ly
have to make the best of it, don't they? If--if we go to California next
month--you know that I'll do everything I can----!"

He was not listening to her.

"Norma," he interrupted, sharply, "if Liggett's wife was out of the
way--would you want to marry him?"

"Wolf!--what's the use of asking that? You only--you only excite us
both. Aunt Alice _isn't_ out of the way, and even if she were, I am your
wife. I'm sorry. I'll never meet him again--I haven't been a bit happy
about it. I'll promise you that I will not see him again."

"I don't ask you for that promise," Wolf said. "I don't know what we can
do! I never should have let you--I shouldn't have been such a fool as
to--but somehow, I'd always dreamed that you and I would marry.
Well!"--he interrupted his musing with resolute cheerfulness--"I've got
to get over to the library to-night," he said, "for I may have to start
for Phily to-morrow afternoon. Will you tell Mother----"

Norma immediately protested that she was going with him, but he
patiently declined, kissing her in a matter-of-fact sort of way as he
pulled on the old overcoat and the new gloves, and slamming the hall
door behind him when he went.

For a minute she stood looking after him, with a great heartache almost
blinding her. Then she flashed to her room, and before Wolf had reached
the corner his wife had slipped her hand into his arm, and her little
double step was keeping pace with his long stride in the way they both
loved.

She talked to him in her usual manner, and presently he could answer
normally, and they bought peppermints to soften their literary labours.
In the big library Wolf was instantly absorbed, but for awhile Norma sat
watching the shabby, interested, intelligent men and women who came and
went, the shabby books that crossed the counters, the pretty, efficient
desk-clerks under their green droplights. The radiators clanked and
hissed softly in the intervals of silence, sometimes there was
whispering at the shelves, or one of the attendants spoke in a low tone.

Norma loved the atmosphere, so typical a phase of the great city's
life. After awhile she idly dragged toward her three books, from a
table, and idly dipped into them: "The Life of the Grimkes"; "The Life
of Elizabeth Prentiss"; "The Letters of Charles Dickens."

Nine struck; ten; eleven. Wolf had some six or seven large books about
him, and alternated his plunges into them with animated whispered
conversations wit