cared for what he stood for, but I am over that now, and I
feel so much older, and as if I needed you so. I shall have a
tremendous lot of money, and we'll just have to decide what to
do with it, but I think I know now that there won't be any
particular pleasure in spending it. We'll always love the old
car, and----But it just occurs to me that we _could_ send poor
Kitty Barry to the hospital, and perhaps ship them all off
somewhere where they'd get better. Aunt Kate would like that.
But won't you come up, Wolf, and see me? I'll meet you anywhere,
and we can talk, on Monday or Tuesday. Will you write me or wire
me? I can't wait to see you!

She cried over the letter, and over the signature that she was his
loving Nono, but she mailed it with a dancing heart. The road had been
dark and troubled for awhile, but it was all clear now! The wrong had
been--the whole wretched trouble had been--in her thinking that she
could toss aside the solemn oath that she had taken on the bewildering
day of her marriage almost a year ago.

Never since old, old days of childhood, when she and Wolf and Rose had
wiped the dishes and raked the yard, and walked a mile to the
twenty-five-cent seats at the circus, had Norma been so sure of
herself, and so happy. She felt herself promoted, lifted above the old
feelings and the old ways, and dedicated to the work before her. And one
by one the shadows lifted, and the illusions blew away, and she could
see her way clear for the first time in more than three years. It was
all simple, all right, all just as she would have had it. She would
never be a petted and wealthy little Leslie, she would never be a
leader, like Mrs. von Behrens, and she would never stand before the
world as the woman chosen by the incomparable Chris. Yet she was the
last Melrose, and she knew now how she could prove herself the proudest
of them all, how she could do these kinspeople of hers a greater favour
than any they had ever dreamed of doing her. And in the richness of
renouncing Norma knew herself to be for the first time truly rich.

Chris saw the difference in her next day, felt the new dignity, the
sudden transition from girl to woman, but he had no inkling of its
cause. Leslie saw it, and Annie, but Norma gave them no clue. At
luncheon Annie, who had joined them for the meal, proposed that Leslie
and Norma and the Liggetts come to her for a quiet family dinner, but
Norma begge