of being
her own mistress crept over her, her cheeks cooled, her fluttering
heart came back to its normal beat. She began to hear herself telling
Chris how courageous she had been.

It was too bad--it was one of the sad things of life. But after all,
love was love, in spite of Wolf's scepticism, and if it soothed Wolf to
be rude, let him have that consolation! What did a little pain more or
less signify now? There was no going back. Years from now Wolf would
forgive her, recognizing that great love was its own excuse for being.
"And if this sort of thing exists only to be crushed and killed," Norma
wrote Chris a few days later, "then half the great pictures, the great
novels, the great poems and dramas, the great operas, are lies. But you
and I know that they are not lies!"

She was unhappy at home, for Aunt Kate was grave and silent, Rose
wrapped in the all-absorbing question of the tiny Catherine's meals, and
Wolf neither came nor wrote on Saturday night. But in Chris's devotion
she was feverishly and breathlessly happy, their meetings--always in
public places, and without a visible evidence of their emotion--were
hours of the most stimulating delight.

CHAPTER XXX

So matters went on for another ten days. Then suddenly, on a mid-week
afternoon, Norma, walking home from a luncheon in a wild and stormy
wind, was amazed to see the familiar, low-slung roadster waiting outside
her aunt's door when she reached the steps. Chris jumped out and came to
meet her as she looked bewilderedly toward it, a Chris curiously
different in manner from the man she had left only an hour ago.

"Norma!" he said, quickly, "I found a message when I got to the office.
I was to call up Aunt Marianna's house at once. She's ill--_very_ ill.
They want me, and they want you!"

"Me?" she echoed, blankly. "What for?"

"She's had a stroke," he said, still with that urgent and hurried air,
"and Joseph--poor old fellow, he was completely broken up--said that she
had been begging them to get hold of you!"

Norma had gotten into the familiar front seat, but now she stayed him
with a quick hand.

"Wait a minute, Chris, I'll run up and tell Aunt Kate where I am going!"
she said.

"She's gone out. There's nobody there!" he assured her, glancing up at
the apartment windows. "I knew you would be coming in, so I waited."

"Then I'll telephone!" the girl said, settling herself again. "But what
do you suppose she wants me for?" she asked, r