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 ma.s.ses 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 x.x.xVI

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 ma.s.s of soft dark hair into a stern k.n.o.b for her bath. "Aunt Kate, I've always loved Wolf, always!" she said, pa.s.sionately. "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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sumed, "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 x.x.xVII

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!