was something rather throat-catching about his treatment of her
mother that made Alma want to cry.

He would never tire of marveling, not alone at the wonder of her, but at
the wonder that she was his.

"No man has ever been as lucky in women as I have, Carrie," he told her
once in Alma's hearing. "It seemed to me that after--my little mother
there couldn't ever be another--and now you!"

At the business of sewing some beads on a lamp shade Carrie looked up,
her eyes dewy.

"And I felt that way about one good husband," she said, "and now I see
there could be two."

Alma tiptoed out.

The third month of this she was allowing Leo Friedlander his two
evenings a week. Once to the theater in a modish little sedan car
which Leo drove himself. One evening at home in the rose-and-mauve
drawing-room. It delighted Louis and Carrie slyly to have in their
friends for poker over the dining-room table these evenings, leaving the
young people somewhat indirectly chaperoned until as late as midnight.
Louis' attitude with Leo was one of winks, quirks, slaps on the back,
and the curving voice of innuendo.

"Come on in, Leo; the water's fine!"

"Louis!" This from Alma, stung to crimson and not arch enough to feign
that she did not understand.

"Loo, don't tease," said Carrie, smiling, but then closing her eyes as
if to invoke help to want this thing to come to pass.

But Leo was frankly the lover, kept not without difficulty on the
edge of his ardor. A city youth with gymnasium-bred shoulders, fine,
pole-vaulter's length of limb, and a clean tan skin that bespoke cold
drubbings with Turkish towels.

And despite herself, Alma, who was not without a young girl's feelings
for nice detail, could thrill to this sartorial svelteness and to the
patent-leather lay of his black hair which caught the light like a
polished floor.

In the lingo of Louis Latz, he was "a rattling good business man,
too." He shared with his father partnership in a manufacturing
business--"Friedlander Clinical Supply Company"--which, since his advent
from high school into the already enormously rich firm, had almost
doubled its volume of business.

The kind of sweetness he found in Alma he could never articulate even to
himself. In some ways she seemed hardly to have the pressure of vitality
to match his, but, on the other hand, just that slower beat to her may
have heightened his sense of prowess.

His greatest delight seemed to lie in her pallid love