han the following afternoon. It was
twilight in Alice's room, and she and Norma were talking on into the
gloom, discussing the one or two guests who had chanced to come in for
tea, and planning the two large teas that Alice usually gave some time
late in November.

Chris came in quietly, kissed his wife, and nodded carelessly to Norma.
The girl's sudden mad heartbeats and creeping colour could subside
together unnoticed, for he apparently paid no attention to her, and
presently drifted to the piano, leaving the women free to resume their
conference.

Alice was a person of more than a surface sweetness; she loved harmony
and serenity, and there was almost no inclination to irritability or
ugliness in her nature. Her voice was always soothing and soft, and her
patience in the unravelling of other people's problems was
inexhaustible. Alice was, as all the world conceded, an angel.

But Norma had not been a member of her household for eight months
without realizing that Alice, like other household angels, did not wish
an understudy in the role. She did not quite enjoy the nearness of
another woman who might be all sweet and generous and peace-making, too.
That was her own sacred and peculiar right. She could gently and
persistently urge objections and find inconsistencies in any plan of
her sister or of Norma, no matter how advantageous it sounded, and she
could adhere to a plan of her own with a tenacity that, taken in
consideration with Alice's weak body and tender voice, was nothing less
than astonishing.

Norma, lessoned in a hard school, and possessing more than her share of
adaptability and common sense, had swiftly come to the conclusion that,
since it was not her part to adjust the affairs of her benefactors, she
might much more wisely constitute herself a sort of Greek chorus to
Alice's manipulations. Alice's motives were always of the highest, and
it was easy to praise them in all honesty, and if sometimes the younger
woman had mentally arrived at a conclusion long before Alice had
patiently and sweetly reached it, the little self-control was not much
to pay toward the comfort of a woman as heavily afflicted as Alice.

For Norma knew in her own heart that Alice was heavily afflicted,
although the invalid herself always took the attitude that her
helplessness brought the best part of life into her room, and shut away
from her the tediousness and ugliness of the world.

"'Aida' two weeks from to-night!" Alice