He sat down, and Norma, incapable of any effort, at least until she could control the emotion that was shaking her like a vertigo, sank back into her own chair, unseeing and unhearing. The gold clock on the mantel ticked and tocked, the other three women chatted and laughed, and Chris contributed his share to the general conversation. But Norma's one desperate need was for escape.

He made no protest when she said hasty farewells, but when she had gone rapidly and almost blindly down the stairway, and was at the front door, she found him beside her. He got into his fur-collared coat, picked up his hat, and they descended to the sidewalk together, in the colourless, airless, sunless light of the winter afternoon.

"Get in my car!" Chris said, indicating the roadster at the curb.

The girl without a word obeyed. His voice, the motion of his clean-cut mouth, the searching glance of his quick, keen eyes, acted upon her like a charm. Alice--Wolf--every thing else in the world vanished from her thoughts, or rather had never been there. She was drinking again the forbidden waters for which she had thirsted, perhaps without quite knowing it, so long. The strangeness, the strain, the artifice of the last eight months fell from her like a spell; she was herself again, comfortable again, poised again, thrilling from head to heels with delicious and bubbling life--ready for anything!

Now that they were alone she felt no more nervousness; he would speak to her when he was ready, he could not leave her without speaking. Norma settled back comfortably in the deep, low seat, and glanced sidewise at the stern profile that showed between his high fur collar and the fur cap he had pulled well down over his ears. The world seemed changed to her; she had wakened from a long dream.

"No--not the old house!" she presently broke the silence to tell him. "I go to New Jersey."

He had been driving slowly out Fifth Avenue, now he obediently turned, and threaded his way through the cross-street traffic until they were within perhaps a hundred feet of the entrance to the New Jersey subways.

Then he ran the car close to the curb, and stopped, and for the first time looked fully at Norma, and she saw his old, pleasant smile.

"Well, and how goes it?" he asked. "How is Wolf? Tell me where you are living, and all about it!"

Norma in answer gave him a report upon her own affairs, and spoke of Aunt Kate and Rose and Rose's children. She did not realize that a tone almost pleading, almost apologetic, crept into her eager voice while she spoke, and told its own story. Chris watched her closely, his eyes never leaving her face. All around them moved the confusion and congestion of Sixth Avenue; overhead the elevated road roared and crashed, but neither man nor woman was more than vaguely conscious of surroundings.

"And are you happy, Norma?" Chris asked.

"Oh, yes!" she answered, quickly.

"You are a very game little liar," he said, dispa.s.sionately. "No--no, I'm not blaming you!" he added, hastily, as she would have spoken. "You took the very best way out, and I respect and honour you for it! I was not surprised--although the possibility had never occurred to me."

Something in his cool, almost lifeless tone, chilled her, and she did not speak.

"When I heard of it," Chris said, "I went to Canada. I don't remember the details exactly, but I remember one day sitting up there--in the woods somewhere, and looking at my hunting knife, and looking at my wrist----"

He looked at his wrist now, and her eyes followed his.

"--and if I had thought," Chris presently continued, "that a slash there might have carried me to some region of peace--where there was no hunger for Norma--I would not have hesitated! But one isn't sure--more's the pity!" he finished, smiling with eyes full of pain.

Norma could not speak. The work of long months had been undone in a short hour, and she was conscious of a world that crashed and tumbled in utter ruin about her.

"Well, no use now," Chris said. He folded his arms on his chest, and looked sternly away into s.p.a.ce for a minute, and Norma felt his self-control, his repression, as she would have felt no pa.s.sionate outburst of reproach. "But there is one thing that I've wanted for a long time to tell you, Norma. If you hadn't been such a little girl, if you had known what life is, you could not have done what you did!"

"I suppose not," she half-whispered, with a dry throat, as he waited for some sign from her.

"No, you couldn't have given yourself to any one else--if you had known," Chris went on, as if musing aloud. "And that brings me to what I want to say. Marriage lasts a long, long time, Norma, and even you--with all your courage!--may find that you've promised more than you can perform! The time may come----

"Norma, I hope it won't!" he interrupted himself to say, bitterly. "I try to hope it won't! I try to hope that you will come to love him, my dear, and forget me! But if that time does come, what I want you to remember is this afternoon, and sitting here with me in the car, and Chris telling you that whenever--or wherever--or however he can serve you, you are to remember that he is living just for that hour! There will never be any change in me, Norma, never anything but longing and longing just for the sight of you, just for one word from you! I love you, my dear--I can't help it. G.o.d knows I've _tried_ to help it. I love you as I don't believe any other woman in the world was ever loved! So much that I want life to be good to you, even if I never see you, and I want you to be happy, even without me!"

He had squared about to face her, and as the pa.s.sionate rush of words swept about her, Norma laid her little gloved hand gently upon his big one, and her blue eyes, drowned in sudden tears, fixed themselves in exquisite desolation and despair upon his face.

Once or twice she had whispered "I know--I know!" as if to herself, but she did not interrupt him, and when he paused he saw that she was choked with tears, and could not speak.

"The mad and wonderful sacrifice you made I can't talk about, Norma," he said. "Only an ignorant, n.o.ble-hearted little girl like you could have done that! But that's all over, now. You must try to make your life what they think it is--those good people that love you! And I'll try, too!--I do try. And you mustn't cry, my little sweetheart," Chris added, with a tenderness so new, and so poignantly sweet, that Norma was almost faint with the sheer joy of it, "you mustn't blame me for just saying this, this once, because it's for the last time! We mustn't meet----" His voice dropped. "I think we mustn't meet," he repeated, painfully and slowly.

"No!" she agreed, quickly.

"But you are to remember that," Chris reiterated, "that I am living, and moving about, and going to the office, and back to my home, only because you are alive in the world, and the day may come when I can serve you!

Life has been only that to me, for a long, long time!"

For a long minute Norma sat silent, her dark lashes fallen on her cheek, her eyes on the hand that she had grasped in her own.

"I'll remember, Chris! Thank you, Chris!" she said, simply. Then she raised her eyes and looked straight at him, with a childish little frown, puzzled and bewildered, on her forehead, and they exchanged a long look of good-bye. Chris raised her hand to his lips, and Norma very quietly slipped from her seat, and turned once to smile bravely at him before she was lost in the swiftly moving whirlpool of the subway entrance. She was trembling as she seated herself in the train, and moved upon her way scarcely conscious of what she was doing.

But Chris did not move from his seat for more than an hour.

Norma went home, and quickly and deftly began her preparations for dinner. Inga had been married a few weeks before, and so Norma had no maid. She put her new hat into its tissue paper, and tied a fresh checked ap.r.o.n over her filmy best waist, and stepped to and fro between stove and dining table, as efficient a little housekeeper as all New Jersey could show.

Wolf came home hungry and good-natured, and kissed her, and sat at the end of her little kitchen table while she put the last touches to the meal, appreciative and amusing, a new magazine for her in the pocket of his overcoat, an invitation from his mother for dinner to-morrow night, and a pleasant suggestion that he and she wander up Broadway again and look in windows, after his mother's dinner.

They talked, while they dined, of the possibility of the California move, and Wolf afterward went down to the furnace. When the fire was banked for the night, he watched the last of the dinner clearance, and they went across the cold dark strip of land between their house and a neighbour's, to play three exciting rubbers of bridge.

And at eleven Wolf was asleep, and Norma reading again, or trying to read. But her blood was racing, and her head was spinning, and before she slept she brought out all her memories of the afternoon. Chris's words rang in her heart again, and the glances that had accompanied them unrolled before her eyes like some long pageant that was infinitely wonderful and thrilling. Leslie and Annie and Alice might snub her, but Chris--their idol, the cleverest and most charming man in all their circle!--Chris loved her. Chris loved her. And--from those old dreamy days in Biretta's Bookstore, had she not loved Chris?

Another morning came, another night, and life went its usual way. But Norma was wrapped in a dream that was truly a pillar of cloud by day, and of flame by night. She was hardly aware of the people about her, except that her inner consciousness of happiness and of elation gave her an even added sweetness and charm, made her readier to please them, and more anxious for their love.

Wolf almost immediately saw the change, but she did not see the shadow that came to be habitual in his young face, nor read aright his grave eyes. She supposed him perhaps unusually busy, if indeed she thought of him at all. Like her aunt, and Rose, and the rest of her world, he was no more now than a kindly and dependable shadow, something to be quickly put aside for the reality of her absorbing friendship for Chris.

CHAPTER XXIX

Despite their resolve not to see each other in the two weeks that followed Alice's luncheon, Norma had seen Chris three times. He had written her on the third day, and she had met the postman at the corner, sure that the big square envelope would be there. They had had luncheon, far down town, and walked up through the snowy streets together, parting with an engagement for the fourth day ahead, a matinee and tea engagement. The third meeting had been for luncheon again, and after lunch they had wandered through an Avenue gallery, looking at the pictures, and talking about themselves.

Chris had loaned her books, little slim books of dramas or essays, and Chris had talked to her of plays and music. One night, when Wolf was in Philadelphia, Chris took her to the opera again, duly returning her to Aunt Kate at half-past eleven, and politely disclaiming Aunt Kate's grat.i.tude for his goodness to little Norma.

He never attempted to touch her, to kiss her; he never permitted himself an affectionate term, or a hint of the pa.s.sion that enveloped him; they were friends, that was all, and surely, surely, they told themselves, a self-respecting man and woman may be friends--may talk and walk and lunch together, and harm no one? Norma knew that it was the one vital element in Chris's life, as in her own, and that the hours that he did not spend with her were filled with plans and antic.i.p.ations for their times together.

One evening, just before Christmas, when the young Sheridans were staying through a heavy storm with their mother, Wolf came home with the news that he must spend some weeks in Philadelphia, studying a new method of refining iron ore. It was tacitly understood that this transfer was but a preliminary to the long-antic.i.p.ated promotion to the California managership, but Wolf took it very quietly, with none of the exultation that the compliment once would have caused him.

"I'll go with you to Philadelphia," Norma said, not quite naturally. She had been made vaguely uneasy by his repressed manner, and by the fact that her kiss of greeting had been almost put aside by him, at the door, a few minutes earlier. Dear old Wolf; she had always loved him--she would not have him unhappy for all the world!

In answer he looked at her unsmilingly, wearily narrowing his eyes as if to concentrate his thoughts.

"You can't, very well, but thank you just the same, Norma," he said, formally. "I shall be with Voorhies and Palmer and Bender all the time; they put me up at a club, and there'll be plenty of evening work--nearly every evening----"

"Norma'll stay here with me!" Aunt Kate said, hospitably.

"Well"--Wolf agreed, indifferently--"I can run up from Philadelphia and be home every Sat.u.r.day, Mother," he added. Norma felt vaguely alarmed by his manner, and devoted her best efforts to amusing and interesting him for the rest of the meal. After dinner she came in from the kitchen to find him in a big chair in the little front parlour, and she seated herself upon an arm of it, and put her own arm loosely about his neck.

"What are you reading, Wolf? Shall we go out and burn up Broadway?

There's a wonderful picture at The Favourite."

He tossed his paper aside, and moved from under her, so that Norma found herself ensconced in the chair, and her husband facing her from the rug that was before the little gas log.