out, angrily. "It isn't my
+fault that Kitty Barry has trouble; _I_ had nothing to do with it! Look
+at people like Leslie--what she wastes on one new fur coat would keep
+the Barrys for a year! Eighty-two hundred dollars she paid for her
+birthday coat! And that's _nothing_! Katrina Thayer----"
+
+"Norma--Norma--Norma!" her aunt interrupted, reproachfully. "What have
+you to do with girls like the Thayer girl? Why, there aren't twenty
+girls in the country as rich as that. That doesn't affect _you_, if
+there's something you can do for the poor and unfortunate----"
+
+"It _does_ affect me! I can't"--Norma dropped her tone, and glanced at
+her aunt. She knew that she was misbehaving--"I can't help inheriting a
+love for money," she said, breathing hard. "I know perfectly well who I
+am--who my mother is," she ended, with a half-defiant and half-fearful
+sob in her voice.
+
+"How do you mean that you know about your mother, Norma?" Mrs. Sheridan
+demanded, sharply.
+
+"Well"--Norma had calmed a little, and she was a trifle nervous--"Chris
+told me; and Aunt Alice knows, too--that Aunt Annie is my mother," she
+said.
+
+"Chris Liggett told you that?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, with a note of
+incredulity in her voice.
+
+"Yes. Aunt Alice guessed it almost as soon as I went to live there! And
+I've known it for over a year," Norma said.
+
+"And who told Chris?"
+
+"Well--Aunt Marianna, I suppose!"
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"Norma," said Mrs. Sheridan, in a quiet, convincing tone that cooled the
+girl's hot blood instantly, "Chris is entirely wrong; your mother is
+dead. I've never lied to you, and I give you my word! I don't know where
+Miss Alice got that idea, but it's like her romantic way of fancying
+things! No, dear," she went on, sympathetically, as Norma sat silent,
+half-stunned by painful surprise, "you have no claim on Miss Annie. Both
+your father and mother are dead, Norma; I knew them both. There was a
+reason," Mrs. Sheridan added, thoughtfully, "why I felt that Mrs.
+Melrose might want to be kind to you--want to undo an injustice she did
+years ago. But I've told myself a thousand times that I did you a cruel
+wrong when I first let you go among them--you who were always so
+sensible, and so cheerful, and who would always take things as they
+came, and make no fuss!"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Kate," Norma stammered, bitterly, her lip trembling, and her
+voice fighting tears, "you don't have to tell me that in your opinion
+I've changed for the worse--I see it in the way you look at me! You've
+always thought Rose was an angel--too good to live!--and that I was
+spoiled and lazy and good-for-nothing; you were glad enough to get rid
+of me, and now I hope you're satisfied! They've told me one thing, and
+you've told me another--and I guess the truth is that I don't belong to
+anybody; and I wish I was dead, where my f-f-father and m-m-mother
+are----!"
+
+And stumbling into incoherence and tears, Norma dropped her head on her
+arm, and sobbed bitterly. Mrs. Sheridan's face was full of pain, but she
+did not soften.
+
+"You belong to your husband, Norma!" she said, mildly.
+
+Norma sat up, and wiped her eyes on a little handkerchief that she took
+from the pocket of her housewifely blue apron. She did not meet her
+aunt's eye, and still looked angry and hurt.
+
+"Well--who _am_ I then? Haven't I got some right to know who my mother
+and father were?" she demanded.
+
+"That you will never hear from me," Mrs. Sheridan replied, firmly.
+
+"But, Aunt Kate----"
+
+"I gave my solemn promise, Norma, and I've kept my word all these years;
+I'm not likely to break it now."
+
+"But--won't I _ever_ know?"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan shrugged her broad shoulders and frowned slightly.
+
+"That I can't say, my dear," she said, gently. "Some day I may be
+released from my bond, and then I'll be glad to tell you everything."
+
+"Perhaps Wolf will tell me he's nothing to me, now!" the girl continued,
+with childish temper.
+
+"Wolf--and all of us--think that there's nobody like you," the older
+woman said, tenderly. But Norma did not brighten. She went in a
+businesslike way to the stove, and glanced at the various bowls and
+saucepans in which dinner was baking and boiling, then sliced some stale
+bread neatly, put the shaved crusts in a special jar, and began to toast
+the slices with a charming precision.
+
+"Change your mind and stay with us, Aunt Kate?" she said, lifelessly.
+
+"No, dear, I'm going!" And Aunt Kate really did bundle herself into coat
+and rubber overshoes and woolly scarf again. "November's coming in with
+a storm," she predicted, glancing out at the darkness, where the wind
+was rushing and howling drearily.
+
+Norma did not answer. No mere rushing of clouds and whirl of dry and
+colourless leaves could match the storm of disappointment that was
+beginning to rage in her own heart.
+
+Yet she felt a pang of repentance, when cheerful Aunt Kate had tramped
+off in the dark, to Rose's house, which was five blocks away, and
+perhaps afterward to the desolate Barrys', and wished that she had put
+her arms about the big square shoulders, and her cheek against her
+aunt's cheek, and said that she was sorry to be unreasonable.
+
+Rushing to another extreme of unreason, she decided that she and Wolf
+must go see Rose to-night--and perhaps the Barrys, too--and cheer and
+solace them all. And Norma indulged in a little dream of herself nursing
+and cooking in the Barrys' six little cluttered rooms, and earning
+golden opinions from all the group. There was money, too; she had not
+used all of October's allowance, and to-morrow would find another big
+check at the bank.
+
+Wolf interrupted by coming in so tired he could hardly move. He ate his
+dinner, yawned amiably in the kitchen while she cleared it away, and was
+so sound asleep at nine o'clock that Norma's bedside light and the
+rustling of the pages of her book, three feet away from his face, had no
+more effect upon him than if the three feet had been three hundred.
+
+And then the bitter mood came back to her again; the bored, restless,
+impatient feeling that her life was a stupid affair. And deep in her
+heart the sense of hurt and humiliation grew and spread; the thought
+that she was not of the charmed circle of the Melroses, not secretly and
+romantically akin to them, she was merely the casual object of the old
+lady's fantastic sense of obligation. Aunt Kate, who had never said what
+was untrue--who, Norma and her children firmly believed, could not say
+what was untrue--had taken away, once and for all, the veil of mystery
+and romance that had wrapped Norma for three exciting years.
+
+For Leslie, and Katrina, and Mary Bishop, perhaps, travel and the thrill
+of foreign shores or European courts. But for Wolf Sheridan's wife, this
+small, orderly, charming house on the edge of the New Jersey woods, and
+the laundry to think of every Monday, and the two-days' ordering to
+remember every Saturday, as long as the world went round!
+
+For a few days Norma really suffered in spirit, then the natural healthy
+current of her life reestablished itself, and she philosophically
+determined to make the best of the matter. If she was not Aunt Annie's
+daughter and Leslie's cousin, she was at least their friend. They--even
+unsuspecting of any strange relationship--had always been kind to her.
+And Aunt Marianna and Aunt Alice had been definitely affectionate, to
+say nothing of Chris!
+
+So one day, when she happened to be shopping in the winter briskness of
+the packed and brilliant Avenue, she telephoned Leslie at about the
+luncheon hour. Leslie when last they met had said that she would
+confidently expect Norma to run out and lunch with her some day--any
+day.
+
+"Who is it?" Leslie's voice asked, irritably, when at last the telephone
+connection was established. "Oh, _Norma_! Oh----? What is it?"
+
+"Just wondering how you all were, and what the family news is," Norma
+said, with an uncomfortable inclination to falter.
+
+"I don't _hear_ you!" Leslie protested, impatiently. The insignificant
+inquiry did not seem to gain much by repetition, and Norma's cheeks
+burned in shame when Leslie followed it by a blank little pause.
+"Oh--everyone's fine. The baby wasn't well, but she's all right now."
+
+Another slight pause, then Norma said:
+
+"She must be adorable--I'd like to see her."
+
+"She's not here now," Leslie answered, quickly.
+
+"I've been shopping," Norma said. "Any chance that you could come down
+town and lunch with me?"
+
+"No, I really couldn't, to-day!" Leslie answered, lightly and promptly.
+
+A moment later Norma said good-bye. She walked away from the telephone
+booth with her face burning, and her heart beating quickly with anger
+and resentment.
+
+"Snob--snob--snob!" she said to herself, furiously, of Leslie. And of
+herself she presently added honestly, "And I wasn't much better, for I
+don't really like her any more than she does me!" And she stopped for
+flowers, and a little box of pastry, and went out to delight her Aunt
+Kate's heart with an unexpected visit.
+
+But a sting remained, and Norma brooded over the injustice of life, as
+she went about her little house in the wintry sunlight, and listened to
+Wolf, and made much of Rose and the new baby girl. By Thanksgiving it
+seemed to her that she had only dreamed of "Aida" and of Newport, and
+that the Norma of the wonderful frocks and the wonderful dreams had been
+only a dream herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+And then suddenly she was delighted to have a friendly little note from
+Alice, asking her to come to luncheon on a certain December Friday, as
+there was "a tiny bit of business" that she would like to discuss; Chris
+was away, she would be alone. Norma accepted with no more than ordinary
+politeness, and showed neither Wolf nor his mother any elation, but she
+felt a deep satisfaction in the renewed relationship.
+
+On the appointed Friday, at one o'clock, she mounted the familiar steps
+of the Christopher Liggetts' house, and greeted the butler with a
+delighted sense of returning to her own. Alice was in the front room,
+before a wood fire; she greeted Norma with her old smile, and with an
+outstretched hand, but Norma was shocked to see how drawn and strangely
+aged the smile was, and how thin the hand!
+
+The room had its old scent of violets, and its old ordered beauty and
+richness, but Norma was vaguely conscious, for the first time, of some
+new invalid quality of fussiness, of a pretty and superfluous cluttering
+that had not been characteristic of Alice's belongings a year ago.
+Alice, too, wore newly a certain stamp of frailty, her always pure high
+forehead had a faint transparency and shine that Norma did not remember,
+and the increasing accumulation of pillows and little bookcases and
+handsome stands about her suggested that her horizon was closing in,
+that her world was diminishing to this room, and this room alone.
+
+The strange nurse who smilingly and noiselessly slipped away as Norma
+came in, was another vaguely disquieting hint of helplessness, but Norma
+knew better than to make any comment upon her impressions, and merely
+asked the usual casual questions, as she sat down near the couch.
+
+"How are you, Aunt Alice? But you look splendidly!"
+
+"I'm so _well_," said Alice, emphatically, with a sort of solemn
+thankfulness, "that I don't know myself! Whether it was saving myself
+the strain of moving to Newport last summer, or what, I don't know. But
+I haven't been so well for _years_!"
+
+Norma's heart contracted with sudden pity. Alice had never employed
+these gallant falsehoods before. She had always been quite obviously
+happy and busy and even enviable, in her limited sphere. The girl
+chatted away with her naturally enough while the luncheon table was
+arranged between them and the fire, but she noticed that two nurses
+shifted the invalid into an upright position before the meal, and that
+Alice's face was white with exhaustion as she began to sip her bouillon.
+
+They were alone, an hour later, playing with little boxed ices, when
+Alice suddenly revealed the object of the meeting. Norma had asked for
+Chris, who was, it appeared, absent on some matter of business for a few
+days, and it was in connection with the introduction of his name that
+Alice spoke.
+
+"Chris--that reminds me! I wanted to speak to you about something,
+Norma; I've wanted to for months, really. It's not really important,
+because of course you never would mention it any more than I would, and
+yet it's just as well to have this sort of thing straightened out!
+Chris told me"--said Alice, looking straight at Norma, who had grown a
+trifle pale, and was watching her fixedly--"Chris told me that some
+months before you were married, he told you of some--some ridiculous
+suspicions we had--it seems absurd now!--about Annie."
+
+So that was it! Norma could breathe again.
+
+"Yes--we talked about it one morning walking home from church," she
+admitted.
+
+"I don't know whether you know now," Alice said, quickly, flushing
+nervously, "that there wasn't one shred of foundation for that--that
+crazy suspicion of mine! But I give you my word--and my mother told
+me!--that it wasn't so. I don't know how I ever came to think of it, or
+why I thought Mama admitted it. But I've realized," said Alice,
+nervously, "that it was a terrible injustice to Annie, and as soon as
+Chris told me that you knew it--and of course he had _no business_ to
+let it get any further!--I wanted to set it straight. Poor Annie; she
+would be perfectly frantic if she knew how calmly I was saddling her
+with a--a terrible past!" said Alice, laughing. "But I have always been
+too sensitive where the people I love are concerned, and I blundered
+into this--this outrageous----"
+
+"My aunt had told me that it was not so," Norma said, coolly and
+superbly interrupting the somewhat incoherent story. "If I ever really
+believed it----!" she added, scornfully.
+
+For her heart was hot with rage, and the first impulse was to vent it
+upon this nearest of the supercilious Melroses. This was all Alice had
+wanted then, in sending that little overture of friendship: to tell the
+little nobody that she was nothing to the great family, after all, to
+prevent her from ever boasting even an illicit relationship! It was for
+a formal snub, a definite casting-off, that Norma had been brought all
+the way from the little green-and-white house in New Jersey! Her eyes
+grew very bright, and her lips very firm, as she and Alice finished the
+topic, and she told herself that she would never, never enter the house
+of Liggett again!
+
+Alice, this load off her mind, and the family honour secure, became much
+more friendly, and she and Norma were talking animatedly when Leslie and
+Annie came unexpectedly in. They had been to a debutante luncheon, and
+were going to a debutante tea, and meanwhile wanted a few minutes with
+dear Alice, and the latest news of Mrs. Melrose, who was in Florida.
+
+Aunt and niece were magnificently furred and jewelled, magnificently
+unaware of the existence of little Mrs. Sheridan of East Orange. Norma
+knew in a second that the social ripples had closed over her head; she
+was of no further possible significance in the life of either. Leslie
+was pretty, bored, ill-tempered; Annie her usual stunning and radiantly
+satisfied self. The conversation speedily left Norma stranded, the
+chatter of engagements, of scandals, of new names, was all strange to
+her, and she sat through some ten minutes of it uncomfortably, longing
+to go, and not quite knowing how to start. She said to herself that she
+was done with the Melroses; never--never--never again would even their
+most fervently extended favour win from her so much as a civil
+acknowledgment!
+
+There was a step in the hall, and a voice that drove the blood from
+Norma's face, and made her heart begin the old frantic fluttering and
+thumping. Before she could attempt to collect her thoughts, the door
+opened, and Chris came in. He came straight to Alice, and kissed her,
+holding her hand as he greeted Annie and Leslie. Then he came across the
+hearthrug, and Norma got to her feet, and felt that his hand was as cold
+as hers, and that the room was rocking about her.
+
+"Hello, Norma!" he said, quietly. "I didn't expect to find you here!"
+
+"You haven't seen her since she was married, Chris," Alice said, and
+Chris agreed with a pleasant "That's so!"
+
+He sat down, and Norma, incapable of any effort, at least until she
+could control the emotion that was shaking her like a vertigo, sank back
+into her own chair, unseeing and unhearing. The gold clock on the mantel
+ticked and tocked, the other three women chatted and laughed, and Chris
+contributed his share to the general conversation. But Norma's one
+desperate need was for escape.
+
+He made no protest when she said hasty farewells, but when she had gone
+rapidly and almost blindly down the stairway, and was at the front door,
+she found him beside her. He got into his fur-collared coat, picked up
+his hat, and they descended to the sidewalk together, in the colourless,
+airless, sunless light of the winter afternoon.
+
+"Get in my car!" Chris said, indicating the roadster at the curb.
+
+The girl without a word obeyed. His voice, the motion of his clean-cut
+mouth, the searching glance of his quick, keen eyes, acted upon her like
+a charm. Alice--Wolf--every thing else in the world vanished from her
+thoughts, or rather had never been there. She was drinking again the
+forbidden waters for which she had thirsted, perhaps without quite
+knowing it, so long. The strangeness, the strain, the artifice of the
+last eight months fell from her like a spell; she was herself again,
+comfortable again, poised again, thrilling from head to heels with
+delicious and bubbling life--ready for anything!
+
+Now that they were alone she felt no more nervousness; he would speak to
+her when he was ready, he could not leave her without speaking. Norma
+settled back comfortably in the deep, low seat, and glanced sidewise at
+the stern profile that showed between his high fur collar and the fur
+cap he had pulled well down over his ears. The world seemed changed to
+her; she had wakened from a long dream.
+
+"No--not the old house!" she presently broke the silence to tell him. "I
+go to New Jersey."
+
+He had been driving slowly out Fifth Avenue, now he obediently turned,
+and threaded his way through the cross-street traffic until they were
+within perhaps a hundred feet of the entrance to the New Jersey subways.
+Then he ran the car close to the curb, and stopped, and for the first
+time looked fully at Norma, and she saw his old, pleasant smile.
+
+"Well, and how goes it?" he asked. "How is Wolf? Tell me where you are
+living, and all about it!"
+
+Norma in answer gave him a report upon her own affairs, and spoke of
+Aunt Kate and Rose and Rose's children. She did not realize that a tone
+almost pleading, almost apologetic, crept into her eager voice while she
+spoke, and told its own story. Chris watched her closely, his eyes never
+leaving her face. All around them moved the confusion and congestion of
+Sixth Avenue; overhead the elevated road roared and crashed, but
+neither man nor woman was more than vaguely conscious of surroundings.
+
+"And are you happy, Norma?" Chris asked.
+
+"Oh, yes!" she answered, quickly.
+
+"You are a very game little liar," he said, dispassionately. "No--no,
+I'm not blaming you!" he added, hastily, as she would have spoken. "You
+took the very best way out, and I respect and honour you for it! I was
+not surprised--although the possibility had never occurred to me."
+
+Something in his cool, almost lifeless tone, chilled her, and she did
+not speak.
+
+"When I heard of it," Chris said, "I went to Canada. I don't remember
+the details exactly, but I remember one day sitting up there--in the
+woods somewhere, and looking at my hunting knife, and looking at my
+wrist----"
+
+He looked at his wrist now, and her eyes followed his.
+
+"--and if I had thought," Chris presently continued, "that a slash there
+might have carried me to some region of peace--where there was no hunger
+for Norma--I would not have hesitated! But one isn't sure--more's the
+pity!" he finished, smiling with eyes full of pain.
+
+Norma could not speak. The work of long months had been undone in a
+short hour, and she was conscious of a world that crashed and tumbled in
+utter ruin about her.
+
+"Well, no use now," Chris said. He folded his arms on his chest, and
+looked sternly away into space for a minute, and Norma felt his
+self-control, his repression, as she would have felt no passionate
+outburst of reproach. "But there is one thing that I've wanted for a
+long time to tell you, Norma. If you hadn't been such a little girl, if
+you had known what life is, you could not have done what you did!"
+
+"I suppose not," she half-whispered, with a dry throat, as he waited for
+some sign from her.
+
+"No, you couldn't have given yourself to any one else--if you had
+known," Chris went on, as if musing aloud. "And that brings me to what I
+want to say. Marriage lasts a long, long time, Norma, and even you--with
+all your courage!--may find that you've promised more than you can
+perform! The time may come----
+
+"Norma, I hope it won't!" he interrupted himself to say, bitterly. "I
+try to hope it won't! I try to hope that you will come to love him, my
+dear, and forget me! But if that time does come, what I want you to
+remember is this afternoon, and sitting here with me in the car, and
+Chris telling you that whenever--or wherever--or however he can serve
+you, you are to remember that he is living just for that hour! There
+will never be any change in me, Norma, never anything but longing and
+longing just for the sight of you, just for one word from you! I love
+you, my dear--I can't help it. God knows I've _tried_ to help it. I love
+you as I don't believe any other woman in the world was ever loved! So
+much that I want life to be good to you, even if I never see you, and I
+want you to be happy, even without me!"
+
+He had squared about to face her, and as the passionate rush of words
+swept about her, Norma laid her little gloved hand gently upon his big
+one, and her blue eyes, drowned in sudden tears, fixed themselves in
+exquisite desolation and despair upon his face.
+
+Once or twice she had whispered "I know--I know!" as if to herself, but
+she did not interrupt him, and when he paused he saw that she was choked
+with tears, and could not speak.
+
+"The mad and wonderful sacrifice you made I can't talk about, Norma," he
+said. "Only an ignorant, noble-hearted little girl like you could have
+done that! But that's all over, now. You must try to make your life what
+they think it is--those good people that love you! And I'll try, too!--I
+do try. And you mustn't cry, my little sweetheart," Chris added, with a
+tenderness so new, and so poignantly sweet, that Norma was almost faint
+with the sheer joy of it, "you mustn't blame me for just saying this,
+this once, because it's for the last time! We mustn't meet----" His
+voice dropped. "I think we mustn't meet," he repeated, painfully and
+slowly.
+
+"No!" she agreed, quickly.
+
+"But you are to remember that," Chris reiterated, "that I am living, and
+moving about, and going to the office, and back to my home, only because
+you are alive in the world, and the day may come when I can serve you!
+Life has been only that to me, for a long, long time!"
+
+For a long minute Norma sat silent, her dark lashes fallen on her cheek,
+her eyes on the hand that she had grasped in her own.
+
+"I'll remember, Chris! Thank you, Chris!" she said, simply. Then she
+raised her eyes and looked straight at him, with a childish little
+frown, puzzled and bewildered, on her forehead, and they exchanged a
+long look of good-bye. Chris raised her hand to his lips, and Norma very
+quietly slipped from her seat, and turned once to smile bravely at him
+before she was lost in the swiftly moving whirlpool of the subway
+entrance. She was trembling as she seated herself in the train, and
+moved upon her way scarcely conscious of what she was doing.
+
+But Chris did not move from his seat for more than an hour.
+
+Norma went home, and quickly and deftly began her preparations for
+dinner. Inga had been married a few weeks before, and so Norma had no
+maid. She put her new hat into its tissue paper, and tied a fresh
+checked apron over her filmy best waist, and stepped to and fro between
+stove and dining table, as efficient a little housekeeper as all New
+Jersey could show.
+
+Wolf came home hungry and good-natured, and kissed her, and sat at the
+end of her little kitchen table while she put the last touches to the
+meal, appreciative and amusing, a new magazine for her in the pocket of
+his overcoat, an invitation from his mother for dinner to-morrow night,
+and a pleasant suggestion that he and she wander up Broadway again and
+look in windows, after his mother's dinner.
+
+They talked, while they dined, of the possibility of the California
+move, and Wolf afterward went down to the furnace. When the fire was
+banked for the night, he watched the last of the dinner clearance, and
+they went across the cold dark strip of land between their house and a
+neighbour's, to play three exciting rubbers of bridge.
+
+And at eleven Wolf was asleep, and Norma reading again, or trying to
+read. But her blood was racing, and her head was spinning, and before
+she slept she brought out all her memories of the afternoon. Chris's
+words rang in her heart again, and the glances that had accompanied
+them unrolled before her eyes like some long pageant that was infinitely
+wonderful and thrilling. Leslie and Annie and Alice might snub her, but
+Chris--their idol, the cleverest and most charming man in all their
+circle!--Chris loved her. Chris loved her. And--from those old dreamy
+days in Biretta's Bookstore, had she not loved Chris?
+
+Another morning came, another night, and life went its usual way. But
+Norma was wrapped in a dream that was truly a pillar of cloud by day,
+and of flame by night. She was hardly aware of the people about her,
+except that her inner consciousness of happiness and of elation gave her
+an even added sweetness and charm, made her readier to please them, and
+more anxious for their love.
+
+Wolf almost immediately saw the change, but she did not see the shadow
+that came to be habitual in his young face, nor read aright his grave
+eyes. She supposed him perhaps unusually busy, if indeed she thought of
+him at all. Like her aunt, and Rose, and the rest of her world, he was
+no more now than a kindly and dependable shadow, something to be quickly
+put aside for the reality of her absorbing friendship for Chris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Despite their resolve not to see each other in the two weeks that
+followed Alice's luncheon, Norma had seen Chris three times. He had
+written her on the third day, and she had met the postman at the corner,
+sure that the big square envelope would be there. They had had luncheon,
+far down town, and walked up through the snowy streets together, parting
+with an engagement for the fourth day ahead, a matinee and tea
+engagement. The third meeting had been for luncheon again, and after
+lunch they had wandered through an Avenue gallery, looking at the
+pictures, and talking about themselves.
+
+Chris had loaned her books, little slim books of dramas or essays, and
+Chris had talked to her of plays and music. One night, when Wolf was in
+Philadelphia, Chris took her to the opera again, duly returning her to
+Aunt Kate at half-past eleven, and politely disclaiming Aunt Kate's
+gratitude for his goodness to little Norma.
+
+He never attempted to touch her, to kiss her; he never permitted himself
+an affectionate term, or a hint of the passion that enveloped him; they
+were friends, that was all, and surely, surely, they told themselves, a
+self-respecting man and woman may be friends--may talk and walk and
+lunch together, and harm no one? Norma knew that it was the one vital
+element in Chris's life, as in her own, and that the hours that he did
+not spend with her were filled with plans and anticipations for their
+times together.
+
+One evening, just before Christmas, when the young Sheridans were
+staying through a heavy storm with their mother, Wolf came home with the
+news that he must spend some weeks in Philadelphia, studying a new
+method of refining iron ore. It was tacitly understood that this
+transfer was but a preliminary to the long-anticipated promotion to the
+California managership, but Wolf took it very quietly, with none of the
+exultation that the compliment once would have caused him.
+
+"I'll go with you to Philadelphia," Norma said, not quite naturally. She
+had been made vaguely uneasy by his repressed manner, and by the fact
+that her kiss of greeting had been almost put aside by him, at the door,
+a few minutes earlier. Dear old Wolf; she had always loved him--she
+would not have him unhappy for all the world!
+
+In answer he looked at her unsmilingly, wearily narrowing his eyes as if
+to concentrate his thoughts.
+
+"You can't, very well, but thank you just the same, Norma," he said,
+formally. "I shall be with Voorhies and Palmer and Bender all the time;
+they put me up at a club, and there'll be plenty of evening work--nearly
+every evening----"
+
+"Norma'll stay here with me!" Aunt Kate said, hospitably.
+
+"Well"--Wolf agreed, indifferently--"I can run up from Philadelphia and
+be home every Saturday, Mother," he added. Norma felt vaguely alarmed by
+his manner, and devoted her best efforts to amusing and interesting him
+for the rest of the meal. After dinner she came in from the kitchen to
+find him in a big chair in the little front parlour, and she seated
+herself upon an arm of it, and put her own arm loosely about his neck.
+
+"What are you reading, Wolf? Shall we go out and burn up Broadway?
+There's a wonderful picture at The Favourite."
+
+He tossed his paper aside, and moved from under her, so that Norma found
+herself ensconced in the chair, and her husband facing her from the rug
+that was before the little gas log.
+
+"Where's Mother?"
+
+"Gone downstairs to see how the Noon baby is."
+
+"Norma," said Wolf, without preamble, "did you see Chris Liggett
+to-day?"
+
+Her colour flamed high, but her eyes did not waver.
+
+"Yes. We met at Sherry's. We had lunch together."
+
+"You didn't meet by accident?" There was desperate hope in Wolf's voice.
+But Norma would not lie. With her simple negative her head drooped, and
+she looked at her locked fingers in silence.
+
+Wolf was silent, too, for a long minute. Then he cleared his throat, and
+spoke quietly and sensibly.
+
+"I've been a long time waking up, Nono," he said. "I'm sorry! Of course
+I knew that there was a difference; I knew that you--felt differently.
+And I guessed that it was Chris. Norma, do you--do you still like him?"
+
+She looked up wretchedly, nodding her head.
+
+"More"--he began, and stopped--"more than you do me?" he asked. And in
+the silence he added suddenly: "Norma, I thought we were so happy!"
+
+Then the tears came.
+
+"Wolf, I'll never love any one more than I do you!" the girl said,
+passionately. "You've always been an angel to me--always the best friend
+I ever had. I know you--I know what you are to Rose, Aunt Kate, and what
+the men at the factory think of you. I'm not fit to tie your shoes! I'm
+wicked, and selfish, and--and everything I oughtn't to be! But I can't
+help it. I've wanted you to know--all there was to know. I've met him,
+and we've talked and walked together; that's all. And that's all we
+want--just to be friends. I'm sorry----" Her voice trailed off on a sob.
+"I'm awfully sorry!" she said.
+
+"Yes," Wolf said, slowly, after a pause, "I'm sorry, too!"
+
+He sat down, rumpling his hair, frowning. Norma, watching him fearfully,
+noticed that he was very pale.
+
+"I thought we were so happy," he said again, simply.
+
+"Ah, Wolf, don't think I've been fooling all this summer!" his wife
+pleaded, her eyes filling afresh. "I've loved it all--the peach
+ice-cream, and the picnics, and everything. But--but people can't help
+this sort of thing, can they? It does happen, and--and they just simply
+have to make the best of it, don't they? If--if we go to California next
+month--you know that I'll do everything I can----!"
+
+He was not listening to her.
+
+"Norma," he interrupted, sharply, "if Liggett's wife was out of the
+way--would you want to marry him?"
+
+"Wolf!--what's the use of asking that? You only--you only excite us
+both. Aunt Alice _isn't_ out of the way, and even if she were, I am your
+wife. I'm sorry. I'll never meet him again--I haven't been a bit happy
+about it. I'll promise you that I will not see him again."
+
+"I don't ask you for that promise," Wolf said. "I don't know what we can
+do! I never should have let you--I shouldn't have been such a fool as
+to--but somehow, I'd always dreamed that you and I would marry.
+Well!"--he interrupted his musing with resolute cheerfulness--"I've got
+to get over to the library to-night," he said, "for I may have to start
+for Phily to-morrow afternoon. Will you tell Mother----"
+
+Norma immediately protested that she was going with him, but he
+patiently declined, kissing her in a matter-of-fact sort of way as he
+pulled on the old overcoat and the new gloves, and slamming the hall
+door behind him when he went.
+
+For a minute she stood looking after him, with a great heartache almost
+blinding her. Then she flashed to her room, and before Wolf had reached
+the corner his wife had slipped her hand into his arm, and her little
+double step was keeping pace with his long stride in the way they both
+loved.
+
+She talked to him in her usual manner, and presently he could answer
+normally, and they bought peppermints to soften their literary labours.
+In the big library Wolf was instantly absorbed, but for awhile Norma sat
+watching the shabby, interested, intelligent men and women who came and
+went, the shabby books that crossed the counters, the pretty, efficient
+desk-clerks under their green droplights. The radiators clanked and
+hissed softly in the intervals of silence, sometimes there was
+whispering at the shelves, or one of the attendants spoke in a low tone.
+
+Norma loved the atmosphere, so typical a phase of the great city's
+life. After awhile she idly dragged toward her three books, from a
+table, and idly dipped into them: "The Life of the Grimkes"; "The Life
+of Elizabeth Prentiss"; "The Letters of Charles Dickens."
+
+Nine struck; ten; eleven. Wolf had some six or seven large books about
+him, and alternated his plunges into them with animated whispered
+conversations with a silver-headed old man, two hours ago an utter
+stranger, but always henceforth to be affectionately quoted by Wolf as a
+friend.
+
+They indulged in the extravagance of a taxi-cab for the home trip. Norma
+left Wolf still reading, after winning from him a kiss and a promise not
+to "worry", and went to bed and to sleep. When she wakened, after some
+nine delicious hours, he was gone; gone to Philadelphia, as it proved.
+
+Breakfasting at ten o'clock, in a flood of sweet winter sunshine, she
+put a brave face on the matter. She told herself that it was better that
+Wolf should know, and only the part of true kindness not to deny what,
+for good or ill, was true. The memory of his grave and troubled face
+distressed her, but she reminded herself that he would be back on
+Saturday, and then he would have forgiven her. She would see Chris
+to-day, to-morrow, and the day after, and by that time they would have
+said everything that there was to say, and they would never see each
+other again.
+
+For it was a favourite hallucination of theirs that every meeting was to
+be the last. Not, said Chris, that there was any harm in it, but it was
+wiser not to see each other. And when Norma, glowing under his eyes,
+would echo this feeling, he praised her for her courage as if they had
+resisted the temptation already.
+
+"I've thought it all over, Chris," she would say, "and I know that the
+wisest way is to stop. And you must help me." And when Chris answered,
+"Norma, I don't see where you get that marvellous courage of yours," it
+did not occur to Norma to question in what way she was showing courage
+at all. She lived upon his praise, and could not have enough of it. He
+never tired of telling her that she was beautiful, good, brave, a
+constant inspiration, and far above the ordinary type of woman; and
+Norma believed him.
+
+On the day before Wolf's first week-end return from Philadelphia, Chris
+was very grave. When he and Norma were halfway through their luncheon,
+in the quiet angle of an old-fashioned restaurant, he told her why.
+Alice was failing. Specialists had told him that England was out of the
+question. She might live a year, but the probability was against it.
+They--he and Norma--Chris said, must consider this, now.
+
+Norma considered it with a paling face. It--it couldn't make any
+difference, she said, quickly and nervously.
+
+And then, for the first time, he talked to her of her responsibility in
+the matter, of what their love meant to them both. Wolf had his claim,
+true; but what was truly the generous thing for a woman to do toward a
+man she did not love? Wasn't a year or two of hurt feelings, even anger
+and resentment, better than a loveless marriage that might last fifty
+years?
+
+This was a terrible problem, and Norma did not know what to think. On
+the one hand was the certainty of that higher life from which she had
+been exiled since her marriage: the music, the art, the letters, the
+cultivated voices and fragrant rooms, the wealth and luxury, the
+devotion of this remarkable and charming man, whose simple friendship
+had been beyond her dreams a few years ago. On the other side was the
+painful and indeed shameful desertion of Wolf, the rupture with Aunt
+Kate and Rose, and the undying sense in her own soul of an unworthy
+action.
+
+But Rose was absorbed in Harry and the children, and Aunt Kate would
+surely go with Wolf to California, three thousand miles away----
+
+"I am not brave enough!" she whispered.
+
+"You _are_ brave enough," Chris answered, quickly. "Tell him the
+truth--as you did on your wedding day. Tell him you acted on a mad
+impulse, and that you are sorry. A few days' discomfort, and you are
+free, and one week of happiness will blot out the whole wretched memory
+for ever."
+
+"It is not wretchedness, Chris," she corrected, with a rueful smile. But
+she did not contradict him, and before they parted she promised him that
+she would not go to California without at least telling Wolf how she
+felt about it.
+
+Rose and Harry joined them for the Saturday night reunion. Norma thought
+that Wolf seemed moody, and was unresponsive to her generous welcome,
+and she was conscious of watching him somewhat apprehensively as the
+evening wore on. But it was Sunday afternoon before the storm broke.
+
+Wolf was at church when Norma wakened, and as she dressed she meditated
+a trifle uneasily over this departure from their usual comfortable
+Sunday morning habit. She breakfasted alone, Wolf and his mother coming
+in for their belated coffee just as Norma, prettily coated and hatted
+and furred, was leaving the house for the ten-o'clock Mass. They did
+not meet again until luncheon, and as Wolf had explained that he must
+leave at four o'clock for Philadelphia, Norma began to think that this
+particular visit would end without any definite unpleasantness.
+
+However, at about three o'clock, he invited her to walk with him to the
+station, and join his mother later, at Rose's house, in New Jersey, and
+Norma dared not refuse. They locked the apartment, and walked slowly
+down Broadway, as they had walked so many thousand times before, in the
+streaming Sunday crowds. Before they had gone a block Wolf opened
+hostilities by asking abruptly:
+
+"Where did you go to church this morning?"
+
+Norma flushed, and laughed a little.
+
+"I went down to the Cathedral; I'm fond of it, you know. Why?"
+
+"Did you meet Chris Liggett?" Wolf asked.
+
+"Yes--I did, Wolf. He goes to the church near there, now and then."
+
+"When you telephone him to," Wolf said, grimly.
+
+Norma began to feel frightened. She had never heard this tone from Wolf
+before.
+
+"I did telephone him, as a matter of fact--or rather he happened to
+telephone me, and I said I was going there. Is there anything so
+horrifying in that?" she asked.
+
+"Just after you went out, the telephone operator asked me if the Murray
+Hill number had gotten us," Wolf answered; "that's how I happen to
+know."
+
+Norma was angry, ashamed, and afraid, all at once. For twenty feet they
+walked in silence. She stole more than one anxious look at her
+companion; Wolf's face was set like flint. He was buttoned into the
+familiar old overcoat, a tall, brown, clean-shaven, and just now
+scowling young man of the accepted American type, firm of jaw, keen of
+eye, and with a somewhat homely bluntness of feature preventing him from
+being describable as handsome, or with at best a rough, hard, open-eyed
+sort of handsomeness that was as unconscious of itself as the beauty of
+a young animal.
+
+"Wolf, don't be cross," his wife pleaded, in illogical coaxing.
+
+"I'm not cross," he said, with an annoyed glance that humiliated and
+angered her. "But I don't like this sort of thing, Norma, and I should
+think you'd know why."
+
+"What sort of thing?" Norma countered, quickly.
+
+"The sort of thing that evidently Mr. Christopher Liggett thinks is fair
+play!" Wolf said, with youthful bitterness. "Harry saw you both walking
+up Fifth Avenue yesterday, and Joe Anderson happened to mention that you
+and a man were lunching together on Thursday, down at the Lafayette.
+There may be no harm in it----"
+
+"There _may_ be!" Norma echoed, firing. "You know very well there
+_isn't_!"
+
+"You see him every day," Wolf said.
+
+"I _don't_ see him every day! But if I did, it wouldn't be Harry
+Redding's and Joe Anderson's business!"
+
+"No," Wolf said, more mildly, "but it might be mine!"
+
+Norma realized that he was softening under her distress, and she changed
+her tone.
+
+"Wolf, you know that you can trust me!" she said.
+
+"But I don't know anything about him!" Wolf reminded her. "I know that
+he's twice your age----"
+
+"He's thirty-eight!"
+
+"Thirty-eight, then--and I know that he's a loafer--a rich man who has
+nothing else to do but run around with women----"
+
+"I want to ask you to stop talking about something of which you are
+entirely ignorant!" Norma interrupted, hotly.
+
+"You're the one that's ignorant, Norma," Wolf said, stubbornly, not
+looking at her. "You are only a little girl; you think it's great fun to
+be married to one man, and flirting with another! What makes me sick is
+that a man like Liggett thinks he can get away with it, and you
+women----"
+
+"If you say that again, I'll not walk with you!" Norma burst in
+furiously.
+
+"Does it ever occur to you," Wolf asked, equally roused, "that you are
+my wife?"
+
+"Yes!" Norma answered, breathlessly. "Yes--it does! And why? Because I
+was afraid I was beginning to care too much for Chris Liggett--because I
+knew he loved me, he had told me so!--and I went to you because I wanted
+to be safe--and I told you so, too, Wolf Sheridan, the very day that we
+were married! I never lied to you! I told you I loved Chris, that I
+always had! And if you'd been _civil_ to me," rushed on Norma, beginning
+to feel tears mastering her, "if you'd been _decent_ to me, I would have
+gotten over it. I would never have seen him again anyway, after this
+week, for I told him this morning that I didn't want to go on meeting
+him--that it wasn't fair to you! But no, you don't trust me and you
+don't believe me, and consequently--consequently, I don't care what I
+do, and I'll make you sorry----"
+
+"Don't talk so wildly, Norma," Wolf warned her, in a tone suddenly quiet
+and sad. "Please don't--people will notice you!"
+
+"I don't care if they do!" Norma said. But she glanced about deserted
+Eighth Avenue uneasily none the less, and furtively dried her eyes upon
+a flimsy little transparent handkerchief that somehow tore at her
+husband's heart. "If you had been a little patient, Wolf----" she
+pleaded, reproachfully.
+
+"There are times when a man hasn't much use for patience, Norma," Wolf
+said, still with strange gentleness. "You _did_ tell me of liking
+Liggett--but I thought--I hoped, I guess----!" He paused, and then went
+on with sudden fierceness: "He's married, Norma, and you're married--I
+wish there was some way of letting you out of it, as far as I am
+concerned! Of course you don't have to go to California with me--if that
+helps. You can get your freedom, easily enough, after awhile. But as
+long as he's tied, it doesn't seem to me that he has any business----"
+
+His gentle tone disarmed her, and she took up Chris's defence eagerly.
+
+"Wolf, don't you believe there is such a thing as love? Just that two
+people find out that they belong to each other--whether it's right or
+wrong, or possible or impossible--and that it may last for ever?"
+
+"No," said Wolf, harshly, "I don't believe it! He's married--doesn't he
+love his wife?"
+
+"Well, of course he loves her! But this is the first time in all his
+life that he has--cared--this way!" Norma said.
+
+Wolf made no answer, and she felt that she had scored. They were in the
+station now, and weaving their way down toward the big concourse. Norma
+took her husband's arm.
+
+"Please--please--don't make scenes, Wolf! If you will just believe me
+that I wouldn't--truly I wouldn't!--hurt you and Aunt Kate for all the
+world----"
+
+"Ah, Norma," he said, quickly, "I can't take my wife on those terms!"
+And turning from the ticket window he added, sensibly: "Liggett is tied,
+of course. But would you like me to leave you here when I go West? Until
+you are surer of yourself--one way or another? You only have to say so!"
+
+She only had to say so. He had reached, of his own accord, the very
+point to which she long had hoped to bring him. But perversely, Norma
+did not quite like to have Wolf go off to Philadelphia with this
+unpalatable affirmative ringing in his ears. She looked down. A moment's
+courage now, and she would win everything--and more than everything!--to
+which Chris had ever urged her. But she felt oddly sad and even hurt by
+his willingness to give her her way.
+
+"All right!" he said, hastily. "That's understood. I'll tell Mother I
+don't want you to follow, for awhile. Good-bye, Norma! You're taking the
+next tube? Wait a minute--I want a _Post_----"
+
+Was he trying to show her how mean he could be? she thought, as with a
+heartache, and a confused sense of wrong and distress, she slowly went
+upon her way. Of course that parting was just bravado, of course he felt
+more than that! She resented it--she thought he had been unnecessarily
+unkind----
+
+But her spirits slowly settled themselves. Wolf knew what she felt, now,
+and they had really parted without bitterness. A pleasant sense of being
+her own mistress crept over her, her cheeks cooled, her fluttering
+heart came back to its normal beat. She began to hear herself telling
+Chris how courageous she had been.
+
+It was too bad--it was one of the sad things of life. But after all,
+love was love, in spite of Wolf's scepticism, and if it soothed Wolf to
+be rude, let him have that consolation! What did a little pain more or
+less signify now? There was no going back. Years from now Wolf would
+forgive her, recognizing that great love was its own excuse for being.
+"And if this sort of thing exists only to be crushed and killed," Norma
+wrote Chris a few days later, "then half the great pictures, the great
+novels, the great poems and dramas, the great operas, are lies. But you
+and I know that they are not lies!"
+
+She was unhappy at home, for Aunt Kate was grave and silent, Rose
+wrapped in the all-absorbing question of the tiny Catherine's meals, and
+Wolf neither came nor wrote on Saturday night. But in Chris's devotion
+she was feverishly and breathlessly happy, their meetings--always in
+public places, and without a visible evidence of their emotion--were
+hours of the most stimulating delight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+So matters went on for another ten days. Then suddenly, on a mid-week
+afternoon, Norma, walking home from a luncheon in a wild and stormy
+wind, was amazed to see the familiar, low-slung roadster waiting outside
+her aunt's door when she reached the steps. Chris jumped out and came to
+meet her as she looked bewilderedly toward it, a Chris curiously
+different in manner from the man she had left only an hour ago.
+
+"Norma!" he said, quickly, "I found a message when I got to the office.
+I was to call up Aunt Marianna's house at once. She's ill--_very_ ill.
+They want me, and they want you!"
+
+"Me?" she echoed, blankly. "What for?"
+
+"She's had a stroke," he said, still with that urgent and hurried air,
+"and Joseph--poor old fellow, he was completely broken up--said that she
+had been begging them to get hold of you!"
+
+Norma had gotten into the familiar front seat, but now she stayed him
+with a quick hand.
+
+"Wait a minute, Chris, I'll run up and tell Aunt Kate where I am going!"
+she said.
+
+"She's gone out. There's nobody there!" he assured her, glancing up at
+the apartment windows. "I knew you would be coming in, so I waited."
+
+"Then I'll telephone!" the girl said, settling herself again. "But what
+do you suppose she wants me for?" she asked, returning to the subject of
+the summons. "Have they--will they--send for Aunt Annie and Leslie, do
+you suppose?"
+
+"Leslie is in Florida with the Binneys, most unfortunately. Annie was in
+Baltimore yesterday, but I believe she was expected home to-day. Joseph
+said he had gotten hold of Hendrick von Behrens, and I told my clerk to
+get Acton, and to warn Miss Slater that Alice isn't to be frightened."
+
+"But, Chris--do you suppose she is dying?"
+
+"I don't know--one never does, of course, with paralysis."
+
+"Poor Aunt Alice--it will almost kill her!"
+
+"Yes, it will be terribly hard for her, harder than for any one," he
+answered. And Norma loved him for the grave sympathy that filled his
+voice, and for the poise that could make such a speech possible, under
+the circumstances, without ever a side glance for her.
+
+Then they reached the old house, ran up the steps, and were in the great
+dark hallway that already seemed to be filled with the shadow of change.
+
+Whispering, solemn-faced maids went to and fro; Joseph was red-eyed; the
+heavy fur coats of two doctors were flung upon chairs. Norma slipped
+from her own coat.
+
+"How is she, Joseph?"
+
+"I hardly know, Miss. You're to go up, please, and Regina was to tell
+one of the nurses at once that you had come, Miss." He delivered his
+message impassively enough, but then the human note must break through.
+"I've been with her since she was married, Miss--nigh forty years," the
+old man faltered, "and I'm afraid she is very bad--very bad, indeed!"
+
+"Oh, I _hope_ not!" Norma went noiselessly upstairs, Chris close behind
+her. Did she hope not? She hardly knew. But she knew that all this was
+strangely thrilling--this rush through the tossing windy afternoon to
+the old house, this sense of being a part of the emergency, this utter
+departure from the tedious routine of life.
+
+A serious-faced nurse took charge of them, and she and Chris followed
+her noiselessly into the familiar bedroom that yet looked so altered in
+its new lifeless order and emptiness. The clutter of personal
+possessions was already gone, chairs had been straightened and pushed
+back, and on the bed that had lately been frilled and embroidered in
+white and pink, and piled with foolish little transparent baby pillows,
+a fresh, flawless linen sheet was spread. Silence reigned in the wide
+chamber; but two doctors were standing by the window, and looked at the
+newcomers with interest, and a second nurse passed them on her way out.
+Norma vaguely noted the fire, burning clear and bright, the shaded light
+that showed a chart, on a cleared table, the absence of flowers and
+plants that made the place seem bare. But after one general impression
+her attention was riveted upon the sick woman, and with her heart
+beating quickly with fright she went to stand at the foot of the great
+walnut bed.
+
+Mrs. Melrose was lying with her head tipped back in pillows; her usually
+gentle, soft old face looked hard and lined, and was a dark red, and the
+scanty gray hair, brushed back mercilessly from the temples, and devoid
+of the usual puffs and transformations, made her look her full sixty
+years. Her eyes were half-open, but she did not move them, her lips
+seemed very dry, and occasionally she muttered restlessly, and a third
+nurse, bending above her, leaned anxiously near, to catch what she
+said, and perhaps murmur a soothing response.
+
+This nurse looked sharply at Norma, and breathed rather than whispered:
+"Mrs. Sheridan?" and when Norma answered with a nod, nodded herself in
+satisfaction.
+
+"She's been asking and asking for you," she said, in a low clear tone
+that oddly broke the unnatural silence of the room. Norma, hearing a
+stir behind her, looked back to see that both doctors had come over to
+the bed, and were looking down at their patient with a profound concern
+that their gray heads and their big spectacles oddly emphasized.
+
+"Mrs. Sheridan?" one of them questioned. Norma dared not use her voice,
+and nodded again. Immediately the doctor leaned over Mrs. Melrose, and
+said in a clear and encouraging tone: "Here is Mrs. Sheridan now!"
+
+Mrs. Melrose merely moaned heavily in answer, and Norma said softly, to
+the doctor who had spoken:
+
+"I think perhaps she was asking for my aunt--who is also Mrs. Sheridan!"
+
+Before the doctor, gravely considering, could answer, the sick woman
+startled them all by saying, almost fretfully, in a surprisingly clear
+and quiet voice:
+
+"No--no--no, I want you, Norma!"
+
+She groped blindly about with her hand, as she spoke, and Norma kneeled
+down, and covered it with both her own. Mrs. Melrose immediately began
+to breathe more easily, and sank at once into the stupor from which she
+had only momentarily roused.
+
+Norma looked for instruction to the doctor, who presently decided that
+there was nothing more to be gained for a time; she joined them
+presently, with Chris, in the adjoining room. This was the same old room
+of her first visit to the house, with the same rich old brocaded paper
+and fringed rep draperies, with the same pictures, and a few new ones,
+lined on the mantel.
+
+"Where are Mrs. von Behrens and Leslie?" Doctor Murray, who had known
+all the family intimately for years, asked Chris.
+
+"Is it so serious, Doctor?" Christopher asked in turn, when he had
+answered. The doctor, glancing toward the closed door, nodded gravely.
+
+"A matter of a day or two," he said, looking at the other old doctor for
+confirmation. "She was apparently perfectly normal last night, went to
+bed at her usual hour," he said, "this morning she complained of her
+head, when the maid went in at ten, said that she must have hurt
+it--struck it against something. The maid, a sensible young woman, was
+uneasy, and telephoned for me. Unfortunately, I was in Westchester this
+morning, but I got here at about one o'clock and found her as she is
+now. She has had a stroke--probably several slight shocks."
+
+"Why, but she was perfectly well day before yesterday!" Norma said, in
+amazement. "And only ten days ago she came back from Florida, and said
+that she never felt better!"
+
+"That is frequently the history of the disease," the second doctor said,
+sagely. And, glancing at his watch, he added, "I don't think you will
+need me again, Doctor Murray?"
+
+"What are the chances of her--knowing anybody?" Chris asked.
+
+"She may very probably have another lucid interval," Doctor Murray said.
+"If Mrs. Sheridan could arrange to stay, it would be advisable. She
+asked for her daughters, but she seemed even more anxious that we should
+send for--_you_." He glanced at Norma, with a little old-fashioned bow.
+
+Mrs. Sheridan could stay, of course. She would telephone home, and
+advise Aunt Kate, at once. Indeed, so keen was Norma's sense almost of
+enjoyment in this thrilling hour that she would have been extremely
+sorry to leave the house. It was sad, it was dreadful, of course, to
+think that poor old Aunt Marianna was so ill, but at the same time it
+was most dramatic. She and Chris settled themselves before the fire in
+the upstairs sitting-room with Doctor Murray, who entertained them with
+mild reminiscences of the Civil War. The storm was upon the city now,
+rain slashed at the windows and the wind howled bitterly.
+
+There was whispering in the old house, quiet footsteps, muffled voices
+at the door and telephone. At about six o'clock Chris went home, to tell
+Alice, with what tenderness he might, of the impending sorrow. Regina,
+who had been weeping bitterly, and would speak to no one, brought Norma
+and the doctor two smoking hot cups of bouillon on a tray.
+
+"And you mustn't get tired, Mrs. Sheridan," one of the nurses, herself
+healthily odorous of a beef and apple-pie dinner, said kindly to Norma,
+at about seven o'clock. "There'll be coffee and sandwiches all night.
+This is a part of our lives, you know, and we get used to it, but it's
+hard for those not accustomed to it."
+
+At about nine o'clock in the evening Chris came back. Alice had received
+the news bravely, he said; there had been no hysteria and she kept
+admirable control of herself, and he had left her ready for sleep. But
+it had hit her very hard. Miss Slater had promised him that she would
+put a sleeping powder into Alice's regular ten o'clock glass of hot
+milk, and let him know when she was safely off.
+
+"She is very thankful that you are here, she was uneasy every instant
+that I stayed away!" he said softly to Norma, and Norma nodded her
+approval. Long before eleven o'clock they had the report that Alice was
+sleeping soundly under the combined effect of the powder and Miss
+Slater's repeated and earnest assurance that there was no immediate
+danger as regarded her mother.
+
+Chris and Norma and the doctor and two of the nurses went down to the
+dining-room, and had sandwiches and coffee, and talked long and sadly of
+the briefness and mutability of mortal life. When they went upstairs
+again the doctor stretched out for some rest, on the sitting-room couch,
+and Norma went to her own old room, and got into her comfortable, thick
+padded wrapper and warm slippers. The night was still wet and stormy,
+and had turned cold. Hail rattled on the window sills.
+
+Then she crept into the sick-room, and joined the nurses in their
+unrelenting vigil. Mrs. Melrose was still lying back, her eyes
+half-open, her face darkly flushed, her lips moving in an incoherent
+mutter. Now and then they caught the syllables of Norma's name, and once
+she said "Kate!" so sharply that everyone in the sick chamber started.
+
+Norma, leaning back in a great chair by the bed, mused and pondered as
+the slow hours went by. The softened lights touched the nurses' crisp
+aprons, the fire was out now, and only the two softly palpitating disks
+from the shaded lamps dimly illumined the room.
+
+Annie and Theodore and Alice had all been born in this very room, Norma
+thought. She imagined Aunt Marianna, a handsome, stout, radiant young
+woman, in the bustles and pleats of the early eighties, with the flowing
+ruffles of Theodore's christening robe spreading over her lap. How
+wonderful life must have seemed to her then, rich and young, and adored
+by her husband, and with her first-born child receiving all the homage
+due the heir of the great name and fortune! Then came Annie, and some
+years later Alice, and how busy and happy their mother must have been
+with plenty of money for schools and frocks, trips to the country with
+her handsome, imperious children; trips to Europe when no desire need be
+denied them, all the world the playground for the fortunate Melroses!
+
+How short the perspective must look now, thought Norma, to that troubled
+brain that was struggling among closing shadows, nearer and nearer every
+slow clocktick to the end. How loathsome it must be to the prisoned
+spirit, this handsome, stifling room, this army of maids and nurses and
+doctors so decorously resigned to facing the last scene of all. Why, the
+poorest child in the city to-night, healthily asleep in some unspeakable
+makeshift for a bed, possessed what all the Melrose money could not buy
+for this moaning, suffocating old autocrat.
+
+"I should like to die out on a hillside, under the stars," thought
+Norma, "with no one to watch me. This is--somehow--so horrible!"
+
+And she crept toward the bed and slipped to her knees again, forcing
+herself against her inclination--for somehow prayers seemed to have
+nothing to do with this scene--to pray for the departing soul.
+
+"Norma," the old lady said, suddenly, opening her eyes. She looked
+quietly and intelligently at the girl.
+
+"Yes, dear!" Norma stammered, with a frightened glance toward the
+nurses.
+
+These were instantly intent, at the bedside. But Mrs. Melrose paid no
+attention to them. She patted Norma's hand.
+
+"Late for you, dear!" she whispered. "Night!" Obediently she drank
+something the nurse put to her lips, and when she spoke it was more
+clearly. A moment later Doctor Murray had her pulse between his
+nerveless fingers. She moved her eyes lazily to smile at him. "Tide
+running out, old friend!" she said, in a deep, rich voice. The doctor
+smiled, shaking his head, but Norma saw his eyes glisten behind his
+glasses.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Melrose frowned, and began to show excitement.
+
+"Norma!" she said, quickly. "I want Chris!"
+
+"Right here, Aunt Marianna!" Norma answered, soothingly. And Chris was
+indeed leaning over the bed almost before she finished speaking.
+
+"I want to talk to you and Chris," the old lady said, contentedly
+closing her eyes. "Everybody else out!" she whispered.
+
+The room was immediately cleared. "It can't hurt her now!" Doctor Murray
+looked rather than said to Norma as he passed her. Chris watched the
+closing doors, sat beside the bed's head with one arm half-supporting
+his mother-in-law's pillows.
+
+"We're all alone, Aunt Marianna," he said. "Leslie and Annie will be
+here in the morning, and Alice told me to tell you that she hoped----"
+
+"Chris," the sick woman interrupted, gazing at him with an intense and
+painful stare, "this child here--Norma! I--I must straighten it all out
+now, Chris. Kate knows. Kate has all the papers--letters--Louison's
+letters! Ask Kate----"
+
+She shut her eyes. Norma and Chris looked at one another in
+bewilderment. There was a long silence.
+
+"So now you know!" Mrs. Melrose said, presently, returning to full
+consciousness as naturally as she had before. "I told you, didn't I?"
+she asked, faintly anxious.
+
+"Don't bother now, Aunt Marianna," the girl begged in distress.
+"To-morrow----"
+
+"Louison," Mrs. Melrose said, "was Annie's French maid--very superior
+girl!"
+
+"I remember her--Theodore's wife," Chris said, eager to help her.
+
+"And she was this girl's mother," Mrs. Melrose added, clasping Norma's
+fingers. "You understand that, Chris?"
+
+"Yes, darling--we understand!" Norma said, with a nod to Chris that he
+was to humour her. But Chris looked only strangely troubled.
+
+"Annie's poor baby lived--Kate brought it home from France, and we named
+it Leslie," the invalid said, clearly. "I couldn't--I couldn't forget
+it, Chris. I used to go see it--at Kate's. And then, when it was three,
+I met Louison--poor girl, I had been cruel to her--and Theodore was far
+off in California--dying, we knew. And I met Louison in Brooklyn. And I
+had a sudden idea, Chris! I told her to go to Kate, and get Annie's
+baby, and bring it to me as if it was her own. I told her to! I told her
+to say that it was her baby--Theodore's baby. And she did, Chris, and I
+paid her well for it. She brought Leslie here, and Annie never
+knew--nobody ever knew! But I never knew that Louison had a baby of her
+own, Chris--I never knew that! Louison hated me, and she never told me
+she had a little girl. No--no--no, I never knew that!"
+
+"Then Leslie--is--Annie's child by Mueller, the riding master!" Chris
+whispered, staring blindly ahead of him. "And what--what became of the
+other child--Theodore's child?"
+
+"Louison kept her until she was five," the old lady explained, eagerly,
+"and then she wanted to marry again, and she had to go live in a wild
+sort of place, in Canada. She didn't want to take the little girl there,
+and she remembered Kate Sheridan, who had had the other baby, and who
+had been so good to it--so devoted to it! And she went there, Chris, and
+left her baby there."
+
+"And that baby----" Chris began.
+
+"Yes. That was Norma!" Mrs. Melrose said. "It is all Norma's, the whole
+thing--and you must take care that she gets it, Chris. I--even my will,
+dear, only gives Norma the Melrose Building and some bonds. But those
+are for Leslie, now, all the rest--the whole estate goes to Theodore's
+child--Norma. You must forgive me if I did it all wrong. I meant it for
+the best. I never knew that you were living, dear, until Kate brought
+you here three years ago. She didn't dare do it until your mother died;
+she had promised she would never tell a living soul. But Louison
+softened toward the end, and wrote Kate she must use her own judgment.
+And Kate--Kate--knows all about it----"
+
+The voice thickened. The old lady raised herself in bed.
+
+"That man--behind you, Chris!" she gasped. Chris put her down again,
+Norma flew for help. The muttering and the heavy breathing recommenced.
+Nurses and doctors ran back, Regina came to kneel at the foot of the
+bed.
+
+Another slight stroke, they said later, when they were all about the
+fire in the next room again. Norma was white, her eyes glittering, her
+bitten lips scarlet in her colourless face. Chris looked stunned.
+
+But he found time for just one aside, as the endless night wore on.
+Annie had arrived, superbly horrified and stricken, and Acton was there.
+Mrs. Melrose was still breathing. The sickly light of a winter morning
+was tugging at the shutters.
+
+"Norma," Chris said, "do you realize what a tremendous thing has
+happened to you? Do you realize who you are? You are a rich woman now,
+my dear!"
+
+"But do you believe it?" she asked, in a low tone.
+
+"I know it is true! It explains everything," he answered. "It will be a
+cruel blow to Leslie--poor child, and Annie, too. Alice, I think, need
+never know. But Norma--even though this doesn't seem the time or the
+place, let me be the first to congratulate you on your new position--my
+old friend Theodore's daughter, and the last of the Melroses!"
+
+At seven o'clock in the morning Norma, exhausted with excitement and
+emotion, took a hot bath, and finding things unchanged in the sick-room,
+except that the lights had been extinguished, and the winter daylight
+was drearily mingling with firelight, went on downstairs for coffee and
+for one more conference with the blinking nurses and the tired old
+doctor. She found herself too shaken to eat, but the hot drink was
+wonderfully soothing and stimulating, and for the first time, as she
+stood looking out into the street from the dining-room window, a sense
+of power and pride began to thrill her. Old people must die, of course,
+and after this sad and dark scene was over--then what? Then what? Then
+she would be in Leslie's long-envied place, the heiress, the important
+figure among all the changes that followed.
+
+"If you please, Mrs. Sheridan----!" It was Joseph, haggard and white,
+who had come softly behind her to interrupt her thoughts. She glanced
+with quick apprehension toward the hall stairway. There had been a
+change----?
+
+"No, it was the telephone, Miss." Norma, puzzled by the old butler's
+stricken air, went to the instrument. It was Miss Slater.
+
+"Norma," Miss Slater said, agitatedly, "is Mr. Liggett--there?"
+
+"I think he's with Aunt Annie, upstairs, but he's going home about
+eight," Norma answered. "There is no change. Is Aunt Alice awake? Mr.
+Liggett wanted to be there when she woke!"
+
+"No--she's not awake," the other woman's voice said, solemnly. "She went
+to sleep like a child last night, Norma. But about half an hour ago I
+went in--she hadn't called me--it was just instinct, I suppose! She was
+lying--hadn't changed her position even----"
+
+"_What's that!_" Norma cried, in a whisper that was like a scream. The
+grave voice and the sudden break of tears chilled her to the soul.
+
+"We've had Doctor Merrill here," Miss Slater said. "Norma, you'll have
+to tell him--God help us all! She's gone!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+Mrs. Melrose never spoke again, or showed another flicker of the clear
+and normal intelligence that she had shown in the night. But she still
+breathed, and the long, wet day dragged slowly, in the big, mournful old
+house, until late in the unnatural afternoon. People--all sorts of
+people--were coming and going now, and being answered, or being turned
+away; a few privileged old friends came softly up the carpeted stairs,
+and cried quietly with Annie, who looked unbelievably old and ashen
+under the double shock. Norma began to hear, on all sides, respectful
+and sympathetic references to "the family." The family felt this, and
+would like that, the family was not seeing any one, the family must be
+protected and considered in every way. The privileged old friends talked
+with strange men in the lower hall, and were heard saying "I suppose so"
+dubiously, to questions of hats and veils and carriages and the church.
+
+Chris was gone all day, but at four o'clock an urgent message was sent
+him, and he and Acton came into Mrs. Melrose's room about half an hour
+later, for the end. His face was ghastly, and he seemed almost unable to
+understand what was said to him, but he was very quiet.
+
+Norma never forgot the scene. She knelt on one side of the bed, praying
+with all the concentration and fervour that she could rally under the
+circumstances. But her frightened, tired eyes were impressed with every
+detail of the dark old stately bedroom none the less. This was the end
+of the road, for youth and beauty and power and wealth, this sunken,
+unrecognizable face, this gathering of shadows among the dull, wintry
+shadows of the afternoon.
+
+Annie was kneeling, too, her fine, unringed hands clasping one of her
+mother's hands. Chris sat against the back of the bed, half-supporting
+the piled pillows, in a futile attempt to make more easy the fighting
+breath, and Acton and Hendrick von Behrens, grave and awed, stood beside
+him, their faces full of sympathy and distress. There was an outer
+fringe of nurses, doctors, maids; there was even an audible whisper from
+one of them that caused Annie to frown, annoyed and rebuking, over her
+shoulder.
+
+Minutes passed. Norma, pressing her cheek against the hand she held,
+began a Litany, very low. Suddenly the dying woman opened her eyes.
+
+"Yes--yes--yes!" she whispered, eagerly, and with a break in her
+frightened voice Norma began more clearly, "Our Father, Who art in
+Heaven----" and they all joined in, somewhat awkwardly and uncertainly.
+
+Mrs. Melrose sank back; she had raised herself just a fraction of an
+inch to speak. Now her head fell, and Norma saw the florid colour drain
+from her face as wine drains from an overturned glass. A leaden pallor
+settled suddenly upon her. When the prayer was finished they
+waited--eyed each other--waited again. There was no other breath.
+
+"Doctor----" Annie cried, choking. The doctor gently laid down the limp
+hand he had raised; it was already cool. And behind him the maids began
+to sob and wail unrebuked.
+
+Norma went out into the hall dazed and shaken. This was her first sight
+of death. It made her feel a little faint and sick. Chris came and
+talked to her for a few minutes; Annie had collapsed utterly, and was
+under the doctor's care; Acton broke down, too, and Norma heard Chris
+attempting to quiet him. There was audible sobbing all over the house
+when, an hour or two later, Alice's beautiful body in a magnificent
+casket was brought to lie in the old home beside the mother she had
+adored.
+
+The fragrance of masses and masses of damp flowers began to penetrate
+everywhere, and Norma made occasional pilgrimages in to Annie's bedside,
+and told her what beautiful offerings were coming and coming and coming.
+Joseph had reinforcements of sympathetic, black-clad young men, who kept
+opening the front door, and murmuring at the muffled telephone. Annie's
+secretary, a young woman about Norma's age, was detailed by Hendrick to
+keep cards and messages straight--for every little courtesy must be
+acknowledged on Annie's black-bordered card within a few weeks'
+time--and Norma heard Joseph telephoning several of the prominent
+florists that Mr. Liggett had directed that all flowers were to come to
+the Melrose house. Nothing was overlooked.
+
+When Norma went to her room, big boxes were on the bed, boxes that held
+everything that was simple and beautiful in mourning: plain, charming
+frocks, a smart long seal-bordered coat, veils and gloves, small and
+elegant hats, even black-bordered handkerchiefs. She dressed herself
+soberly, yet not without that mournful thrill that fitness and
+becomingness lends to bereavement. When she went back to Annie's side
+Annie was in beautiful lengths of lustreless crape, too; they settled
+down to low, sad conversation, with a few of the privileged old friends.
+Chris was nowhere to be seen, but at about six o'clock Acton came in to
+show them a telegram from Leslie, flying homeward. Judge Lee was
+hurrying to them from Washington, and for a few minutes Annie's
+handsome, bewildered little boys came in with a governess, and she cried
+over them, and clung to them forlornly.
+
+After a distracted half-hour in the dining-room, when she and Acton and
+Annie's secretary had soup and salad from a sort of buffet meal that was
+going on there indefinitely, Norma went upstairs to find that the door
+to the front upper sitting-room, closed for hours, was set ajar, and to
+see a vague mass of beautiful flowers within--white and purple flowers,
+and wreaths of shining dark round leaves. With a quick-beating heart she
+stepped softly inside, and went to kneel at the nearer coffin, and cover
+her face with her shaking hands. The thick sweetness of the wet leaves
+and blossoms enveloped her. Candles were burning; there was no other
+light.
+
+Two or three other women were in the room, catching their breath up
+through their nostrils with little gasps, pressing folded handkerchiefs
+against their trembling mouths, letting fresh tears well from their
+tear-reddened eyes. Chris was standing a few feet away from the
+white-clad, flower-circled, radiant sleeper who had been Alice; his arms
+were folded, his splendid dark gaze fell upon her with a sort of sombre
+calm; he seemed entirely unconscious of the pitying and sorrowful
+friends who were moving noiselessly to and fro.
+
+In the candlelight there was a wavering smile on Alice's quiet face, her
+broad forehead was unruffled, and her mouth mysteriously sweet. Norma's
+eyes fell upon a familiar black coat, on the kneeling woman nearest her,
+and with a start she recognized Aunt Kate.
+
+They left the room together a few minutes later, and Norma led her aunt
+to her own room, where they talked tenderly of the dead. The older woman
+was touched by the slender little black figure, and badly shaken by the
+double tragedy, and she cried quite openly. Norma had Regina send her up
+some tea, and petted and fussed about her in her little daughterly way.
+
+"I saw about Miss Alice this morning, but I had no idea the poor old
+lady----!" Mrs. Sheridan commented sadly. "Well, well, it seems only
+yesterday that here, in this very house--and they were all young
+then----" Aunt Kate fell silent, and mused for a moment, before adding
+briskly: "But now, will they want you, Norma, after the funeral, I mean?
+Wolf wrote me----"
+
+"I don't think Aunt Annie wants me now," Norma said, and with a
+heightened colour she added, suddenly, "But I belong here, now, Aunt
+Kate--I know who I am at last!"
+
+Mrs. Sheridan's face did not move; but an indefinable tightness came
+about her mouth, and an indefinable sharpness to her eyes. She looked at
+Norma without speaking.
+
+"Aunt Marianna told me," the girl said, simply. "You're sorry," she
+added, quickly, "I can see you are!"
+
+"No--I wouldn't say that, Baby!" But Mrs. Sheridan spoke heavily, and
+ended on a sigh. There was a short silence.
+
+Then Regina came in with a note for Norma, who read it, and turned to
+her aunt.
+
+"It's Chris--he wants very much to see you before you go away," she
+said. "I wonder if you would ask Mr. Liggett to come in here, Regina?"
+But five minutes later, when Chris came in, he looked so ill that she
+was quick to spare him. "Chris, wouldn't to-morrow do--you look so
+tired!"
+
+"I _am_ tired," Chris said, after quietly accepting Mrs. Sheridan's
+murmured condolence, with his hand holding hers, as if he liked the big,
+sympathetic woman. "But I want this off my mind before I see Judge Lee!
+You are right, Mrs. Sheridan," he said, with a sort of boyish gruffness,
+not yet releasing her hands, "my wife was an angel. I always knew
+it--but I wish I could tell her so just once more!"
+
+"Ah, that's the very hardest thing about death," Mrs. Sheridan said,
+sitting down, and quite frankly wiping from her eyes the tears that
+sympathy for his sorrow had made spring again. "We'd always want one
+more hour!"
+
+"But Norma perhaps has told you----?" Chris said, in a different tone.
+"Told you of the--the remarkable talk we had yesterday--with my poor
+mother-in-law----"
+
+Kate Sheridan nodded gravely.
+
+"Yes," she answered, almost reluctantly, "Norma is Theodore Melrose's
+child. I have letters--all their letters. I knew her mother, that was
+Louison Courtot, well. It was a mixed-up business--but you've got the
+whole truth at last. I've lost more than one night's sleep over my share
+of it, Mr. Liggett, thinking who this child was, and whether I had the
+right to hold my tongue.
+
+"I was a widow when I went to Germany with Mrs. Melrose. She begged and
+begged me to, for she was sick with worry about Miss Annie. Miss Annie
+had been over there about eight months, and something she'd written had
+made her mother feel that she was ill, or in trouble. Well, I didn't
+want to leave my own children, but she coaxed me so hard that I went. We
+sailed without cabling, and went straight to Leipsic, and to the
+dreadful, dreary pension that Miss Annie was in--a dismal, lonely place.
+She came downstairs to see her mother, and I'll never forget the scream
+she gave, for she'd had no warning, poor child, and Mueller had taken all
+her money, and she was--well, we could see how she was. She began
+laughing and crying, and her mother did, too, but Mrs. Melrose stopped
+after a few minutes, and we couldn't stop Miss Annie at all. She
+shrieked and sobbed and strangled until we saw she was ill, and her
+mother gave me one look, and bundled her right out to the carriage, and
+off to a better place, and we got a doctor and a nurse. But all that
+night she was in danger of her life. I went in to her room that evening,
+to put things in order, and she was lying on the bed like a dead
+thing--white, sick, and with her eyes never moving off her mother's
+face. I could hear her murmuring the whole story, the shame and the
+bitter cruelty of it, crying sometimes--and her mother crying, too.
+
+"'And, Mama,' she said--the innocence of her! 'Mama, did the doctor tell
+you that there might have been a baby?--I didn't know it myself until a
+few weeks ago! And that's why they're so frightened about me now. But,'
+she said, beginning to cry again, 'I should have hated it--I've always
+hated it, and I'd rather have it all over--I don't want to have to face
+anything more!'
+
+"Well, it looked then as if she couldn't possibly live through the
+night, and all her mother could think of was to comfort her. She told
+her that they would go away and forget it all, and Miss Annie clung to
+her through the whole terrible thing. We none of us got any sleep that
+night, and I think it was at about three o'clock the next morning that I
+crept to the door, and the doctor--Doctor Leslie--an old English doctor
+who was very kind, came to the door and gave me the poor little pitiful
+baby in a blanket. I almost screamed when I took it, for the poor little
+soul was alive, working her little mouth! I took her to my room, and
+indeed I baptized her myself--I named her Mary for my mother, and Leslie
+for the doctor, but I never thought she'd need a name--then. She was
+under four pounds, and with a little claw like a monkey's paw, and so
+thin we didn't dare dress her--we thought she was three months too soon,
+then, and I just sat watching her, waiting for her to die, and thinking
+of my own----!
+
+"Miss Annie was given up the next day, she'd gone into a brain fever,
+but my poor little soul was wailing a good healthy wail--I remember I
+cried bitterly when the doctor told me not to hope for her! But she
+lived--and on the fourth day Mrs. Melrose sent us away, and we went and
+stayed in the country for two months after that.
+
+"Then I had a letter from the Riviera, the first that'd come. Miss Annie
+was getting well, her hair was coming out curly, and she hardly
+remembered anything about what had happened at all. She wasn't nineteen
+then, poor child! She had cried once, her mother wrote, and had said she
+thanked God the baby had died and that was all she ever said of it.
+
+"I brought the baby home, and for nearly three years she lived with my
+own, and of course Mrs. Melrose paid me for it. And then one day Louison
+Courtot came to see me--I'd known her, of course--Mr. Theodore's wife,
+that had been Miss Annie's maid. She had a letter from Mrs. Melrose, and
+she took Leslie away, and gave her to her grandmother--just according to
+plan. Well, I didn't like it--though it gave the child her rights, but
+it didn't seem honest. I had no call to interfere, and a few months
+later Mrs. Melrose gave me the double house in Brooklyn, that you'll
+well remember, Norma--and your own father made out the deed of gift, Mr.
+Chris----!
+
+"And then, perhaps a year later, Louison came to call on me again, and
+with her was a little girl--four years old, and I looked at her, and
+looked at Louison, and I said, 'My God--that's a Melrose!' She said,
+yes, it was Theodore's child."
+
+"Norma!" Chris said.
+
+"Norma--and I remember her as if it was yesterday! With a blue velvet
+coat on her, and a white collar, and the way she dragged off her little
+mittens to go over and play with Rose and Wolf--and the little coaxing
+air she had! So then Louison told me the story, how she had never told
+Mrs. Melrose that Theodore really had a daughter, because she hated her
+so! But she was going to be married again, and go to Canada, and she
+wanted me to keep the baby until she could send for her. I said I would
+see how it went, but I could see then that there never was in the
+world----" Mrs. Sheridan interrupted herself, coughed, and glanced at
+the girl. "Well, we liked Norma right then and there!" she finished, a
+little tamely.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Kate!" Norma said, smiling through tears, her hand tight upon
+the older woman's, "you never will praise me!"
+
+"So Norma," the story went on, "had her supper that night between my two
+children, and for fourteen years she never knew that she wasn't our own.
+And perhaps she never would have known if Louison hadn't written me that
+she was in a hospital--she was to have an operation, and she was willing
+at last to make peace with her husband's family. In the same letter was
+her husband's note that she was gone, so I had to use my own judgment
+then. And when I heard Norma talk of the rich girls she saw in the
+bookstore, Mr. Chris, and knew how she loved what money could do for
+her, it seemed to me that at least I must tell her grandmother the
+truth. So we came here, three years ago, and if it wasn't for Miss
+Alice's mistake about her, perhaps the story would have come out then!
+But that's all the truth."
+
+Chris nodded, his arms folded on his chest, his tired face very
+thoughtful.
+
+"It makes her a rich woman, Mrs. Sheridan," he said.
+
+"I suppose so, sir. I understand Mr. Melrose--the old gentleman--left
+everything to his son, Theodore."
+
+"But not only that," Chris said. "She can claim every penny that has
+ever been paid over to Leslie, all through her minority, and since she
+came of age, and she also inherits the larger part of her grandmother's
+estate, under the will. Probably Mrs. Melrose would have changed that,
+if she had lived when all this came to light, and given that same legacy
+to Leslie, but we can't act on that supposition. The court will
+probably feel that a very grave injustice has been done Norma, and exact
+the full arrears."
+
+"But, Chris," Norma said, quickly, "surely some way can be found to
+_give_ Leslie all that would have come to me----"
+
+"Well, that, of course, would be pure generosity on your part!" he said,
+quietly. "However, it would seem to me desirable all round," he added,
+"to keep this in the family."
+
+"Oh, I think so!" Norma agreed, eagerly.
+
+"Annie and Hendrick must be informed, and, as Leslie's mother, Annie
+will provide for her some day, of course. We'll discuss all that later.
+But to-day I only wanted to clear up a few points before I see Judge
+Lee. He has the will, I believe. He will be here to-morrow morning. In
+the meanwhile, I think I would say nothing, Norma, just because Annie is
+so upset, and if Leslie heard any garbled story, before she got
+here----"
+
+"Oh, I agree with you entirely, Chris! Anything that makes it easier all
+round!" Norma could afford to be magnanimous and agreeable. She would
+not have been human not to feel herself the most interesting figure in
+all this dramatic situation, not to know that thoughtfulness and
+generosity were the most charming parts of her new role. Quietly,
+affectionately, she went to the door with Aunt Kate.
+
+"I wish I could go home with you!" she said. "But I think they need me
+here! And if Wolf should come up Saturday, Aunt Kate, you'll tell him
+about the funeral----"
+
+"Rose said he wasn't coming up on Saturday," his mother said. "But if he
+does, of course he'll understand! Remember, Norma," she added, drawing
+the girl aside a moment, in the lower hall, "remember that they've all
+been very kind to you, dear! It's going to be hard for them all!"
+
+"Yes, I know!" Norma said, hastily, the admonition not to her taste.
+
+"And what you and Wolf will do with all that money----!" her aunt mused,
+shaking her head. "Well, one thing at a time! But I know," she finished,
+fondly, "my girl will show them all what a generous and a lovely nature
+she has, in all the changes and shifts!"
+
+Clever Aunt Kate! Norma smiled to herself as she went upstairs. She had
+hundreds of times before this guided the girl by premature confidence
+and praise; she knew how Norma loved the approbation of those about her.
+
+Not but what Norma meant to be everything that was broad and considerate
+now; she had assumed that position from the beginning. Leslie's chagrin,
+Aunt Annie's consternation, should be respected and humoured. They had
+sometimes shown her the arrogant, the supercilious side of the Melrose
+nature, in the years gone by. Now she, the truest Melrose of them all,
+would show them real greatness of soul. She would talk it all over with
+Wolf, of course----
+
+She missed Wolf. It was, as always, a curiously unsatisfying atmosphere,
+this of the old Melrose house. The whispers, the hushed footsteps, the
+lowered voices, Aunt Annie's plaintive heroism in her superb crapes, the
+almost belligerent loyalty of the intimate friends who praised and
+marvelled at her, the costly flowers--thousands of dollars' worth of
+them--the extra men helping Joseph to keep everything decorous and
+beautiful--somehow it all sickened Norma, and she wished that Wolf
+could come and take her for a walk, and talk to her about it. He would
+be interested in it all, and he would laugh at her account of the
+undertakers, and he would break into elementary socialism when the cost
+of the whole pompous pageant was estimated.
+
+And what would he think of her new-found wealth? Norma tried to imagine
+it, but somehow she could not think of Wolf as very much affected. He
+hated society, primarily, and he would never be idle, not for the
+treasures of India. He would let her spend it as she pleased, and go on
+working rapturously at his valves and meters and gauges, perhaps
+delighted if she bought him the costliest motor-car made, or the finest
+of mechanical piano-players, but quite as willing that the pearls about
+his wife's throat should cost fifty dollars as fifty thousand, and quite
+as anxious that the heiress of the Melroses should "make good" with his
+associate workers as if she had been still a little clerk from Biretta's
+Bookshop!
+
+But cheerfully indifferent as he was to everything that made life worth
+living to such a man as Christopher Liggett, she knew that he would not
+go to California without her unless there was a definite break between
+them. She knew she could not persuade him to leave her here, as a normal
+and pleasant solution, just until everything was settled, and until they
+could see a little further ahead. No, Wolf was annoyingly conventional
+where his wife was concerned: her place was with him, unless for some
+secondary reason they had decided to part. And she knew that if he let
+her go it would be because he felt that he never should have claimed
+her--that, in the highest sense, he never had had her at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Moving automatically through the solemn scenes of the next two days,
+that, mused Norma, must be the solution. Wolf must go alone to
+California. Not because she did not love him--who could help loving him
+indeed?--but because she loved Chris more--or differently, at least, and
+she belonged to Chris's world now, by every right of birth, wealth, and
+position.
+
+"Of course you must stay here," Chris said, positively, on the one
+occasion when they spoke of her plans. "In the first place, there is the
+estate to settle, we shall need you. Then there are books--pictures--all
+that sort of thing to manage, the old servants to dispose of, and
+probably this house to sell--but we can discuss that. Judge Lee has felt
+for a long time that this is the right site for a big apartment house,
+especially if we can get hold of Boyer's plot. You had better take a
+suite at one of the hotels, and later we can look up the right sort of
+an apartment for you."
+
+Not a word of his personal hopes; missing them she felt oddly cheated.
+
+"Wolf goes to California next month," she said. Christopher gave her a
+sharp, quizzing look.
+
+"But I think you had decided, weeks ago, that you were not going?"
+
+"Yes--I've told him so!" she faltered. She felt strangely lost and
+forlorn, releasing her hold on Wolf, and yet not able to claim
+Christopher's support. It was contemptible--it was weak in her, she
+felt, but she could not quite choke down her hunger for one reassuring
+word from Chris. "I feel so--lonely, Chris," she said.
+
+He gave a quick, uneasy glance about the breakfast-room, where they were
+having a hasty three-o'clock luncheon. No one was within hearing.
+
+"You understand my position now," he said.
+
+"Oh, of course!" But she felt oddly chilled. Chris as the bereaved
+husband and son-in-law was perfect, of course, almost too perfect. If
+Wolf loved a woman----
+
+But then the fancy of Wolf, married, and confessedly loving a woman who
+was another man's wife, was absurd, anyway. Wolf did not belong to the
+world where such things were common, it was utterly foreign to his
+nature, with all the rest. Wolf did not go to operas and picture
+galleries and polo matches; he did not know how to comport himself at
+afternoon teas or summer lunches at the country club.
+
+And Norma's life would be spent in this atmosphere now. She would get
+her frocks from Madame Modiste, and her hats from the Avenue
+specialists; she would be a smart and a conspicuous little figure at
+Lenox and Bar Harbour and Newport; she would spend her days with
+masseuses and dressmakers, and with French and Italian teachers. She
+could travel, some day--but here the thought of Chris crept in, and she
+was a little hurt at Chris. His exquisite poise, his sureness of being
+absolutely correct, was one of his charms. But it was a little hard not
+to have the depth of his present feeling for her sweep him off his feet
+just occasionally. He had, indeed, shown her far more daring favour
+when Alice was alive--meeting Norma down town, driving her about,
+walking with her where they might reasonably fear to be seen now and
+then.
+
+It came to her painfully that, even there, Chris's respect for the
+conventions of his world was not at fault. Flirtations, "crushes,"
+"cases," and "suitors" were entirely acceptable in the circle that Chris
+so conspicuously ornamented. To pay desperate attentions to a pretty
+young married woman was quite excusable; it would have been universally
+understood.
+
+But to show the faintest trace of interest in her while his wife lay
+dead, and while his house was plunged into mourning, no--Chris would not
+do that. That would not be good form, it would be censured as not being
+compatible with the standard of a gentleman. His conduct now must be
+beyond criticism, he was the domestic dictator in this, as in every
+emergency. Norma listened while he and Hendrick and Annie discussed the
+funeral.
+
+They were in the big upstairs bedroom that Annie had appropriated to
+herself during these days. Annie was resting on a couch in a nest of
+little pillows, her long bare hands very white against the blackness of
+her gown. Hendrick did most of the talking, Chris listening
+thoughtfully, accepting, rejecting, Norma a mere spectator. She decided
+that Annie was playing her part with a stimulating consciousness of its
+dignity, and that Chris was not much better. Honest, red-faced Hendrick
+was only genuinely anxious to arrange these details without a scene.
+
+"I take Annie up the aisle," Chris said, "you'll be a pall-bearer,
+Hendrick. Mrs. Lee says that the Judge feels he is too old to serve, so
+he will follow me, with Leslie. She gets here this afternoon. Then
+Acton brings Norma, and that fills the family pew. Now, in the next
+pew----"
+
+It reminded Norma of something, she could not for a moment remember
+what. Then it came to her. Of course!--Leslie's wedding. They had
+discussed precedence and pews just that way. Music, too. Hendrick was
+making a note of music--Alice's favourite dirge was to be played, and
+"Come Ye Disconsolate" which had been sung at Theodore's funeral,
+thirteen years ago, and at his father's, seven years before that, was to
+be sung by the famous church choir.
+
+The church was unfortunately small, so cards were to be given to the few
+hundreds that it would accommodate. Hendrick suggested a larger church,
+but Annie shut her eyes, leaning back, and faintly shaking her head.
+
+"Please--Hendrick--_please_!" she articulated, wearily. "Mama loved that
+church--and there's so little that we can do now--so little that she
+ever wanted, dear old saint!"
+
+It was not hypocrisy, Norma thought. Annie had been a good daughter.
+Indeed she had been unusually loyal, as the daughters of Annie's set saw
+their filial duties. But something in this overwhelming, becoming grief,
+combined with so lively a sense of what was socially correct, jarred
+unpleasantly on the younger woman. Of course, funerals had to have
+management, like everything else. And it was only part of Annie's code
+to believe that an awkwardness now, a social error ever so faint, an
+opportunity given the world for amusement or criticism, would reflect
+upon the family and upon the dead.
+
+Norma carried on long mental conversations with Wolf, criticizing or
+defending the Melroses. She imagined herself telling him of the shock it
+had given her to realize that her grandmother's body was barely cold
+before an autocratic and noisy French hairdresser had arrived, demanding
+electric heat and hand-glasses as casually as if his customer had been
+the bustling, vain old lady of a week ago. She laughed secretly whenever
+she recalled the solemn undertaker who had solicited her own aid in
+filling out a blank. His first melancholy question, "And thud dame of
+the father----" Norma had momentarily supposed to be the beginning of a
+prayer, and it had been with an almost hysterical revulsion of feeling
+that she had said: "Oh, her father's name? Oh, Francis Dabney Murison."
+
+Wolf, who would not laugh at one tenth of the things that amused Chris,
+or that Annie found richly funny, would laugh at these little glimpses
+of a formal funeral, Norma knew, and he would remember other odd bits of
+reading that were in the same key--from Macaulay, or Henry George, or a
+scrap of newspaper that had chanced to be pasted upon an engine-house
+wall.
+
+Leslie came into the house late on the afternoon of Friday, and there
+was much fresh crying between her and Annie. Leslie had on new black,
+too, "just what I could grab down there," she explained--and was pettish
+and weary with fatigue and the nervous shock. She gave only the side of
+her cheek to Acton's dutiful kiss, and answered his question about the
+baby with an impatient, "Oh, heavens, she's all _right_! What could be
+the matter with her? She did have a cold, but now she's all right--and
+when I'm half-crazy about Grandma and poor Aunt Alice, I do _wish_ you
+wouldn't take me up so quickly. I've been travelling all night, and my
+head is splitting! If it was _I_ that had the cold, I don't believe
+you'd be so fussy!"
+
+"Poor little girl, it's hard for you not to have seen them once more,"
+Christopher said, tenderly, failing to meet the half-amused and
+half-indignant glance that Norma sent him. Leslie burst into
+self-pitying tears, and held tight to his hand, as they all sat down in
+Annie's room.
+
+"I believe I feel it most for you, Uncle Chris," she sobbed.
+
+"It changes my life--ends it as surely as it did hers," Chris said,
+quietly. "Just now--well, I don't see ahead--just now. After awhile I
+believe she'll come back to me--her sweetness and goodness and
+bigness--for Alice was the biggest woman, and the finest, that I ever
+knew; and then I'll try to live again--just as she would have had me.
+And meanwhile, I try to comfort myself that I tried to show her, in
+whatever clumsy way I could, that I appreciated her!"
+
+"You not only showed her, you showed all the world, Chris," Annie said,
+stretching a hand toward him. Norma felt a sudden uprising of some
+emotion singularly akin to contempt.
+
+A maid signalled her, and she stepped to the dressing-room door. A
+special delivery letter had come from Wolf. The maid went away again,
+but Norma stood where she was, reading it. Wolf had written:
+
+    DEAR NORMA,
+
+    Mother wrote me of all that you have been going through, and I
+    am as sorry as I can be for all their trouble, and glad that
+    they have you to help them through. Mother also told me of the
+    change in your position there; I had always known vaguely that
+    we didn't understand it all. I remember now your coming to us
+    in Brooklyn, and your mother crying when she went away. I know
+    this will make a difference to you, and be one more reason for
+    your not coming West with me. You must use your own judgment,
+    but the longer I think of it, the meaner it seems to me for me
+    to take advantage of your coming to me, last spring, and our
+    getting married. I've thought about it a great deal. Nothing
+    will ever make me like, or respect, the man you say you care
+    for. I don't believe you do care for him. And I would rather see
+    you dead than married to him. But it isn't for me to say, of
+    course. If you like him, that's enough. If you ever stop liking
+    him, and will come back to me, I'll meet you anywhere, or take
+    you anywhere--it won't make any difference what Mother thinks,
+    or Rose thinks, or any one else. I've written and destroyed this
+    letter about six times. I just want you to know that if you
+    think I am standing in the way of your happiness, I won't stand
+    there, even though I believe you are making an awful mistake
+    about that particular man. And I want to thank you for the
+    happiest eight months that any man ever had.
+
+    Yours always,
+    WOLF.
+
+Norma stood perfectly still, after she read the letter through, with the
+clutch of vague pain and shame at her heart. The stiff, stilted words
+did not seem like Wolf, and the definite casting-off hurt her. Why
+couldn't they be friends, at least? Granted that their marriage was a
+mistake, it had never had anything but harmony in it, companionship,
+mutual respect and understanding, and a happy intimacy as clean and
+natural as the meeting of flowers.
+
+She was standing, motionless and silent, when Leslie's voice came
+clearly to her ears. Evidently Acton, Annie, and Leslie were alone, in
+Annie's room, out of sight, but not a dozen feet away from where she
+stood. Norma did not catch the exact words, but she caught her name, and
+her heart stood still with the instinctive terror of the trapped. Annie
+had not heard either evidently; she said "What, dear?" sympathetically.
+
+"I asked what's Norma doing here--isn't she overdoing her relationship a
+little?" Leslie said, languidly.
+
+Norma's face burned, she could hardly breathe as she waited.
+
+"Mama sent for her, for some reason," Annie answered, with a little
+drawl.
+
+"After all, she's a sort of cousin, isn't she?" Acton added.
+
+"Oh, don't jump on me for _everything_ I say, Acton," Leslie said,
+angrily. "My _goodness_----!"
+
+"Chris says that Mama left her the Melrose Building--and I don't know
+what besides!" Annie said. There was a moment of silence.
+
+"I don't believe it! What for!" Leslie exclaimed, then, incredulously.
+And after another silence she added, in a puzzled tone, "Do _you_
+understand it, Aunt Annie?"
+
+Evidently Annie answered with a glance or a shrug, for there was another
+pause before Annie said:
+
+"What I don't like about it, and what I do wish Mama had thought of, is
+the way that people comment on a thing like that. It's not as if Norma
+needed it; she has a husband to take care of her, now, and it makes us a
+little ridiculous! One likes to feel that, at a time like this,
+everything is to be done decently, at least--not enormous legacies to
+comparative strangers----"
+
+"I like Norma, we've all been kind to her," Leslie contributed, as
+Annie's voice died listlessly away. "I've always made allowances for
+her. But I confess that it was rather a surprise to find her here, one
+of the family----! After all, we Melroses have always rather prided
+ourselves on standing together, haven't we? If she wants to wear black
+for Grandma, why, it makes no difference to _me_----"
+
+"I suppose the will could be broken without any notoriety, Chris?" Annie
+asked, in an undertone. Norma's heart turned sick. She had not supposed
+that Chris was listening without protest to this conversation.
+
+"No," she heard him say, briefly and definitely, "that's impossible!"
+
+"It isn't the money----" Annie began. But Leslie interrupted with a
+bitter little laugh.
+
+"It may not be with you, Aunt Annie, but I assure you I wouldn't mind a
+few extra thousands," she said.
+
+"I think you get the Newport house, Leslie," Chris said, in a tone whose
+dubiety only Norma could understand.
+
+"The Newport house!" Leslie exclaimed. "Why, but don't I own _this_,
+now? I thought----"
+
+"I don't really know," Chris answered. "We'll open the will next week,
+and then we'll straighten everything out."
+
+"In the meanwhile," Annie said, lazily, "if she suggests going back to
+her own family, for Heaven's sake don't stop her! I like Norma--always
+have. But after all, there are times when _any_ outsider--no matter how
+agreeable she is----"
+
+"I think she'll go immediately after the funeral," Chris said,
+constrainedly and uncertainly.
+
+Norma, suddenly roused both to a realization of the utter impropriety of
+her overhearing all this, and the danger of detection, slipped from the
+dressing-room by the hall door, and so escaped to her own room.
+
+She shut the door behind her, walked irresolutely to the bed, stood
+there for a moment, with her hands pressed to her cheeks, walked blindly
+to the window, only to pause again, paced the room mechanically for a
+few minutes, and finally found herself seated on the broad,
+old-fashioned sill of the dressing-room window, staring down unseeing at
+the afternoon traffic in Madison Avenue.
+
+Oh, how she hated them--cruel, selfish, self-satisfied
+snobs--snobs--snobs that they were! Leslie--Leslie "making allowances
+for her!" Leslie making allowances for _her_! And Annie--hoping that for
+Heaven's sake nobody would prevent her from going home after the
+funeral! The remembered phrases burned and stung like acid upon her
+soul; she wanted to hurt Annie and Leslie as they had hurt her, she
+wanted to shame them and anger them.
+
+Yes, and she could do it, too! She could do it! They little knew that
+within a few days' time utter consternation and upheaval, notoriety and
+shame, and the pity of their intimates, would disrupt the surface of
+their lives, that surface that they felt it so important to keep smooth!
+"People will comment," Norma quoted to herself, with a bitter
+smile--indeed people would comment, as they had never commented even
+upon the Melroses before! Leslie would be robbed not only of her
+inheritance but of her name and of her position. And Annie--even
+magnificent Aunt Annie must accept, with what surface veneer of
+cordiality she might affect, the only child of her only brother, the
+heir to the family estate.
+
+"I believe I'm horribly tired," Norma said to herself, looking out into
+the dimming winter day, "or else I'm nervous, or something! I wish I
+could go over to Rose's and help her put the children to bed----! Or I
+wish Aunt Kate would telephone for me--I'm sick of this place! Or I wish
+Wolf would come walking around that corner--oh, if he would--if he
+would----!" Norma said, staring out with an intensity so great that it
+seemed to her for the moment that Wolf indeed might come. "If only he'd
+come to take me to dinner, at some little Italian place with a backyard,
+and skyscrapers all about, so that we could talk!"
+
+Regina, coming in a little later, saw that Mrs. Sheridan had been
+crying, and reproached her with the affectionate familiarity of an old
+servitor.
+
+"You that were always so light-hearted, Miss, it don't seem right for
+you to grieve so!" said Regina, a little tearful herself. Norma smiled,
+and wiped her eyes.
+
+"This is a nice beginning," the girl told herself, as she bathed and
+dressed for the evening ordeal of calls, and messages, and solemn visits
+to the chamber of death, "this is a nice beginning for a woman who knows
+that the man she loves is free to marry her, and who has just fallen
+heir to a great fortune!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+The evening moved through its dark and sombre hours unchanged; Joseph's
+assistants opened and opened and opened the door. More flowers--more
+flowers--and more. Notes, telephone messages, black-clad callers
+murmuring in the dimness of the lower hall, maids coming noiselessly and
+deferentially, the clergyman, the doctor, the choir-master, old Judge
+Lee tremulous and tedious, all her world circled about the lifeless form
+of the old mistress of the house. Certain persons went quietly upstairs,
+women in rich furs, and bare-headed, uncomfortable-looking men, entered
+the front room, and passed through with serious faces and slowly shaking
+heads.
+
+Chris spoke to Norma in the hall, just after she had said good-night to
+some rather important callers, assuring them that Annie and Leslie were
+well, and had been kissed herself as their representative. He extended
+her a crushed document in which she was alarmed to recognize Wolf's
+letter.
+
+"Oh--I think I dropped that in Aunt Annie's dressing-room!" Norma said,
+turning scarlet, and wondering what eyes had seen it.
+
+"There was no envelope; a maid brought it to her, and Annie read it,"
+Chris said. Norma's eyes were racing through it.
+
+"There are no names!" she said, thankfully.
+
+"It would have been a most unfortunate--a--a horrible thing, if there
+had been," Chris commented. Something in his manner said as plainly as
+words that dropping the letter had been a breach of good manners, had
+been extremely careless, almost reprehensible. Norma felt herself
+unreasonably antagonized.
+
+"Oh, I don't know! It's true," she said, recklessly.
+
+"Annie is a very important person in your plans, Norma," Chris reminded
+her. "It would be most regrettable for you to lose your head now, to
+give everyone an opportunity of criticizing you. I should advise you to
+enlist your Aunt Annie's sympathies just as soon as you can. She is, of
+all the world, the one woman who can direct you--help you equip
+yourself--tell you what to get, and how to establish yourself. If Annie
+chose to be unfriendly, to ignore you----"
+
+"I don't see Annie von Behrens ignoring me--now!" Norma said, with
+anger, and throwing her head back proudly. They were in a curtained
+alcove on the landing of the angled stairway, completely hidden by the
+great curtain and by potted palms. "When my revered aunt realizes----"
+
+"Your money will have absolutely no effect on Annie," Chris said,
+quickly.
+
+"No, but what I _am_ will!" Norma answered, breathing hard.
+
+"Not while we keep it to ourselves, as of course we must," Chris
+answered, in displeasure. "No one but ourselves will ever know----"
+
+"The whole world will know!" Norma said, in sudden impatience with
+smoothing and hiding and pretending. Chris straightened his eyeglasses
+on their ribbon, and gave her his scrutinizing, unruffled glance.
+
+"That would be foolish, I think, Norma!" he told her, calmly. "It would
+be a most unnecessary piece of vulgarity. Old families are constantly
+hushing up unfortunate chapters in their history; there is no reason why
+the whole thing should not be kept an absolute secret. My dear girl, you
+have just had a most extraordinary piece of good fortune--but you must
+be very careful how you take it! You will be--you are--a tremendously
+wealthy woman--and you will be in the public eye. Upon how you conduct
+yourself now your future position largely depends. Annie can--and I
+believe will--gladly assist you. Acton and Leslie will go abroad, I
+suppose--they can't live here. But a breath of scandal--or an
+ill-advised slip on your part--would make us all ridiculous. You must
+play your cards carefully. If you could stay with Annie, now----"
+
+"I _hate_ Aunt Annie!" Norma interrupted, childishly.
+
+"My dear girl--you're over-tired, you don't mean what you say!" Chris
+said, putting his hand on her arm. Under the light touch she dropped her
+eyes, and stood still. "Norma, do be advised by me in this," he urged
+her earnestly. "It is one of the most important crises in your life.
+Annie can put you exactly where you want to be, introduced and accepted
+everywhere--a constant guest in her house, in her opera box, or Annie
+can drop you--I've seen her do it!--and it would take you ten years to
+make up the lost ground!"
+
+"It didn't take Annie ten years to be a--a--social leader!" Norma
+argued, resentfully.
+
+"Annie? Ah, my dear, a woman like Annie isn't born twice in a hundred
+years! She has--but you know what she has, Norma. Languages,
+experiences, friends--most of all she has the grand manner--the _belle
+aire_."
+
+Norma was fighting to regain her composure over almost unbearable hurt
+and chagrin.
+
+"But, Chris," she argued, desperately, "you've always said that you had
+no particular use for Annie's crowd--that you'd rather live in some
+little Italian place--or travel slowly through India----"
+
+"I said I would like to do that, and so I would!" he answered. "But
+believe me, Norma, your money makes a very different sort of thing
+possible now, and you would be mad--you would be _mad_!--to throw it
+away. Put yourself in Annie's hands," he finished, with the first hint
+of his old manner that she had seen for forty-eight hours, "and have
+your car, your maids, your little establishment on the upper East Side,
+and then--then"--and now his arm was about her, and he had tipped up her
+face close to his own--"and then you and I will break our little
+surprise to them!" he said, kindly. "Only be careful, Norma. Don't let
+them say that you did anything ostentatious or conspicuous----"
+
+She freed herself, her heart cold and desolate almost beyond bearing,
+and Chris answered her as if she had spoken.
+
+"Yes--and I must go, too! To-morrow will be a terrible day for us all.
+Oh, one thing more, Norma! Annie asked me if I had any idea of who the
+man was--the man Wolf speaks of there in that note--and I had to say
+someone, just to quiet her. So I said that I thought it was Roy
+Gillespie--you don't mind?--I knew he liked you tremendously, and I
+happened to think of him! Is that all right?"
+
+She made no audible answer, almost immediately leaving him, and going
+upstairs. There was nothing to do, in her room, and she knew that she
+could really be of use downstairs, among the intimate old friends who
+were protecting Annie and Leslie from annoyance, but she felt in no mood
+for that. She hated herself and everybody; she was half-mad with fatigue
+and despondency.
+
+Oh, what was the use of living--what was the use of living! Chris
+despised her; that was quite plain. He had advised her to-night as he
+would have advised an ignorant servant--an inexperienced commoner who
+might make the family ridiculous--who might lose her head, and descend
+to "unnecessary pieces of vulgarity!" Leslie had always "made allowances
+for Norma"; Annie considered her an "outsider." Wolf was going to
+California without her, and even Aunt Kate--even Aunt Kate had scolded
+her, reminded her that the Melroses had always been kind to her!
+
+Norma's tears flowed fast, there seemed to be no end to the flood. She
+sopped them away with the black-bordered handkerchief, and tried walking
+about, and drinking cold water, but it was of no use. Her heart seemed
+broken, there was no avenue for her thoughts that did not lead to
+loneliness and grief. They had all pretended to love her--but not one of
+them did--not one of them did! She had never had a father, and never had
+a mother, she had never had a fair chance!
+
+Money--she thought darkly. But what was the use of money if everyone
+hated her, if everyone thought she was selfish and stupid and ignorant
+and superfluous! Why find a beautiful apartment, and buy beautiful
+clothes, if she must flatter and cajole her way into Annie's favour to
+enjoy them, and bear Chris's superior disdain for her stumbling literary
+criticisms and her amateurish Italian?
+
+And she was furious at Chris. How dared he--how dared he insult her by
+coupling her name with that of Roy Gillespie, to quiet Annie and to
+protect himself! She was a married woman; she had never given him any
+reason to take such liberties with her dignity! Roy Gillespie, indeed!
+Annie was to amuse herself by fancying Norma secretly enamoured of that
+big, stupid, simple Gillespie boy, who was twenty-two years old, and
+hardly out of college! And it was for him that Norma was presumably
+leaving her husband!
+
+It was insufferable. It was insufferable. She would go straight to
+Annie--but no, she couldn't do that. She couldn't tell Annie, on the
+night before Annie's sister was buried, that that same sister's husband
+loved and was beloved by another woman.
+
+"Still, it's true," Norma mused, darkly. "Only we seem unable to speak
+the truth in this house! Well, I'm stifling here----"
+
+She had been leaning out of the open window, the night was soft and
+warm. Norma looked at her wrist watch; it was nine o'clock. A sudden mad
+impulse took her: she would go over to Jersey, and see Rose. It was not
+so very late, the babies kept Rose and Harry up until almost eleven. She
+thirsted suddenly for Rose, for Rose's beautiful, pure little face, her
+puzzled, earnest blue eyes under black eyebrows, her pleasant, unready
+words that were always so true and so kind.
+
+Rapidly Norma buttoned the new black coat, dropped the filmy veil, fled
+down the back stairway, and through a bright, hot pantry, where maids
+were laughing and eating gaily. She explained to their horrified silence
+that she was slipping out for a breath of air, went through doorways
+and gratings, and found herself in the blessed coolness and darkness of
+the side street.
+
+Ah--this was delicious! She belonged here, flying along inconspicuous
+and unmolested in light and darkness, just one of the hurrying and
+indifferent millions. The shop windows, the subways, the very
+gum-machines and the chestnut ovens with their blowing lamps looked
+friendly to Norma to-night; she loved every detail of blowing newspapers
+and yawning fellow-passengers, in the hot, bright tube.
+
+On the other side she was hurrying off the train with the plunging crowd
+when her heart jumped wildly at the sight of a familiar shabby overcoat
+some fifty feet ahead of her, topped by the slightly tipped slouch hat
+that Wolf always wore. Friday night! her thoughts flashed joyously, and
+he was coming to New Jersey to see his mother and Rose! Of all fortunate
+accidents--the one person in the world she wanted to see--and must see
+now!
+
+Norma fled after the coat, dodging and slipping through every opening,
+and keeping the rapidly moving slouch hat before her. She was quite out
+of breath when she came abreast of the man, and saw, with a sickening
+revulsion, that it was not Wolf.
+
+What the man thought Norma never knew or cared. The surprising blankness
+of the disappointment made her almost dizzy; she turned aside blindly,
+and stumbled into the quiet backwater behind a stairway, where she could
+recover her self-possession and endure unobserved the first pangs of
+bitterness. It seemed to her that she would die if she could not see
+Wolf, if she had to endure another minute of loneliness and darkness and
+aimless wandering through the night.
+
+Rose's house was only three well-lighted blocks from the station; Norma
+almost ran them. Other houses, she noted, were still brightly lighted at
+quarter to eleven o'clock, and Rose's might be. Aunt Kate was there, and
+she and Rose might well be sitting up, with the restless smaller baby,
+or to finish some bit of sewing.
+
+It was a double house, and the windows that matched Rose's bedroom and
+dining-room were lighted in the wrong half. But all Rose's side was
+black and dark and silent.
+
+Norma, for the first time in her life, needed courage for the knocking
+and ringing and explaining. If they would surely be kind to her, she
+might chance it, she thought. But if Aunt Kate was angry with her
+vacillations in regard to Wolf, and if Rose had also taken Wolf's side,
+then she knew that she, Norma, would begin to cry, and disgrace herself,
+and have good-natured simple old Harry poking about and wondering what
+was the matter----
+
+No, she didn't dare risk it. So she waited in the little garden, looking
+up at the windows, praying that little Harry would wake up, or that the
+baby's little acid wail would drift through the open window, and then
+the dim light bloom suddenly, and show a silhouette of Rose, tall and
+sweet in her wrapper, with a great rope of braid falling over one
+shoulder.
+
+But moments went by, and there was no sound. Norma went to the street
+lamp a hundred feet away and looked at her wrist watch. Quarter past
+eleven; it was useless to wait any longer; it had been a senseless quest
+from the beginning.
+
+She went back to the city by train and boat, crying desolately in the
+darkness above the ploughing of the invisible waters. She cried with
+pity for herself, for it seemed to her that life was very unfair to her.
+
+"Is it _my_ fault that I inherit all that money?" she asked the dark
+night angrily. "Is it my fault that I love Chris Liggett? Isn't it
+better to be honest about it than live with a man I don't love? Isn't
+that the worst thing that woman can endure--a loveless marriage?
+
+"But that's just the High School Debating Society!" she interrupted
+herself, suddenly, using a phrase that she and Wolf had coined long ago
+for glib argument that is untouched by actual knowledge of life.
+"Loveless marriage--and wife in name only! I wonder if I am getting to
+be one of the women who throw those terms about as an excuse for just
+sheer selfishness and stupidity!"
+
+And her aunt's phrases came back to her, making her wonder unhappily
+just where the trouble lay, just what sort of a woman she was.
+
+"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma," Mrs. Sheridan had
+said, "you're a woman now--you're Wolf's wife----"
+
+But that was just what she did not feel herself, a woman and Wolf's
+wife. She was a girl--interested in shaggy sport coats and lace
+stockings; she did not want to be any one's wife! She wanted to punish
+Leslie and Aunt Annie, and to have plenty of money, and to have a
+wonderful little apartment on the east side of the Park, and delicious
+clothes; she wanted to become a well-known figure in New York society,
+at Palm Beach and the summer resorts, and at the opera and the big
+dining-rooms of the hotels.
+
+"And I could do it, too!" Norma thought, walking through the cool, dark
+night restlessly. "In two years--in three or four, anyway, I would be
+where Aunt Annie is; or at least I would if Chris and I were married--he
+could do anything! I suppose," she added, with youthful recklessness, "I
+suppose there are lots of old fogies who would never understand my
+getting separated from Wolf, but it isn't as if _he_ didn't understand,
+for I know he does! Wolf has always known that it took just _certain
+things_ to make me happy!"
+
+Something petty, and contemptible, and unworthy, in this last argument
+smote her ears unpleasantly, and she was conscious of flushing in the
+dark.
+
+"Well, people have to be happy, don't they?" she reasoned, with a rising
+inflection at the end of the phrase that surprised and a trifle
+disquieted her. "Don't they?" she asked herself, thoughtfully, as she
+crept in at the side door of the magnificent, cumbersome old house that
+was her own now. No one but an amazed-looking maid saw her, as she
+regained her room, and fifteen minutes later she was circulating about
+the dim and mournful upper floor again. Annie called her into her room.
+
+"You look fearfully tired, Norma! Do get some sleep," her aunt said,
+with unusual kindness. "I'm going to try to, although my head is aching
+terribly, and I know I can't. To-morrow will be hard on us all. I shall
+go home to-morrow night, and I'm trying to persuade Leslie to come with
+me."
+
+"No, I shan't! I'm going to stay here," Leslie said, with a sort of
+weary pettishness. "My house is closed, and poor Chris is going to begin
+closing Aunt Alice's house, and he doesn't want to go to a club--he'd
+much rather be here, wouldn't he, Norma?"
+
+Something in the tired way that both aunt and niece appealed to her
+touched Norma, and she answered sympathetically:
+
+"Truly, I think he would, Aunt Annie. And if little Patricia and the
+nurse get here on Sunday, she won't be lonely."
+
+"Norma, why don't you stay here, too--your husband's in Philadelphia,"
+Leslie asked her. "Do! We shall have so much to do----"
+
+"We haven't seen the will, but I believe Judge Lee is going to bring it
+on Wednesday," Annie said, "and Chris said that Mama left you--well, I
+don't know what! I wish you could arrange to stay the rest of the week,
+at least!"
+
+"I will!" Norma agreed. She had been feeling neglected and lonely, and
+this unexpected friendliness was heartwarming.
+
+"You've been a real comfort," Annie said, good-naturedly. "You're such a
+sensible child, Norma. I hope one of these days--afterward"--and Annie
+faintly indicated with her eyebrows the direction of the front room from
+which the funeral procession would start to-morrow--"afterward, that
+you'll let us know your husband better. And now it's long past midnight,
+girls, and you ought to be in bed!"
+
+It was mere casual civility on Annie's part, as accidental as had been
+her casual unkindness a few hours before. But it lifted Norma's heart,
+and she went out into the hall in a softer frame of mind than she had
+known for a long time. She managed another word with Chris before going
+to her room for almost nine hours of reviving and restoring sleep.
+
+"Chris, I feel terribly about breaking this news to Aunt Annie and
+Leslie while they feel so badly about Aunt Alice and Aunt Marianna!" she
+said. Again Chris gave the hallway, where she had met him, a quick,
+uneasy scrutiny before he answered her:
+
+"Well, of course! But it can't be helped."
+
+"But do you think that we could put it off until Wednesday, Chris, when
+the will is to be read? Everyone will be here then, and it would seem a
+good time to do it!"
+
+"Yes," he consented, after a moment's thought, "I think that is a good
+idea!" And so they left it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Regina roused Norma just in time for the long, wearisome ceremonials of
+the following day, a cold, bright gusty day, when the wet streets
+flashed back sombre reflections of the motor wheels, and the newly
+turned earth oozed flashing drops of water. The cortege left the old
+Melrose house at ten minutes before ten o'clock, and it was four before
+the tired, headachy, cramped members of the immediate family group
+regathered there, to discard the crape-smothered hats, and the odorous,
+sombre furs, and to talk quietly together as they sipped hot soup and
+crumbled rolls. Everything had been changed, the flowers were gone,
+furniture was back in place, and the upper front room had been opened
+widely to the suddenly spring-like afternoon. There was not a fallen
+violet petal to remind her descendants that the old mistress of forty
+full years was gone for ever.
+
+Annie's boys came to bring Mother home, after so many strange days'
+absence, and Norma liked the way that Annie smiled wearily at Hendrick,
+and pressed her white face hungrily against the boys' blonde, firm
+little faces. Leslie, in an unwontedly tender mood, drew Acton's arm
+about her, as she sat in a big chair, and told him with watering eyes
+that she would be glad to see old Patsie-baby on Sunday. Norma sat
+alone, the carved Tudor oak rising high above her little tired head with
+its crushed soft hair, and Chris sat alone, too, at the other end of
+the table, and somehow, in the soul fatigue that was worse than any
+bodily fatigue, she did not want the distance between them bridged, she
+did not want--she shuddered away from the word--love-making from Chris
+again!
+
+Leslie, who felt quite ill with strain and sorrow, went upstairs to bed,
+the Von Behrens went away, and presently Acton disappeared, to telephone
+old Doctor Murray that his wife would like a sedative--or a heart
+stimulant, or some other little attention as a recognition of her broken
+state.
+
+Then Chris and Norma were alone, and with a quiet dignity that surprised
+him she beckoned him to the chair next to her, and, leaning both elbows
+on the cloth, fixed him with her beautiful, tired eyes.
+
+"I want to talk to you, Chris, and this seems to be the time!" she said.
+"You'll be deep in all sorts of horrible things for weeks now, poor old
+Chris, and I want this said first! I've been thinking very seriously all
+these days--they seem months--since Aunt Marianna died, and I've come to
+the conclusion that I'm--well, I'm a fool!"
+
+She said the last word so unexpectedly, with such obvious surprise, that
+Chris's tired, colourless face broke into something like a smile. He had
+seated himself next to her, and was evidently bending upon her problem
+his most earnest attention.
+
+"Some months ago," Norma said in a low voice, "I thought--I
+_thought_--that I fell in love! The man was rich, and handsome, and
+clever, and he knew more--of certain things!--in his little finger, than
+I shall ever know in my whole life. Not exactly more French, or more of
+politics, or more persons--I don't mean quite that. But I mean a
+conglomerate sort of--I'm expressing myself badly, but you understand--a
+conglomerate total of all these things that make him an aristocrat!
+That's what he is, an aristocrat. Now, I'm not! I've found that out. I'm
+different."
+
+"Nonsense!" Chris said, lightly, but listening patiently none the less.
+
+"I know," Norma resumed, hammering her thought out slowly, and frowning
+down at the teaspoon that she was measuring between her finger-tips, "I
+know that there are two women in me. One is the Melrose, who
+_could_--for I know I could!--push her husband out of sight, take up the
+whole business of doing things correctly, from hair-dressing and writing
+notes of condolence to being"--she could manage a hint of a smile under
+swiftly raised lashes--"being presented at Saint James's!" she said. "In
+five years she would be an admired and correct and popular woman, and
+perhaps even married to this man I speak of! The other woman is my
+little plain French mother's sort--who was a servant--my Aunt Kate's
+kind," and Norma suddenly felt the tears in her eyes, and winked them
+away with an April smile, "who belongs to her husband, who likes to cook
+and tramp about in the woods, and send Christmas boxes to Rose's babies,
+and--and go to movies, and picnics! And that's the sort of woman I _am_,
+Chris," Norma ended, with a sudden firmness, and even a certain relief
+in her voice. "I've just discovered it! I've been spoiled all my
+life--I've been loved too much, I think, but I've thought it all out--it
+really came to me, as I stood beside Aunt Marianna's grave to-day, and
+you don't know how happy it's made me!"
+
+"You are talking very recklessly, Norma," Chris said, as she paused, in
+his quiet, definite voice. "You are over-excited now. There is no such
+difference in the two--the two classes, to call them that, as you fancy!
+The richer people, the people who, as you say, do things correctly, and
+are presented at Saint James's, have all the simple pleasures, too. One
+likes moving pictures now and then; I'm sure we often have picnics in
+the summer. But there are women in New York--hundreds of them, who would
+give the last twenty years of their lives to step into exactly what you
+can take for the asking now. You will have Annie and me back of
+you--this isn't the time, Norma, for me to say just how entirely you
+will have my championship! But surely you know----"
+
+He was just what he had always been: self-possessed, finished,
+splendidly sure in voice and manner. He was rich, he was popular, he was
+a dictator in his quiet way. And she knew even if the shock of his
+wife's sudden going had pushed his thought of her into the background,
+that in a few months he would be hovering about her again,
+conventionally freed for conventional devotion.
+
+She saw all this, and for the first time to-day she saw other things,
+too. That he was forty, and looked it. That there was just the faintest
+suggestion of thinning in his smooth hair, where Wolf's magnificent mane
+was the thickest. That it was just a little bloodless, this decorous
+mourning that had so instantly engulfed him, who had actually told her,
+another man's wife, a few weeks before, that his own wife was dying, and
+so would free him for the woman he loved at last!
+
+In short, Norma mused, watching him as he fell into moody silence, he
+had not scrupled to break the spirit of his bond to Alice, he had not
+hesitated to tell Norma that he loved her when only Norma, and possibly
+Alice, might suffer from his disloyalty. But when the sacred letter was
+touched, the sacred outside of the vessel that must be kept clean before
+the world, then Chris was instantly the impeccable, the irreproachable
+man of his caste again. It was all part of the superficial smallness of
+that world where arbitrary form ruled, where to send a wedding
+invitation printed and not engraved, or to mispronounce the name of a
+visiting Italian tenor or Russian dancer, would mark the noblest woman
+in the world as hopelessly "not belonging."
+
+"One of the things you do that really you oughtn't to, Norma," he
+resumed, presently, in quiet distaste, "is assume that there is some
+mysterious difference between, say, the Craigies, and well--your
+husband. The Craigies are enormously wealthy, of course. That means that
+they have always had fine service, music, travel, the best of everything
+in educational ways, friendship with the best people--and those things
+_are_ an advantage, generation after generation. It's absurd to deny
+that Annie's children, for example, haven't any real and tremendous
+advantages over--well, some child of a perfectly respectable family that
+manages nicely on ten thousand a year. But that Annie's pleasures are
+not as real, or that there must necessarily be something
+dangerous--something detestable--in the life of the best people, is
+ridiculous!"
+
+"That's just what I do assert," she answered, bravely. "It may not be so
+for you, for you were born to it! But when you've lived, as I have, in a
+different sort of life, with people to whom meals, and the rent, and
+their jobs, really matter--this sort of thing doesn't seem _real_. You
+feel like bursting out laughing and saying, 'Oh, get out! What's the
+difference if I _don't_ make calls, and broaden my vowels, and wear just
+this and that, and say just this and that!' It all seems so _tame_."
+
+"Not at all," Chris said, really roused. "Take Betty Doane, now, the
+Craigies' cousin. There's nothing conventional about her. There's a girl
+who dresses like a man all summer, who ran away from school and tramped
+into Hungary dressed as a gipsy, who slapped Joe Brinckerhoff's face for
+him last winter, and who says that when she loves a man she's going off
+with him--no matter who he is, or whether he's married or not, or
+whether she is!"
+
+"I'll tell you what she sounds like to me, Chris, a little saucy girl of
+about eight trying to see how naughty she can be! Why, that," said
+Norma, eagerly, "that's not _real_. That isn't like house-hunting when
+you know you can't pay more than thirty dollars' rent, or surprising
+your husband with a new thermos bottle that he didn't think he could
+afford!"
+
+"Ah, well, if you _like_ slums, of course!" Chris said, coldly. "But
+nothing can prevent your inheriting an enormous sum of money, Norma," he
+said, ending the conversation, "and in six months you'll feel very
+differently!"
+
+"There is just one chance in ten--one chance in a hundred--that I
+might!" she said to herself, going upstairs, after Chris and Acton, who
+presently returned to the dining-room, had begun an undertoned
+conversation. And with a sudden flood of radiance and happiness at her
+heart, she sat down at her desk, and wrote to Wolf.
+
+The note said:
+
+    WOLF DEAR:
+
+    I have been thinking very seriously, during these serious days,
+    and I am writing you more earnestly than I ever wrote any one in
+    my life. I want you to forgive me all my foolishness, and let me
+    come back to you. I have missed you so bitterly, and thought how
+    good and how sensible you were, and how you took care of us all
+    years ago, and gave Rose and me skates that Christmas that you
+    didn't have your bicycle mended, and how we all sat up and cried
+    the night Aunt Kate was sick, and you made us chocolate by the
+    rule on the box. I have been very silly, and I thought I
+    cared--and perhaps I _did_ care--for somebody else; or at least
+    I cared for what he stood for, but I am over that now, and I
+    feel so much older, and as if I needed you so. I shall have a
+    tremendous lot of money, and we'll just have to decide what to
+    do with it, but I think I know now that there won't be any
+    particular pleasure in spending it. We'll always love the old
+    car, and----But it just occurs to me that we _could_ send poor
+    Kitty Barry to the hospital, and perhaps ship them all off
+    somewhere where they'd get better. Aunt Kate would like that.
+    But won't you come up, Wolf, and see me? I'll meet you anywhere,
+    and we can talk, on Monday or Tuesday. Will you write me or wire
+    me? I can't wait to see you!
+
+She cried over the letter, and over the signature that she was his
+loving Nono, but she mailed it with a dancing heart. The road had been
+dark and troubled for awhile, but it was all clear now! The wrong had
+been--the whole wretched trouble had been--in her thinking that she
+could toss aside the solemn oath that she had taken on the bewildering
+day of her marriage almost a year ago.
+
+Never since old, old days of childhood, when she and Wolf and Rose had
+wiped the dishes and raked the yard, and walked a mile to the
+twenty-five-cent seats at the circus, had Norma been so sure of
+herself, and so happy. She felt herself promoted, lifted above the old
+feelings and the old ways, and dedicated to the work before her. And one
+by one the shadows lifted, and the illusions blew away, and she could
+see her way clear for the first time in more than three years. It was
+all simple, all right, all just as she would have had it. She would
+never be a petted and wealthy little Leslie, she would never be a
+leader, like Mrs. von Behrens, and she would never stand before the
+world as the woman chosen by the incomparable Chris. Yet she was the
+last Melrose, and she knew now how she could prove herself the proudest
+of them all, how she could do these kinspeople of hers a greater favour
+than any they had ever dreamed of doing her. And in the richness of
+renouncing Norma knew herself to be for the first time truly rich.
+
+Chris saw the difference in her next day, felt the new dignity, the
+sudden transition from girl to woman, but he had no inkling of its
+cause. Leslie saw it, and Annie, but Norma gave them no clue. At
+luncheon Annie, who had joined them for the meal, proposed that Leslie
+and Norma and the Liggetts come to her for a quiet family dinner, but
+Norma begged off; she really must see Aunt Kate, and would seize this
+opportunity to go home for a night. But leaving the table Norma asked
+Chris if she might talk business to him for a few minutes.
+
+They sat in the old library, Chris sunk in a great leather chair,
+smoking cigarettes, Norma opposite, her white hands clasped on the
+blackness of her simple gown, and her eyes moving occasionally from
+their quiet study of the fire to rest on Chris's face.
+
+"Chris," she said, "I've thought this all out, now, and I'm not really
+asking your advice, I'm telling you what I am going to do! I'm going to
+California with Wolf in a week or two--that's the first thing!"
+
+He stared at her blankly, and as the minutes of silence between them
+lengthened Norma noticed his lips compress themselves into a thin,
+colourless line. But she returned his look bravely, and in her eyes
+there was something that told the man she was determined in her
+decision.
+
+"I don't quite follow you, Norma," he said at last with difficulty. "You
+mean that all the plans and hopes we shared and discussed----" He
+faltered a moment and then made another effort: "Now that whatever
+obstacles there were have been removed, and you and I are free to
+fulfill our destinies, am I to understand that--that you are going back
+to your husband?"
+
+"Exactly." The girl's answer was firm and determined.
+
+The colour fled from Chris's face, and a cold light came into his eye;
+his jaw stiffened.
+
+"You must use your own judgment, Norma," he answered, with a displeased
+shrug.
+
+"I'll leave with you, or send you, my power of attorney," the girl went
+on, "and you and Hendrick as executors must do whatever you think right
+and just--just deposit the money in the bank!"
+
+"I see," Chris said, noncommittally.
+
+"And there's another thing," Norma went on, with heightened colour. "I
+don't want either Leslie or Aunt Annie ever to know--what you and I
+know!"
+
+Chris looked at her, frowning slightly.
+
+"That's impossible, of course," he said. "What are they going to think?"
+
+"They'll think nothing," Norma said, confidently, but with anxious eyes
+fixed on his face, "because they'll know nothing. There'll be no change,
+nothing to make them suspect anything."
+
+"But--great God! You don't seem to understand, Norma. Proofs of your
+birth, of your rightful heritage, your identity, the fact that you are
+Theodore's child, must be shown them, of course. You have inherited by
+Aunt Marianna's will the bulk of her personal fortune, but besides this,
+as Theodore's child, you inherit the Melrose estate, and Leslie must
+turn this all over to you, and make such restitution as she is able, of
+all income from it which she has received since Judge Lee and I turned
+it over to her on her eighteenth birthday."
+
+"No, that's just what she is _not_ to do! I will get exactly what is
+mentioned in the will--as Norma Sheridan, bonds and the Melrose
+Building, and so on," Norma broke in, eagerly. "And that's enough,
+goodness knows, and a thousand times more than Wolf and I ever expected
+to have. Aunt Annie and Leslie are reconciled to that. But for the rest,
+I refuse to accept it. I don't want it. I've never been so unhappy in my
+life as I've been in this house, for all the money and the good times
+and the beautiful clothes. And if that much didn't make me happy, why
+should ten times more? Isn't it far, far better--all round----"
+
+"You are talking absurdities," said Chris. "Do you think that Hendrick
+and I could consent to this? Do you suppose----"
+
+"Hendrick doesn't know it, Chris. It is only you and I and Aunt
+Kate--that's all! And if I do this, and swear you and Aunt Kate to
+secrecy, who is responsible, except me?"
+
+Chris shook his head. "Aunt Marianna wished you righted--wished you to
+take your place as Theodore's daughter. It is her wish, and it is only
+our duty----"
+
+"But think a minute, Chris, think a minute," Norma said, eagerly,
+leaning forward in her chair, so that her locked hands almost touched
+his knees. "_Was_ it her wish? She wanted me to _know_--that's certain!
+And I do know. But do you really think she wanted Leslie to be shamed
+and crushed, and to take away the money Leslie has had all her life, to
+shock Aunt Annie, and stir that old miserable matter up with Hendrick?
+Chris, you _can't_ think that! The one thing she would have wished and
+prayed would have been that somehow the matter would have been righted
+without hurting any one. Chris, _think_ before you tear the whole family
+up by the roots. What harm is there in this way? I have plenty of
+money--and I go away. The others go on just as they always have, and in
+a little way--in just a hundredth part--I pay back dear old Aunt
+Marianna for all the worrying and planning she did, to make up to me for
+what should have been mine, and was Leslie's. Please--_please_, help me
+to do this, Chris. I can't be happy any other way. Aunt Kate will
+approve--you don't know how much she will approve, and it will repay
+her, too, just a little, to feel that it's all known now, and that it
+has turned out this way. And she will destroy every last line and shred
+of letters and papers, and the photographs she said she had, and it will
+all be over--for ever and for ever!"
+
+"You put a terrible responsibility upon me," Chris said, slowly.
+
+"No--I take it myself!" Norma answered. He had gotten to his feet, and
+was standing at the hearth, and now she rose, too, and looked eagerly up
+at him. "It isn't anything like the responsibility of facing the world
+with the whole horrible story!"
+
+Chris was silent, thinking. Presently he turned upon her the old smile
+that she had always found irresistible, and put his two hands on her
+shoulders.
+
+"You are a wonderful woman, Norma!" he said, slowly. "What woman in the
+world, but you, would do that? Yes, I'll do it--for Leslie's sake, and
+Acton's sake, and because I believe Alice would think it as wonderful in
+you as I do. But think," Chris said, "think just a few days, Norma. You
+and I--you and I might go a long way, my dear!"
+
+If he had said it even at this hour yesterday, he might have shaken her,
+for the voice was the voice of the old Chris, and she had been even then
+puzzled and confused to see the wisest way. But now everything was
+changed; he could not reach her now, even when he put his arm about her,
+and said that this was one of their rare last chances to be alone
+together, and asked if it must be good-bye.
+
+She looked up at him gravely and unashamedly.
+
+"Yes, it must be good-bye--dear Chris!" she said, with a little emotion.
+"Although I hope we will see each other often, if ever Wolf and I come
+back. Engineers live in Canada and Panama and India and Alaska, you
+know, and we never will know we are coming until we get here! And I'm
+not going to try to thank you, Chris, for what you did for an ignorant,
+silly, strange little girl; you've been a big brother to me all these
+last years! And something more, of course," Norma added, bravely, "and
+I won't say--I can't say--that if it hadn't been for Wolf, and all the
+changes this year--changes in me, too--I wouldn't have loved you all my
+life. But there's no place that you could take me, as Wolf Sheridan's
+divorced wife, that would seem worth while to me, when I got there--not
+if it was in the peerage!"
+
+"There's just one thing that I want to say, too, Norma," Chris said,
+suddenly, when she had finished. "I'm not good enough for you; I know
+it. I see myself as I am, sometimes, I suppose. I think you're going to
+be happy--and God knows I hope so; perhaps it _is_ a realer life, your
+husband's: and perhaps a man who works for his wife with his hands and
+his head has got something on us other fellows after all! I've often
+wished----But that doesn't matter now. But I want you to know I'll
+always remember you as the finest woman I ever knew--just the best there
+is! And if ever I've hurt you, forgive me, won't you, Norma?--and--and
+let me kiss you good-bye!"
+
+She raised her face to his confidently, and her eyes were misty when she
+went upstairs, because she had seen that his were wet. But there was no
+more unhappiness; indeed an overwhelming sense that everything was
+right--that every life had shifted back into normal and manageable and
+infinitely better lines, went with her as she walked slowly out into the
+sunshine, and wandered in the general direction of Aunt Kate's. As she
+left the old Melrose home, the big limousine was standing at the door,
+and presently Annie and Leslie would sweep out in their flowing veils
+and crapes, and whirl off to the Von Behrens mansion. But Norma Sheridan
+was content to walk to the omnibus, and to take the jolting front seat,
+and to look down in all brotherly love and companionship at the moving
+and shifting crowds that were glorying in the warm spring weather.
+
+To be busy--to be needed--to be loved--she said to herself. That was the
+sweet of life, and it could not be taken from the policeman at the
+crossing or the humblest little shop-girl who scampered under his big
+arm, or bought by the bored women in limousines who, furred and flowered
+and feathered, were moving from the matinee to the tea table. Caroline
+Craigie, Aunt Annie, Leslie; she had seen the material advantages of
+life fail them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Aunt Kate was out when Norma reached the apartment, but she knew that
+the key was always on the top of the door frame, and entered the
+familiar old rooms without any trouble. But she saw in a dismayed flash
+that Aunt Kate was not coming back, for that night at least. The kitchen
+window had been left four inches open, to accommodate the cat, milk and
+bones were laid in waiting, and a note in the bottle notified the
+milkman "no milk until to-morrow." There was also a note in pencil, on
+the bottom of an egg-box, for the nurses who rented two rooms, should
+either one of them chance to come in and be hungry, she was to eat "the
+pudding and the chicken stew, and get herself a good supper."
+
+Norma, chuckling a little, got herself the good supper instead. It was
+with a delightful sense of solitude and irresponsibility that she sat
+eating it, at the only window in the flat that possessed a good view,
+the kitchen window. Aunt Kate, she decided, was with Rose, who had no
+telephone; Norma thought that she would wait until Aunt Kate got home
+the next day, rather than chance the long trip to the Oranges again. An
+alternative would have been to go to Aunt Annie's house, but somehow the
+thought of the big, silent handsome place, with the men in evening wear,
+Aunt Annie and Leslie in just the correct mourning decollete, and the
+conversation decorously funereal, did not appeal to her. Instead it
+seemed a real adventure to dine alone, and after dinner to put on a
+less conspicuous hat and coat, and slip out into the streets, and walk
+about in her new-found freedom.
+
+The night was soft and balmy, and the sidewalks filled with sauntering
+groups enjoying the first delicious promise of summer as much as Norma
+did. The winter had been long and cold and snowy; great masses of
+thawing ice from far-away rivers were slowly drifting down the
+star-lighted surface of the Hudson, and the trees were still bare. But
+the air was warm, and the breezes lifted and stirred the tender darkness
+above her head with a summery sweetness.
+
+Norma loved all the world to-night; the work-tired world that was
+revelling in idleness and fresh air. Romance seemed all about her, the
+doorways into which children reluctantly vanished, the gossiping women
+coming back from bakery or market, the candy stores flooded with light,
+and crowded with young people who were having the brightest and most
+thrilling moments of all their lives over banana specials and chocolate
+sundaes. The usual whirlpools eddied about the subway openings and
+moving-picture houses, the usual lovers locked arms, in the high rocking
+darkness of the omnibus tops, and looked down in apathetic indifference
+upon the disappointment of other lovers at the crossings. In the bright
+windows of dairy restaurants grapefruit were piled, and big baked apples
+ranged in saucers, and beyond there were hungry men leaning far over the
+table while they discussed doughnuts and strong coffee, and shook open
+evening papers.
+
+She and Wolf had studied it all for years; it was sordid and crowded and
+cheap, perhaps, but it was honest and happy, too, and it was real. There
+was no affectation here, even the premature spring hats, and the rouge,
+and the high heels were an ingenuous bid for just a little notice, just
+a little admiration, just a little longer youth.
+
+Sauntering along in the very heart of it, hearing the flirtation, the
+theatrical chatter, the homely gossip about her, Norma knew that she was
+at home. Leslie, perhaps, might have loathed it had she been put down in
+the midst of it; to Aunt Annie it would always seem entirely beneath
+even contempt. But Norma realized to-night, as she slipped into church
+for a few minutes, as she dropped a coin into a beggar's tin cup, as she
+entered into casual conversation with the angry mother of a defiant boy,
+that this, to her, was life. It was life--to work, to plan, to marry and
+bear children, to wrest her own home from unfavourable conditions, and
+help her own man to win. She would live, because she would care--care
+deeply how Wolf fared in his work, how her house prospered, how her
+children developed. She would not be Aunt Annie's sort of woman--Chris's
+sort--she would be herself, judged not by what she had, but by what she
+could do--what she could give.
+
+"And that's the kind of woman I am, after all," she said to herself,
+rejoicingly. "The child of a French maid and a spoiled, rich young man!
+But no, I'm not their child. I'm Aunt Kate's--just as much as Rose and
+Wolf are----!" And at the thought of Wolf she smiled. "Won't Wolf
+Sheridan _open his eyes_?"
+
+When she reached Forty-first Street she turned east, and went past the
+familiar door of the opera house. It was a special performance, and the
+waiting line stretched from the box office down the street, and around
+the corner, into the dark. They would only be able to buy standing
+room, these patient happy music lovers who grew weary and cold waiting
+for their treat, and even standing, they would be behind an immovable
+crowd, they would catch only occasional glimpses of the stage. But Norma
+told herself that she would rather be in that line, than yawningly
+deciding, as she had so often seen Annie decide, that she would perhaps
+rustle into the box at ten o'clock for the third act--although it was
+rather a bore.
+
+She flitted near enough to see the general stir, and to see once more
+the sign "No Footmen Allowed in This Lobby," and then, smiling at the
+old memories, she slipped away into the darkness, drinking in insatiably
+the intimate friendliness of the big city and the spring night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+It was ten o'clock the next day, a silent gray day, when Aunt Kate let
+herself into the apartment, and "let out," to use her own phrase, a
+startled exclamation at finding her young daughter-in-law deeply asleep
+in her bed. Norma, a vision of cloudy dark tumbled hair and beautiful
+sleepy blue eyes, half-strangled the older woman in a rapturous embrace,
+and explained that she had come home the night before, and eaten the
+chicken stew, and perhaps overslept--at any rate would love some coffee.
+
+Something faintly shadowed in her aunt's welcome, however, was
+immediately apparent, and Norma asked, with a trace of anxiety, if
+Rose's babies were well. For answer her aunt merely asked if Wolf had
+telephoned.
+
+"Wolf!" said Wolf's wife. "Is he home?"
+
+"My dear," Mrs. Sheridan said. "He's going--he's gone!--to California!"
+
+Norma did not move. But the colour went out of her face, and the
+brightness from her eyes.
+
+"Gone!" she whispered.
+
+"Well--he goes to-day! At six o'clock----"
+
+"At six o'clock!" Norma leaped from her bed, stood with clenched hands
+and wild eyes, thinking, in the middle of the floor. "It's twenty-two
+minutes past ten," she breathed. "Where does he leave?"
+
+"Rose and I were to see him at the Grand Central at quarter past five,"
+his mother began, catching the contagious excitement. "But, darling, I
+don't know where you can get him before that!--Here, let me do that,"
+she added, for Norma had dashed into the kitchen, and was measuring
+coffee recklessly. A brown stream trickled to the floor.
+
+"Oh, Lord--Lord--help me to get hold of him somewhere!" she heard Norma
+breathe. "And you weren't going to let me know--but it's my fault," she
+said, putting her hands over her face, and rocking to and fro in
+desperate suspense. "Oh, how can I get him?--I must! Oh, Aunt
+Kate--_help me_! Oh, I'm not even dressed--and that clock says half-past
+ten! Aunt Kate, will you help me!"
+
+"Norma, my darling," her aunt said, arresting the whirling little figure
+with a big arm, and looking down at her with all the love and sadness of
+her great heart in her face, "why do you want to see him, dear? He told
+me--he had to tell his mother, poor boy, for his heart is broken--that
+you were not going with him!"
+
+"Oh, but Aunt Kate--he'll have to wait for me!" Norma said, stamping a
+slippered foot, and beginning to cry with hurt and helplessness. "Oh,
+won't you help me? You always help me! Don't--don't mind what I said to
+Wolf; you know how silly I am! But please--_please_----"
+
+"But, Baby--you're sure?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, feeling as if ice that
+had been packed about her heart for days was breaking and stirring, and
+as if the exquisite pain of it would kill her. "Don't--hurt him again,
+Norma!"
+
+"But he's going off--without me," Norma wailed, rushing to the bathroom,
+and pinning her magnificent mass of soft dark hair into a stern knob for
+her bath. "Aunt Kate, I've always loved Wolf, always!" she said,
+passionately. "And if he really had gone away without me I think it
+would have broken my heart! You _know_ how I love him! We'll catch him
+somewhere, I know we will! We'll telephone--or else Harry----"
+
+She trailed into the kitchen half-dressed, ten minutes later.
+
+"I've telephoned for a taxi, Aunt Kate, and we'll find him somewhere,"
+she said, gulping hot coffee appreciatively. "I must--I've something to
+tell him. But I'll have to tell you everything in the cab. To begin
+with--it's all over. I'm done with the Melroses. I appreciate all they
+did for me, and I appreciate your worrying and planning about that old
+secret. But I've made up my mind. Whatever you have of letters, and
+papers and proofs, I want you please to do the family a last favour by
+burning--every last shred. I've told Chris, I won't touch a cent of the
+money, except what Aunt Marianna left me; and I never, never, never
+intend to say one more word on the subject! Thousands didn't make me
+happy, so why should a million? The best thing my father ever did for me
+was to give my mother a chance to bring me here to you!"
+
+She had gotten into her aunt's lap as she spoke, and was rubbing her
+cheek against the older, roughened cheek, and punctuating her
+conversation with little kisses. Mrs. Sheridan looked at her, and
+blinked, and seemed to find nothing to say.
+
+"Perhaps some day when it's hot--and the jelly doesn't jell--and the
+children break the fence," pursued Norma, "I will be sorry! I haven't
+much sense, and I may feel that I've been a fool. But then I just want
+you to remind me of Leslie--and the Craigies--or better, of what a beast
+I am myself in that atmosphere! So it's all over, Aunt Kate, and if
+Wolf will forgive me--and he always does----"
+
+"He's bitterly hurt this time, Nono," said her aunt, gently.
+
+Norma looked a little anxious.
+
+"I wrote him in Philadelphia," she said, "but he won't get that letter.
+Oh, Aunt Kate--if we don't find him! But we will--if I have to walk up
+to him in the station the last minute--and stop him----"
+
+"Ah, Norma, you love him!" his mother said, in a great burst of
+thankfulness. "And may God be thanked for all His goodness! That's all I
+care about--that you love him, and that you two will be together again.
+We'll get hold of him, dear, somehow----!"
+
+"But, my darling," she added, coming presently to the bedroom door to
+see the dashing little feathered hat go on, and the dotted veil pinned
+with exquisite nicety over Norma's glowing face, and the belted brown
+coat and loose brown fur rapidly assumed, "you're not wearing your
+mourning!"
+
+"Not to-day," Norma said, abstractedly. And aloud she read a list:
+
+"Bank; Grand Central; drawing-room; new suit-case; notary for power of
+attorney; Kitty Barry; telephone Chris, Leslie, Annie; telephone Regina
+about trunks. Can we be back here at say--four, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"But what's all that for?" her aunt asked, dazedly.
+
+Norma looked at a check book; put it in her coat pocket. Then as her
+aunt's question reached her preoccupied mind, she turned toward her with
+a puzzled expression.
+
+"Why, Aunt Kate--you don't seem to understand; I'm going with Wolf to
+California this evening."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+It was exactly nineteen minutes past five o'clock when Wolf Sheridan
+walked into the Grand Central Station that afternoon. He had stopped
+outside to send his wife some flowers, and just a brief line of
+farewell, and he was thinking so hard of Norma that it seemed natural
+that the woman who was coming toward him, in the great central
+concourse, should suggest her. The woman was pretty, too, and wore the
+sort of dashing little hat that Norma often wore, and there was
+something so familiar about the belted brown coat and the soft brown
+furs that Wolf's heart gave a great plunge, and began to
+ache--ache--ache--hopelessly again.
+
+The brown coat came nearer--and nearer. And then he saw that the wearer
+was indeed his wife. She had dewy violets in her belt, and her violet
+eyes were dewy, too, and her face paled suddenly as she put her hand on
+his arm.
+
+What Norma all that tired and panicky afternoon had planned to say to
+Wolf on this occasion was something like this:
+
+"Wolf, if you ever loved me, and if I ever did anything that made you
+happy, and if all these years when I have been your little sister, and
+your chum, and your wife, mean anything to you--don't push me away now!
+I am sorrier for my foolishness, and more ashamed of it, than you can
+possibly be! I think it was never anything but weakness and vanity that
+made me want to flirt with Chris Liggett. I think that if he had once
+stopped flattering me, and if ever our meetings had been anything but
+stolen fruit, as it were, I would have seen how utterly blind I was! I'm
+different now, Wolf; I know that what I felt for him was only shallow
+vanity, and that what I feel for you is the deepest and realest love
+that any woman ever knew! There's nothing--no minute of the day or night
+when I don't need you. There's nothing that you think that isn't what I
+think! I want to go West with you, and make a home there, and when you
+go to China, or go to India, I want you to go because your wife has
+helped you--because you have had happy years of working and
+experimenting and picnicking and planning--with me!
+
+"It's all over, Wolf, that Melrose business--that dream! I've said
+good-bye to them, and they have to me, and they know I'm never coming
+back! I'm a Sheridan now--really and truly--for ever."
+
+And in the lonesome and bitter days in which his great dream had come
+true, without Norma to share it, days in which he had been thinking of
+her as affiliated more and more with the element he despised, identified
+more and more with the man who had wrecked--or tried to wreck--her life,
+Wolf had imagined this meeting, and imagined her as tentatively holding
+out the olive branch of peace; and he had had time to formulate exactly
+what he should answer to such an appeal.
+
+"I'm sorry, Norma," he had imagined himself saying. "I'm terribly sorry!
+But just talking doesn't undo these things, just _saying_ that you
+didn't mean it, and that it's all over. No, married life can't be picked
+up and put down again like a coat. You _were_ my wife, and God knows I
+worshipped you--heart and soul! If some day these people get tired of
+you, or you get tired of them, that'll be different! But you've cut me
+too deep--you've killed a part of me, and it won't come alive again!
+I've been through hell--wondering what you were doing, what you were
+going to do! I never should have married you; now let's call it all
+quits, and get out of it the best way we can!"
+
+But when he saw her, the familiar, lovely face that he had loved for so
+many years, when he felt the little gloved hand on his arm, and realized
+that somehow, out of the utter desolation and loneliness of the big
+city, she had come to him again, that she was here, mistily smiling at
+him, and he could touch her and hear her voice, everything else
+vanished, as if it had never been, and he put his big arm about her
+hungrily, and kissed her, and they were both in tears.
+
+"Oh, Wolf----!" Norma faltered, the dry spaces of her soul flooding with
+springtime warmth and greenness, and a great happiness sweeping away all
+consciousness of the place in which they stood, and the interested eyes
+about them. "Oh, Wolf----!" She thought that she added, "Would you have
+gone away without me!" but as a matter of fact words were not needed
+now.
+
+"Nono--you _do_ love me?" he whispered. Or perhaps he only thought he
+enunciated the phrase, for although Norma answered, it was not audibly.
+Neither of them ever remembered anything coherent of that first five
+minutes, in which momentous questions were settled between Norma's
+admiring comment upon Wolf's new coat, and in which they laughed and
+cried and clung together in shameless indifference to the general
+public.
+
+But presently they were calm enough to talk, and Wolf's first
+constructive remark, not even now very steady or clear, was that he must
+put off his going, get hold of Voorhies somehow----
+
+But no, Norma said, even while they were dashing toward the telegraph
+office. She had already bought her ticket; she was going,
+too--to-night--this very hour----!
+
+Wolf brought her up short, ecstatic bewilderment in his face.
+
+"But your trunks----?"
+
+"Regina--I tell you it's all settled--Regina sends them on after me. And
+I've got a new big suit-case, and my old brown one, that's plenty for
+the present! They're checked here, in the parcel-room----"
+
+"But we'll----" They had started automatically to rush toward the
+parcel-room, but now he brought her up short again. "It's five-thirty
+now," he muttered, turning briskly in still another direction, "let me
+have your ticket, we'll have to try for a section--it's pretty late, but
+there may be cancellations!"
+
+"Oh, but see, Wolf----! I've been here since half-past four. I've got
+the A drawing-room in Car 131----" She brought forth an official-looking
+envelope, and flashed a flimsy bit of coloured paper. For a third time
+Wolf checked his hurried rushing, and they both broke into delicious
+laughter. "I've been at it all day, with Aunt Kate," Norma said,
+proudly. "I've been to banks and to Judge Lee's office, and I've seen
+Annie and Leslie, and I bought a new wrapper and a suit-case, and--oh,
+and I saw Kitty Barry, and I got you a book for the train, and I got
+myself one----"
+
+"Oh, Norma," Wolf said, his eyes filling, "you God-blessed little
+adorable idiot, do you know how I love you? My darling--my own wife, do
+you know that I want to die, to-night, I'm so happy! Do you realize what
+it's going to mean to us, poking about Chicago, and sending home little
+presents to Rose and the kids, and reaching San Francisco, and going up
+to the big mine? Do you realize that I feel like a man out of jail--like
+a kid who knows it's Saturday morning?"
+
+"Well--I feel that way, too!" Norma smiled. "And now," she added, in a
+businesslike tone, "we've got to look for Aunt Kate and Rose, and get
+our bags; and Leslie said to-day that it was a good idea to wire a
+Chicago hotel for a room, just for the few hours before the Overland
+pulls out, because one feels so dirty and tired; do you realize that
+I've never spent a night on a Pullman yet?"
+
+"And I'll turn in the ticket for my lower," Wolf said; "we'll have
+dinner on board, so that's all right----"
+
+"Oh, Wolf, and won't that be fun?" Norma exulted. And then, joyously:
+"Oh, there they are!"
+
+And she fled across the great space to meet Rose, pretty and matronly,
+at the foot of the great stairway, and Harry grinning and proud, with
+his little sturdy white-caped boy in his arms, and Aunt Kate beaming
+utter happiness upon them all. And then ensued that thrilling time of
+incoherencies and confusions, laughter and tears, to which the big place
+is, by nature, dedicated. They were parting so lightly, but they all
+knew that there would be changes before they six met again. To Aunt
+Kate, holding close the child whose destinies had been so strangely
+entangled with her own, the moment held a poignant pleasure as well as
+pain. She was launched now, their imperious, beloved youngest; she had
+been taken to the mountain-tops, and shown the world at her feet, and
+she had chosen bravely and wisely, chosen her part of service and
+simplicity and love. Life would go on, changes indeed and growth
+everywhere, but she knew that the years would bring her back a new
+Norma--a developed, sweetened, self-reliant woman--and a new Wolf, his
+hard childhood all swept away and forgotten in the richness and beauty
+of this woman's love and companionship. And she was content.
+
+"And, Wolf--she told you about Kitty! Every month, as long as they need
+it," Rose said, crying heartily, as she clung to her brother. "Why, it's
+the most wonderful thing I ever heard! Poor Louis Barry can't believe
+it--he broke down completely! And Kitty was crying, and kissing the
+children, and she knelt down, and put her arms about Norma's knees; and
+Norma was crying, too--you never saw anything like it!"
+
+"She never told me a word about it," Wolf said, trying to laugh, and
+blinking, as he looked at her, a few feet away. One of her arms was
+about his mother, her hand was in Harry's, her face close to the rosy
+baby's face.
+
+"Wolf," his sister said, earnestly, drying her eyes, "it will bring a
+blessing on your own children----!"
+
+"Ah, Rose!" he answered, quickly. "Pray that there is one, some day--one
+of our own as sweet as yours are!"
+
+"Ah, you'll have everything, you two, never fear!" she said, radiantly.
+And then a gate opened, and the bustle about them thickened, and
+laughing faces grew pale, and last words faltered.
+
+Harry gave Rose the baby, and put his arm about Rose's mother, and they
+watched them go, the red-cap leading with the suit-cases, Wolf carrying
+another, Norma on his arm, twisting herself about, at the very last
+second, to smile an April smile over her shoulder, and wave the green
+jade handle of her slim little umbrella. There was just a glimpse of
+Wolf's old boyish, proud, protecting smile, and then his head drooped
+toward his companion, and the surging crowd shut them out of sight.
+
+Then Rose immediately was concerned for the little baby. Wouldn't it be
+wiser to go straight home, just for fear that Mrs. Noon might have
+fallen asleep--and the house caught on fire----? Mrs. Sheridan blew her
+nose and dried her eyes, and straightened her widow's bonnet, and
+cleared her throat, and agreed that it would. And they all went away.
+
+But there was another watcher who had shared, unseen, all this last
+half-hour, and who stood immovable to the last second, until the iron
+gates had actually clashed shut. It was a well-built, keen-eyed man, in
+an irreproachably fitting fur-collared overcoat, who finally turned
+away, fitting his eyeglasses, on their black ribbon, firmly upon the
+bridge of his nose, and sighing just a little as he went back to the
+sidewalk, and climbed into a waiting roadster.
+
+Even after he took his seat at the wheel, he made no effort to start the
+car, but sat slowly drawing on his heavy gloves, and staring
+abstractedly at the dull, uninteresting stretch of street before him,
+where a dismal spring wind was stirring chaff and papers about the
+subway entrance, and surface cars were grinding and ringing on the
+curve.
+
+It looked dull and empty--dull and empty, he thought. She had been very
+happy, looking up at her man, kissing her people good-bye. She was a
+remarkable woman, Norma.
+
+"A remarkable woman--Norma," he said, half-aloud. "She will make him a
+wonderful wife; she will help him to go a long way. And she never would
+have had patience for formal living; it wasn't in her!"
+
+But he remembered what was in her, what eager gaiety, what hunger for
+new impressions, what courage in seizing her dilemmas the instant she
+saw them. He remembered the flash of her eyes, and the curve of her
+proud little mouth.
+
+"Theodore had more charm than any of them," he said, "and she is like
+him. Well--perhaps I'll meet somebody like her, some day, and the story
+will have a different ending!"
+
+But he knew in his heart that there was nobody like her, and that she
+had gone out of his life for ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had hung the belted brown coat over the big new gray one in the
+drawing-room, and Norma had brushed her hair, and Wolf had shoved the
+suit-cases under the seats, and they had gone straight into the
+dining-car, and were at a lighted little shining table by this time.
+Wolf had had no lunch; Norma was, she said, starving. They ordered their
+meal just as the train drew out of the underground arcades and swept
+over the city, in the twilight of the dull, sunless day.
+
+Norma looked down, and joy and a vague heartache struggled within her.
+The little city blocks, draped with their frail tangles of fire-escapes,
+were as clean-cut as toys. In the streets children were screaming and
+racing, at the doorways women loitered and talked. Great trucks lumbered
+in and out among surging pedestrians, and women and children stood
+before the green-grocers' displays of oranges and cabbages, and trickled
+in and out of the markets, where cheap cuts were advertised in great
+chalk signs on the windows. Red brick, yellow brick, gray cement, the
+streets fled by; the dear, familiar streets that she and Wolf, and she
+and Rose, had tramped and explored, in the burning dry heat of July, in
+the flutter of November's first snows.
+
+"Say good-bye to it, Wolf; it will be a long time before we see New York
+again!"
+
+Wolf looked down, grinning. Then, as they left the city, and the dusk
+deepened, his eyes went toward the river, went toward the vague and
+waiting West. The Palisades lay, a wide bar of soft dull gray, against
+the paler dove-colour of the sky. Above them, bare trees were etched
+sharply, and beneath them was the satiny surface of the full Hudson.
+
+It was still water, and the river was smooth enough to give back a clear
+reflection of the buildings and the wharves on the opposite shore, and
+the floating ice from the north looked like rounded bunches of foam
+arrested on the shining waters.
+
+Suddenly the sinking sun evaded the smother of cloud, and flashed out
+red and shining, for only a few brilliant minutes. It caught window
+glass like flame, twinkled and smouldered in the mirror of the river,
+and lighted the under edges of low clouds with a crisp touch of apricot
+and pink. Wet streets shone joyously, doves rose in a circling whirl
+from a near-by roof, and all the world shone and sparkled in the last
+breath of the spring day. Then dusk came indeed, and the villages
+across the river were strung with increasing lights, and in the tender
+opal softness of the evening sky Norma saw a great star hanging.
+
+"That's a good omen--that's our own little star!" she said softly to
+herself. She looked up to see Wolf smiling at her, and the smile in her
+own eyes deepened, and she stretched a warm and comradely hand to him
+across the little table.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beloved Woman, by Kathleen Norris
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