nished Alice herself.

Alice! Norma was thinking of Alice, now. Just where did Alice come in?
Alice had always been the most generous of wives. But she could not be
generous here; no human woman could. She liked Norma, in a sense she
needed Norma, but Chris was all her world.

"But, good heavens!" Norma mused, as she walked slowly along, "isn't
there to be any friendship for a man but his men friends, or any for a
woman except unmarried men? Isn't there friendship at all between the
sexes? Must it always be sneaking and subterfuge, unless it's marriage?
I don't want to marry Chris Liggett----"

She stopped short, and the blood left her heart suddenly, and rushed
back with a pounding that almost dizzied her.

"_I don't want to marry Chris Liggett_," she whispered, aloud. And then
she widened her eyes at space, and walked on blindly for a little way.
"Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris!" she said. "Oh, what shall I do?"

An agony almost physical in its violence seized her, and she began to
move more rapidly, as if to wear it out, or escape it.

"No, no, no; I can't care for him in that way," said Norma, feeling her
throat dry and her head suddenly aching. "We can't--we cannot--like each
other that way!"

The rest of the walk was a blank as far as her consciousness was
concerned. She was swept far away, on a rushing sea of memories,
memories confused and troubled by a vague apprehension of the days to
come. That was it; that was it; they loved each other. Not as
kinspeople, not as friends, not as the Chris and Norma of Alice's and
Leslie's and Annie's lives, but as man and woman, caught at last in the
old, old snare that is the strongest in life.

Bewildered and sick, she reached the cool, great colonnaded doorway of
the hotel. And here she and Christopher came face to face.

He was coming out, was indeed halfway down the stone steps. They stood
still and looked at each other.

Norma thought that he looked tired, that perhaps the hot week in
streets and offices had been hard for him. He was pale, and the smile he
gave her was strained and unnatural. They had not seen each other for
ten days, and Norma, drinking in every expression of the firm mouth, the
shrewd, kindly eyes, the finely set head, felt sudden confidence and
happiness flood her being again. It was all nonsense, this imagining of
hers, and she and Chris would always be the best friends in the world!

"Alice is perfectly splendid," Norma said, in answer to his