loosened, and
her smart little hat in one hand. Chris, like all well-built men, was
always at his best in sports clothes; the head of his favourite mare
looked mildly over his shoulder. Behind the group stretched the
exquisite reaches of bridle-path, the great trees heavy with summer
foliage and heat.

Norma touched her lips to the glass.

"Chris--Chris--Chris!" she said, half aloud. "I love you so--and I have
brought you, of all men, to this! To the point when you would throw it
all aside--everything your wonderful and generous life has stood
for--for me! God," said Norma, softly, putting the picture down, and
covering her face with her hands, "don't let me do anything that will
hurt him and shame him; help me! Help us both!"

A few minutes later she went down to dinner, which commenced
auspiciously, with the old lady in a gracious and expansive mood, and
her guests, old Judge Lee and his wife, and old Doctor and Mrs. Turner,
sufficiently intimate, and sufficiently reminiscent, to absolve Norma
from any conversational duty. The girl could follow her own line of
heroic and resolute thought uninterruptedly.

But with the salad came utter rout again, and Norma's colour, and heart,
and breath, began to fluctuate in a renewed agony of hope and fear. It
was only Joseph, leaning deferentially over Judge Lee's shoulder, who
said softly:

"Mr. Christopher Liggett, Judge. He has telephoned that he would like to
see you for a moment after dinner, and will be here at about nine
o'clock."

The dinner went on, for Norma, in a daze. At a quarter to nine she went
upstairs; she was standing in the dark upper hallway at the window when
Chris came, saw him leave his car, and come quickly across the sidewalk
under the bare, moving boughs of the old maples. She was trembling with
the longing just to speak to him again, just to hear his voice.

She went to her room, rang for Regina, meditating a message of
good-night that should include a headache as excuse. But before the maid
came she went quickly downstairs, and into his presence, as
instinctively as a drowning man might cling to anything that meant
air--just the essential air. They could not exchange a word alone, but
that was not important. The one necessity was to be together.

Before ten o'clock Norma went back to her room. She undressed, and put
on a loose warm robe, and seated herself before the old-fashioned
fireplace. When Regina came, she asked the girl to put out all