stopher Liggetts' house, and greeted the butler with a
delighted sense of returning to her own. Alice was in the front room,
before a wood fire; she greeted Norma with her old smile, and with an
outstretched hand, but Norma was shocked to see how drawn and strangely
aged the smile was, and how thin the hand!

The room had its old scent of violets, and its old ordered beauty and
richness, but Norma was vaguely conscious, for the first time, of some
new invalid quality of fussiness, of a pretty and superfluous cluttering
that had not been characteristic of Alice's belongings a year ago.
Alice, too, wore newly a certain stamp of frailty, her always pure high
forehead had a faint transparency and shine that Norma did not remember,
and the increasing accumulation of pillows and little bookcases and
handsome stands about her suggested that her horizon was closing in,
that her world was diminishing to this room, and this room alone.

The strange nurse who smilingly and noiselessly slipped away as Norma
came in, was another vaguely disquieting hint of helplessness, but Norma
knew better than to make any comment upon her impressions, and merely
asked the usual casual questions, as she sat down near the couch.

"How are you, Aunt Alice? But you look splendidly!"

"I'm so _well_," said Alice, emphatically, with a sort of solemn
thankfulness, "that I don't know myself! Whether it was saving myself
the strain of moving to Newport last summer, or what, I don't know. But
I haven't been so well for _years_!"

Norma's heart contracted with sudden pity. Alice had never employed
these gallant falsehoods before. She had always been quite obviously
happy and busy and even enviable, in her limited sphere. The girl
chatted away with her naturally enough while the luncheon table was
arranged between them and the fire, but she noticed that two nurses
shifted the invalid into an upright position before the meal, and that
Alice's face was white with exhaustion as she began to sip her bouillon.

They were alone, an hour later, playing with little boxed ices, when
Alice suddenly revealed the object of the meeting. Norma had asked for
Chris, who was, it appeared, absent on some matter of business for a few
days, and it was in connection with the introduction of his name that
Alice spoke.

"Chris--that reminds me! I wanted to speak to you about something,
Norma; I've wanted to for months, really. It's not really important,
because of course yo