by one of those big, comfortable English ambulances, at Southampton, and
taken right to her apartment, or hotel, or whatever Chris arranges."

"Not so much harder," Norma ventured, "than the trip to Newport, after
all."

"Well, she didn't go to Newport last summer," Annie said, "but she is
certainly better now than she was then, and I believe it could be done;
I really do. We're not talking a great deal about it, because nothing is
settled, but if it becomes definite, I shall certainly advise it."

Norma drank her tea, and listened, and threw in an occasional word. When
the other women rose to go, she rose, too, perhaps half-hoping that
Annie would hold her for a more intimate word. But Annie quite suavely
and indifferently included her in her general farewells, and Norma had
cordial good-byes from the two young women, and even a vague invitation
from the older Mrs. Thayer to come and see her, when Katrina was gone.

Then she was walking down the Avenue, with her head and heart in a
confused whirl of bitterness and disappointment. The three quarters of
an hour in Aunt Annie's big, dim, luxurious palace had been like a dose
of some insidious poison.

The very atmosphere of richness and service and idleness, the beauty of
wide spaces and rich tones, the massed blossoms and dimmed lights,
struck sharply upon senses attuned to Aunt Kate's quick voice, Rose's
little house with its poverty and utility, and Wolf's frank enjoyment of
his late and simple dinner. The conversation, with its pleasant
assumption of untold wealth of power and travel and regal luxuriousness,
burned its memory across Norma's mind like a corroding acid. They were
not contemptible, they were not robbers or brutes or hideous old
plutocrats who had grown wealthy upon the wrongs of the poor. No, they
were normal pleasant girls whose code it was to be generous to maids and
underlings, to speak well of their neighbours, to pay their bills and
keep their promises.

"They make me _tired_!" she tried to tell herself, walking briskly, and
filling her lungs with the sweet fresh air. It was twilight, and the
north-bound tide of traffic was halting and rushing, halting and
rushing, up the Avenue; now held motionless at a crossing, now flowing
on in mad haste, the lumbering omnibuses passing each other, little
hansoms threading the mass, and foot passengers scampering and
withdrawing, and risking all sorts of passages between. The distance was
luminous and bl