"All right, little wife. I'll never ask you to drink any more cocktails."
The problem of what to do with Nina's mother troubled us somewhat for a time, but it solved itself with rather dizzying simplicity. She told Norman that with five hundred dollars for capital she could buy a larger fruit store and live in comfort. He investigated the matter carefully and, as it seemed to him a sound business proposition, he gave her the money. That was the last we saw of her. The gossips of the neighborhood said that one of her boarders, attracted by this magnificent dowry, had married her and that they had returned to Italy. I could not discover the man's name. And we never heard of her again.
It was a joyous thing to watch Nina in the weeks and months that followed her marriage. Always I had a sort of impatience with Norman. It did not seem to me that he realized what was going on within her, how her soul under the strains and stresses of her new surroundings, was being shaped to beauty.
There was much discussion in the scientific circles of those days over the relative force of heredity and environment in the formation of character. Most of the pundits were inclined to the belief that the congenital element, the abilities and tendencies with which we are born, is the greatest part of us. Watching Nina, kept me from this error. It may be that she was unusually plastic, peculiarly adaptable. But the change was amazing. It was not only that she left off swearing, learned to handle a fork as we did, came to wash her face without being urged. It went much deeper than this.
I thought that Norman was giving small account of the change. I did not realize I was unjust to him for a good many months. But one day I went to the station to see him off on a western trip. Just before the train started, he laid hold of my arm.
"We—Nina is expecting a baby."
He swung aboard the train and waved his hand to me. The news meant that he was not afraid of Nina's heredity. That he had not told me until there was no chance of discussing it, gave me a sudden pang of jealousy. Without my noticing it, a new element had come into my friend's life, which was too holy for him to talk over with me. It made me feel very lonely for awhile.
In the months which were left to her time, Nina went about the Teepee—singing. The wonder grew in her eyes, as did also the certainty of her high calling. To me—an outsider—there was something uncomfortable in the sight of their happiness those last weeks before the baby came. I felt like a trespasser, a profaner of some high mystery. But Norman begged me not to leave.
BOOK VI
I