"I know. I know the way you tremble when he telephones, and color up when he—"
"Mamma, how can you?"
"I know what I've done. Ruined my baby's life, and now—"
"No!"
"Then help me, Alma. Louis wants me for his happiness. I want him for mine. Nothing will cure me like having a good man to live up to. The minute I find myself getting the craving for—it—don't you see, baby, fear that a good husband like Louis could find out such a thing about me would hold me back? See, Alma?"
"That's a wrong basis to start married life on—"
"I'm a woman who needs a man to baby her, Alma. That's the cure for me. Not to let me would be the same as to kill me. I've been a bad, weak woman, Alma, to be so afraid that maybe Leo Friedlander would steal you away from me. We'll make it a double wedding, baby!"
"Mamma! Mamma! I'll never leave you."
"All right, then, so you won't think your new father and me want to get rid of you, the first thing we'll pick out in our new home, he said it himself to-night, 'is Alma's room.'"
"I tell you it's wrong. It's wrong!"