nd loneliness of the big
city, she had come to him again, that she was here, mistily smiling at
him, and he could touch her and hear her voice, everything else
vanished, as if it had never been, and he put his big arm about her
hungrily, and kissed her, and they were both in tears.

"Oh, Wolf----!" Norma faltered, the dry spaces of her soul flooding with
springtime warmth and greenness, and a great happiness sweeping away all
consciousness of the place in which they stood, and the interested eyes
about them. "Oh, Wolf----!" She thought that she added, "Would you have
gone away without me!" but as a matter of fact words were not needed
now.

"Nono--you _do_ love me?" he whispered. Or perhaps he only thought he
enunciated the phrase, for although Norma answered, it was not audibly.
Neither of them ever remembered anything coherent of that first five
minutes, in which momentous questions were settled between Norma's
admiring comment upon Wolf's new coat, and in which they laughed and
cried and clung together in shameless indifference to the general
public.

But presently they were calm enough to talk, and Wolf's first
constructive remark, not even now very steady or clear, was that he must
put off his going, get hold of Voorhies somehow----

But no, Norma said, even while they were dashing toward the telegraph
office. She had already bought her ticket; she was going,
too--to-night--this very hour----!

Wolf brought her up short, ecstatic bewilderment in his face.

"But your trunks----?"

"Regina--I tell you it's all settled--Regina sends them on after me. And
I've got a new big suit-case, and my old brown one, that's plenty for
the present! They're checked here, in the parcel-room----"

"But we'll----" They had started automatically to rush toward the
parcel-room, but now he brought her up short again. "It's five-thirty
now," he muttered, turning briskly in still another direction, "let me
have your ticket, we'll have to try for a section--it's pretty late, but
there may be cancellations!"

"Oh, but see, Wolf----! I've been here since half-past four. I've got
the A drawing-room in Car 131----" She brought forth an official-looking
envelope, and flashed a flimsy bit of coloured paper. For a third time
Wolf checked his hurried rushing, and they both broke into delicious
laughter. "I've been at it all day, with Aunt Kate," Norma said,
proudly. "I've been to banks and to Judge Lee's office, and I've seen
Annie and