"Oh, most terrible things have happened since then. Will you—have you time for me to tell you?" she pleaded, her hands clasped imploringly. "Can't we," she added, anxiously glancing over to a spooning couple by the window, "can't we go to some less public place?"
"It is time for dinner; if you will join me I will find a place where we will not be disturbed."
"Oh, I will be so glad! I must tell someone who will understand and—and maybe you can do something," she added, searching my eyes with a quick glance.
It was early evening and I was able to get my favorite waiter and alcove seat in the dining-room.
"Now, Mrs. Byng——"
"Call me Norma—please do," she interrupted, "I like the way you pronounce it, and I crave—I—I want some one to be fatherly to me—do you know, I have lost both my parents in the last three years? I—I am quite alone."
"Well, then, Norma, food both quiets and stimulates. First, let us eat, and while we do, forget yourself, and all of your troubles. Afterward you can tell me your story—I am anxious to hear it. While we dine please relate some of the pleasant, delightful things, those for which you are thankful, that happened since I last saw you." I urged all this solicitously. I could not keep my eyes off the beautiful woman, beautiful indeed, though it was evident she had been through some terrible ordeal—the melting fires which refine, and make perfect.
"I do think your idea is more appropriate," she replied with a faint smile at my evident purpose. "It was like you to suggest it. Howard often told me you did things differently. But isn't it strange I was never asked that before?—and how sensible. Let me see—I will have to think. Perhaps, ungratefully I have never tried to enumerate them, and I might have done so with pleasure to myself." I didn't interrupt, for she was smiling now. "First of all—well, I should be truly thankful that I have good health."
"Fine!" I exclaimed, "that's worth a million, and there's a hundred thousand women who would pay that for health and another million for your wonderful hair!"
"Perhaps so—then I have gainful employment compelling attention to others' problems which has taught me values in useful effort, brought me a few friends, uninfluenced by mere money. I should have perished without them," she added, yet inclined to revert.