She faced him, honestly.
"You know what! Of you—of me. It can't go on. You know that. And yet——" And Norma looked far away, her beautiful weary eyes burning in her white face. "And yet, I can't stop it!" she whispered.
"Oh, Chris, don't let's fool ourselves!" she interrupted his protest impatiently. "Weeks ago, weeks ago!—we said that we would see each other less, that it would taper off. We tried. It's no use! If we were in different cities—in different families, even! I tell myself that it will grow less and less," she added presently, as the man watched her in silence, "but oh, my God!—how long the years ahead look!"
And Norma put her head down on the table, pressed her white fingers suddenly against her eyes with a gesture infinitely desolate and despairing, and he knew that she was in tears. Then there was a long silence.
"Look here, Norma," said Chris, suddenly, in a quiet, reasonable tone. "I am thirty-eight. I've had affairs several times in my life, two or three before I married Alice, two or three since. They've never been very serious, never gone very deep. When we were married I was twenty-four. I know women like to pretend that I'm an awful killer when I get going," he interrupted himself to say boyishly, "but there was really never anything of that sort in my life. I liked Alice, I remember my mother talking to me a long time, and telling me how pleased everyone would be if we came to care for each other, and—upon my honour!—I was more surprised than anything else, to think that any one so pretty and sweet would marry me! I don't think there's a woman in the world that I admire more. But, Norma, I've lived her life for ten years. I want my own now! I want my companion—my chum—my wife. I've played with women since I was seventeen. But I never loved any woman before. Norma, there's no life ahead for me, without you. And there's no place so far—so lonely—so strange—but what it would be heaven for me if you were there, looking at me as you are now, and with this little hand where it belongs! My dear, the city is a blank—the men I meet might just as well be wooden Indians; I can't breathe and I can't eat or sleep. Get better? It gets worse! It can't go on!"
She was crying again. They were almost alone now. A red spring sun was sinking, far down the river, and all the world—the opposite shores, the running waters of the Hudson—was bathed in the exquisite glow. Norma fumbled with her left hand for her little handkerchief, her right hand clinging tight to Chris's hand.
"Now, Norma, I've been thinking," the man said, in a matter-of-fact tone, after a pause. "The first consideration is, that this sort of thing can't go on!"
"No; this can't go on!" she agreed, quickly. "Every day makes it more dangerous, and less satisfying! I never"—her eyes watered again—"I never have a happy second!" she said.
Chris looked at her, looked thoughtfully away.
"The great trouble with the way I feel to you, Norma," he said, quietly, "is that it seems to blot every other earthly consideration from view. I see nothing, I think nothing, I hear nothing—but you!"