"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.

THE END