in the morning were mingled with comments on the thunderstorm or
the epidemic of nursery chicken-pox.

When Rose and Harry were gone, on Sunday evenings, Wolf and Norma might
sit on the side steps of the side porch, looking off across the gradual
drop descent of tree-tops and shingled roofs, into a distant world
silvering under the summer moon. These were their happiest times, when
solitude and quiet spread about them, after the hospitable excitements
of the day, and they could talk and dream and plan for the years ahead.

She was an older Norma now, even though marriage had not touched her
with any real responsibility, and even though she was more full of
delicious childish absurdities than ever. The first months of their
marriage had curiously reversed their relationship, and it was Norma now
who gave, and Wolf who humbly and gratefully accepted. It was Norma who
poured comfort and beauty and companionship into his life, who smiled at
him over his morning fruit, and who waited for him under the old maple
at the turn of the road, every night. And as her wonderful and touching
generosity enveloped him, and her strange wisdom and new sweetness
impressed him more and more, Wolf marvelled and adored her more utterly.
He had always loved her as a big brother, had even experienced a
definite heartache when she grew up and went away, a lovely and
unattainable girl in the place where their old giddy dear little Norma
had been.

But now his passion for his young wife was becoming a devouring fire in
Wolf's heart; she absorbed him and possessed him like a madness. A dozen
times a day he would take from his pocket-book the thin leather case she
had given him, holding on one side a photograph of the three heads of
Rose, his mother, and the baby, and on the other an enchanting shadow of
the loosened soft hair and the serious profile that was Norma.

And as he stood looking at it, with the machinery roaring about him, and
the sunlight beating in through steel-barred windows sixty feet high, in
all the confusion of shavings and oil-soaked wood, polished sliding
shafts streaked with thick blue grease, stifling odours of creosote and
oily "wipes", Wolf's eyes would fill with tears and he would shake his
head at his own emotion, and try to laugh it away.

After awhile he took another little picture of her, this one taken under
a taut parasol in bright sunlight, and fitted it over the opposite
faces; and then when he had studied one