CHAPTER XXII
In the beginning, these were times brimful of happiness for Norma. She would meet Chris far down town, among the big, cold, snowbound office-buildings, and they would loiter for two hours at some inconspicuous table in a restaurant, and come wandering out into the cold streets still talking, absorbed and content. Or she would rise before him from a chair in one of the foyers of the big hotels, at tea time, and they would find an unobserved corner for the murmur that rose and fell, rose and fell inexhaustibly. Tea and toast unobserved before them, music drifting unheard about them, furred and fragrant women coming and going; all this was but the vague setting for their own thrilling drama of love and confidence. They would come out into the darkness, Norma tucking herself beside him in the roadster, last promises and last arrangements made, until to-morrow.
Sometimes the girl even accompanied him to Alice's room, to sit at the invalid's knee, and chatter with a tact and responsiveness that Alice found an improvement upon her old amusing manner. So free was Norma in these days from any sense of guilt that she felt herself nothing but generous toward Alice, in sparing the older woman some of the excess of joy and companionship in which she was so rich.
But very swiftly the first complete satisfaction in the discovery of their mutual love began to wane, or rather to be overset with the difficulties by which Norma, and many another more brilliant and older woman, must inevitably be worsted. Her meetings with Chris, innocent and open as they seemed, were immediately threatened by the sordid danger of scandal. To meet him once, twice, half-a-dozen times, even, was safe enough. But when each day of separation became for them both only an agony of waiting until the next day that should unite them, and when all Norma's self-control was not enough to keep her from the telephone summons that at least gave her the sound of his voice, then the world began to be cognizant that something was in the air.
The very maids at Mrs. Melrose's house knew that Miss Sheridan was never available any more, never to be traced to the club, to young Mrs. Liggett's, or to Mrs. von Behrens's house, with a telephone message or an urgent letter. Leslie knew that Norma hated girls' luncheons; Annie asked Hendrick idly why he supposed the child was always taking long walks—or saying that she took long walks—and Hendrick, later speculating himself as to the inaccessibility of Chris, was perhaps the first in the group to suspect the truth.
A quite accidental and innocent hint from Annie overwhelmed Norma with shame and terror, and she and Chris, in earnest consultation, decided that they must be more discreet. But this was slow and difficult work, after the radiant first plunge into danger. Despite their utmost resolution, Chris would find her out, Norma would meet him halfway, and even under Leslie's very eyes, or in old Mrs. Melrose's actual presence, the telephone message, or the quicker signals of eyes and smile, would forge the bond afresh.
Even when Norma really did start off heroically upon a bracing winter walk, determined to shake off, in solitude and exercise, the constant hunger for his presence, torturing possibilities would swarm into her mind, and weaken her almost while she thought them banished. She could catch him at his club; she might have just five minutes of him did she choose to telephone.
Perhaps she would resist the temptation, and go home nervous, high-strung, excitable—the evening stretching endlessly before her—without him. Aunt Annie and Hendrick coming, Leslie and Acton coming, the prospect of the decorous family dinner would drive her almost to madness. She would dress in a feverish dream, answer old Mrs. Melrose absently or impatiently, speculating all the time about him. Where was he? When would they meet again?
And then perhaps Leslie would casually remark that Chris had said he would join them for coffee, or Joseph would summon her gravely to the telephone. Then Norma began to live again, the effect of the lonely walk and the heroic resolutions swept away, nothing—nothing was in the world but the sound of that reassuring voice, or the prospect of that ring at the bell, and that step in the hall.
So matters went on for several weeks, but they were weeks of increasing uneasiness and pain for Norma, and she knew that Chris found them even less endurable than she. The happy hours of confidence and happiness grew fewer and fewer, and as their passion strengthened, and the insuperable obstacles to its natural development impressed them more and more forcibly, miserable and anxious times took their place. Their love was no sooner acknowledged than both came to realize how mad and hopeless it was, and that no reiteration of its intensity and no argument could ever give them a gleam of hope.