lf--always
ready to protect her, always good and big and affectionate, and ready to
laugh at her silliest jokes, and ready to meet any of her problems
sympathetically and generously. Her beauty, her irresistible charm as
she hung on his arm and chattered of what they would do when they
started housekeeping, almost dizzied him.

She liked everything: their wheeling deep upholstered seats in the
train; the seaside hotel, with the sea rolling so near in the soft
twilight; the dinner for which they found themselves so hungry.
Afterward they climbed laughing into a big chair, and were pushed along
between the moving lines of other chairs, far up the long boardwalk. And
Norma, with her soft loose glove in Wolf's big hand, leaned back against
the curved wicker seat, and looked at the little lighted shops, and
listened to the scrape of feet and chatter of tongues and the solemn
roll and crash of the waves, and stared up childishly at the arch of
stars that looked so far and calm above this petty noise and glare. She
was very tired, every muscle in her body ached, but she was content.
Wolf was taking care of her and there would be no more lonely vigils and
agonies of indecision and pain. She thought of Christopher with a sort
of childish quiet triumph; she had solved the whole matter for them
both, superbly.

Wolf was a silent man with persons he did not know. But he never was
silent with Norma; he always had a thousand things to discuss with her.
The lights and the stir on the boardwalk inspired him to all sorts of
good-natured criticism and speculation, and they estimated just the
expense and waste that went on there day by day.

"Really to have the ocean, Wolf, it would be so much nicer to be even in
the wildest place--just rocks and coves. This is like having a lion in
your front parlour!"

"Lord, Norma--when I got up this morning, if somebody had told me that I
would be married, and down at Atlantic City to-night----!"

"I know; it's like a dream!"

"But you're not sorry, Norma; you're sure that I'm going to make you
happy?" the man asked, in sudden anxiety.

"You always _have_, Wolf!" she answered, very simply.

He never really doubted it; it was a part of Wolf's healthy normal
nature to believe what was good and loving. He was not exacting, not
envious; he had no real understanding of her giddy old desires for
wealth and social power. Wolf at twenty-five was working so hard and so
interestedly, sleeping so deepl