with its vista of
utter felicity. She had to drive it resolutely from her mind. Not
that--never that! But there must at least be peace and friendship
between them.

At three o'clock the luncheon was over; it was half-past three when
Leslie and she drove to the Melrose "cottage"--as the fourteen-room,
three-story frame house was called. Norma had searched the drive with
her eyes as they approached. The gray roadster was not there. There was
no sign of Christopher's hat or coat in the hallway. Alice was alone, in
her downstairs sitting-room. Norma's heart sank like a lump of ice.

"Did you see Chris?" the invalid began, happily. "We had the nicest
lunch together--just we two. And look at the books the angel brought
me--just a feast. You saw him, Leslie, didn't you, dear? He said he
caught you and Acton at breakfast. I was perfectly amazed. Miss Slater
moved me out here about eleven o'clock, and I heard someone walking
in----! He's off now, with the Pages; he told you that, of course!"

"He looks rotten, I think," Leslie offered. "I told him he was working
too hard."

"Well, Judge Lee is sick, and he hasn't been in to the office since
June," Alice said, "and that makes it very hard for Chris. But he says
his room at the club is cool, and now he'll have two or three lovely
days with the Page boys----"

Norma, who had subsided quietly into a chair, was looking at the yellow
covers of the new French and Italian novels.

"And then does he come back here Monday, for the tennis?" she asked,
clearing her throat.

"He says not!" Alice answered, regretfully. "He's going straight on down
to the city. Then next week-end is the cruise with the Dwights; and
after that, I suppose we'll all be home!"

She went on into a conversation with Leslie, relative to the move. After
a few moments Norma went out through the opened French window onto the
wide porch. It was rather a dark, old-fashioned side porch, with an
elaborate wooden railing, and potted hydrangeas under a striped awning.
The house had neither the magnificence of Annie's gray-stone mansion or
the beauty of Leslie's colonial white and green at Glen Cove; it had
been built in the late eighties, and was inflexibly ornate.

Norma went down slowly through the garden, and walked vaguely toward the
hot glitter and roll of the blue sea. Her misery was almost unbearable.
Weeks--it would be weeks before she would see him! He had been here
to-day--here in the garden--in Alice's