you a nest right
next to hers. Good night, little White Flower. I'll be waiting, and
remember, counting every second of every minute and every minute of
every hour."

For a long time she remained where he had left her, forward on the pink
divan, her head with a listening look to it, as if waiting an answer for
the prayers that she sent up.

At two o'clock that morning, by what intuition she would never know, and
with such leverage that she landed out of bed plump on her two feet,
Alma, with all her faculties into trace like fire-horses, sprang out of
sleep.

It was a matter of twenty steps across the hall. In the white tiled
Roman bathroom, the muddy circles suddenly out and angry beneath her
eyes, her mother was standing before one of the full-length
mirrors--snickering.

There was a fresh little grave on the inside of her right fore arm.

Sometimes in the weeks that followed, a sense of the miracle of what was
happening would clutch at Alma's throat like a fear.

Louis did not know.

That the old neuralgic recurrences were more frequent again, yes.
Already plans for a summer trip abroad, on a curative mission bent, were
taking shape. There was a famous nerve specialist, the one who had
worked such wonders on his little mother's cruelly rheumatic limbs,
reassuringly foremost in his mind.

But except that there were not infrequent and sometimes twenty-four hour
sieges when he was denied the sight of his wife, he had learned with a
male's acquiescence to the frailties of the other sex, to submit, and
with no great understanding of pain, to condone.

And as if to atone for these more or less frequent lapses there was
something pathetic, even a little heart-breaking, in Carrie's zeal for
his wellbeing. No duty too small. One night she wanted to unlace his
shoes and even shine them, would have, in fact, except for his fierce
catching of her into his arms and for some reason, his tonsils aching as
he kissed her.

Once after a "spell" she took out every garment from his wardrobe and
kissing them piece by piece, put them back again and he found her so,
and they cried together, he of happiness.

In his utter beatitude, even his resentment of Alma continued to grow
but slowly. Once, when after forty-eight hours she forbade him rather
fiercely an entrance into his wife's room, he shoved her aside almost
rudely, but at Carrie's little shriek of remonstrance from the darkened
room, backed out shamefacedly and apologi