At eight she and Mrs. Melrose went to Mrs. von Behrens's, and Norma and Chris went through the song again and again and again, for the benefit of a small circle of onlookers. Hendrick, who had sworn that wild horses would not drag him to the entertainment, sat with a small son in his lap, and applauded tirelessly. Annie criticized and praised alternately. Mrs. Melrose went to sleep, and Annie's new secretary, a small, lean, dark girl of perhaps twenty-two, passionately played the music. Norma knew exactly how this girl felt, how proud she was of her position, how anxious to hold it, and how infinitely removed from her humble struggle the beautiful Miss Sheridan seemed! Yet she herself had been much the same less than two years ago!
Norma could have laughed aloud. She envied no one to-night. The mystery and miracle of Chris's love for her was like an ermine mantle about her shoulders, and like a diadem upon her brows. Annie was delighted with her, and presently told her she had never before sung so well.
"I suppose practice makes perfect!" the girl answered, innocently. She was conscious of no hypocrisy. No actress enjoying a long-coveted part could have rejoiced in every word and gesture more than she. Just to move, under his eyes, to laugh or to be serious, to listen dutifully to Annie and the old lady, to flirt with Baby Piet, was ecstasy enough.
They had small opportunity for asides. But that was of no consequence. All the future was their own. They would see each other to-morrow—or next day; it did not matter. Norma's hungry heart had something to remember, now—a very flood-tide of memories. She could have lived for weeks upon this one day's memories.
Norma and Chris were placed toward the centre of the first half of the programme on the triumphant Saturday night, and could escape from the theatre before eleven o'clock to go home to tell Alice all about it. Chris played the song, on his own piano, and Norma modestly and charmingly went through it again, to the invalid's great satisfaction. Alice, when Norma and her mother were gone, tried to strike a spark of enthusiasm from her husband as to the girl's beauty and talent, but Chris was pleasantly unresponsive.
"She got through it very nicely; they all did!" Chris admitted, indifferently.
"When you think of the upbringing she had, Chris, a little nameless nobody," Alice pursued. "When you think that until last year she had actually never seen a finger-bowl, or spoken to a servant!"
"Exactly!" Chris said, briefly. Alice, who was facing the fire, did not see him wince. She was far from suspecting that he had at that moment a luncheon engagement for the next day with Norma, and that during the weeks that followed they met by appointment almost every day, and frequently by chance more often than that.