she had whispered "I know--I know!" as if to herself, but
she did not interrupt him, and when he paused he saw that she was choked
with tears, and could not speak.

"The mad and wonderful sacrifice you made I can't talk about, Norma," he
said. "Only an ignorant, noble-hearted little girl like you could have
done that! But that's all over, now. You must try to make your life what
they think it is--those good people that love you! And I'll try, too!--I
do try. And you mustn't cry, my little sweetheart," Chris added, with a
tenderness so new, and so poignantly sweet, that Norma was almost faint
with the sheer joy of it, "you mustn't blame me for just saying this,
this once, because it's for the last time! We mustn't meet----" His
voice dropped. "I think we mustn't meet," he repeated, painfully and
slowly.

"No!" she agreed, quickly.

"But you are to remember that," Chris reiterated, "that I am living, and
moving about, and going to the office, and back to my home, only because
you are alive in the world, and the day may come when I can serve you!
Life has been only that to me, for a long, long time!"

For a long minute Norma sat silent, her dark lashes fallen on her cheek,
her eyes on the hand that she had grasped in her own.

"I'll remember, Chris! Thank you, Chris!" she said, simply. Then she
raised her eyes and looked straight at him, with a childish little
frown, puzzled and bewildered, on her forehead, and they exchanged a
long look of good-bye. Chris raised her hand to his lips, and Norma very
quietly slipped from her seat, and turned once to smile bravely at him
before she was lost in the swiftly moving whirlpool of the subway
entrance. She was trembling as she seated herself in the train, and
moved upon her way scarcely conscious of what she was doing.

But Chris did not move from his seat for more than an hour.

Norma went home, and quickly and deftly began her preparations for
dinner. Inga had been married a few weeks before, and so Norma had no
maid. She put her new hat into its tissue paper, and tied a fresh
checked apron over her filmy best waist, and stepped to and fro between
stove and dining table, as efficient a little housekeeper as all New
Jersey could show.

Wolf came home hungry and good-natured, and kissed her, and sat at the
end of her little kitchen table while she put the last touches to the
meal, appreciative and amusing, a new magazine for her in the pocket of
his overcoat, an invitatio