ly expectant, in
the lovely face. Her eyes burned deeply blue above the touch of rouge
and the crimson lips. Her dark, soft hair fell in loose ringlets on her
shoulders from under the absurd little tipped and veiled hat of the late
seventies. Her gown, a flowered muslin, moved and tilted with a gentle,
shaking majesty over hoop skirts, and was crossed on the low shoulders
by a thin silk shawl whose long fringes were tangled in her mitted
fingers. The white lace stockings began where the loose lace pantalettes
stopped, and disappeared into flat-heeled kid slippers. Norma carried a
bright nosegay in lace paper, and on her breast a thin gold locket hung
on a velvet ribbon.

She herself had been completely captivated by the costume when Madame
Modiste had first suggested it, and when the first fittings began. But
that was weeks ago, and she was accustomed to it now, and conscious in
this instant of nothing but Chris, conscious of nothing but the
possibility that he would have a word or a smile, at last, for her.

"Stay right here, both of you--don't move a step--while I telephone
Lucia Street!" said the harassed Annie, her eyes glittering with some
desperate hope. She hurried away; they were alone.

"Poor old Roy--he adored his father!" Chris said, with dry lips, and in
a rather unnatural voice. Norma, for one second, simulated mere
sympathy. Then with a rush the pride and hurt that had sustained her
ever since that weary September evening in the hotel lobby vanished, and
she came close to Chris, so that the fragrance and sweetness of her
enveloped him, and caught his coat with both her mitted hands, and
raised her face imploringly, commandingly to his.

"Chris--for God's sake--what have I done? Don't you know--don't you know
that you're killing me?"

He looked down at her, wretchedly. And suddenly Norma knew. Not that he
liked her, not that she fascinated and interested him, not that they
were friends. But that he loved her with every fibre of his being, even
as she loved him.

The revelation carried her senses away with it upon a raging sea of
emotion and ecstasy. He drew her into a dim corner of the wings, and put
his arms about her, and her whole slender body, in its tilting hoops,
strained backward under the passion and fury of his first embrace. Again
and again his lips met hers, and she heard the incoherent outpouring of
murmured words, and felt the storm that shook him as it was shaking her.
Norma, after the