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 Saturdayand 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.
Normamet 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 planof 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 Lesliejust 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 alwayssmoothed 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.
On thememorable 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. BetweenNorma 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 ofdécolletage.
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. Normahad 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 threeother 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.
"Itiswonderful 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.
It waslong 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, hispleasant 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.
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. Soshe 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.
"Mygrandmother!" 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."
"Youknowher?" 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 whatdoesshe 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, whatismy 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 shehadhad 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 itfair? 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'snotmy 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 instantlyaffected 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 roadahead. 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.
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 inclinedher. 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 cautiousglance 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 eventhinkof 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.
Twodays 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 shesaid," 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 hedoeslike 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 thoughtthat 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.
Wolfwalked 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 morewhimsical 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 wasconscious 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 exceptunmarried 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 perhapsthe 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 reallyexcellent, and I think Leslie will be delighted. And now I have to go, Norma——"