ill approve, and it will repay
her, too, just a little, to feel that it's all known now, and that it
has turned out this way. And she will destroy every last line and shred
of letters and papers, and the photographs she said she had, and it will
all be over--for ever and for ever!"

"You put a terrible responsibility upon me," Chris said, slowly.

"No--I take it myself!" Norma answered. He had gotten to his feet, and
was standing at the hearth, and now she rose, too, and looked eagerly up
at him. "It isn't anything like the responsibility of facing the world
with the whole horrible story!"

Chris was silent, thinking. Presently he turned upon her the old smile
that she had always found irresistible, and put his two hands on her
shoulders.

"You are a wonderful woman, Norma!" he said, slowly. "What woman in the
world, but you, would do that? Yes, I'll do it--for Leslie's sake, and
Acton's sake, and because I believe Alice would think it as wonderful in
you as I do. But think," Chris said, "think just a few days, Norma. You
and I--you and I might go a long way, my dear!"

If he had said it even at this hour yesterday, he might have shaken her,
for the voice was the voice of the old Chris, and she had been even then
puzzled and confused to see the wisest way. But now everything was
changed; he could not reach her now, even when he put his arm about her,
and said that this was one of their rare last chances to be alone
together, and asked if it must be good-bye.

She looked up at him gravely and unashamedly.

"Yes, it must be good-bye--dear Chris!" she said, with a little emotion.
"Although I hope we will see each other often, if ever Wolf and I come
back. Engineers live in Canada and Panama and India and Alaska, you
know, and we never will know we are coming until we get here! And I'm
not going to try to thank you, Chris, for what you did for an ignorant,
silly, strange little girl; you've been a big brother to me all these
last years! And something more, of course," Norma added, bravely, "and
I won't say--I can't say--that if it hadn't been for Wolf, and all the
changes this year--changes in me, too--I wouldn't have loved you all my
life. But there's no place that you could take me, as Wolf Sheridan's
divorced wife, that would seem worth while to me, when I got there--not
if it was in the peerage!"

"There's just one thing that I want to say, too, Norma," Chris said,
suddenly, when she had finished. "I'm not good