And her aunt's phrases came back to her, making her wonder unhappily just where the trouble lay, just what sort of a woman she was.
"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma," Mrs. Sheridan had said, "you're a woman now—you're Wolf's wife——"
But that was just what she did not feel herself, a woman and Wolf's wife. She was a girl—interested in shaggy sport coats and lace stockings; she did not want to be any one's wife! She wanted to punish Leslie and Aunt Annie, and to have plenty of money, and to have a wonderful little apartment on the east side of the Park, and delicious clothes; she wanted to become a well-known figure in New York society, at Palm Beach and the summer resorts, and at the opera and the big dining-rooms of the hotels.
"And I could do it, too!" Norma thought, walking through the cool, dark night restlessly. "In two years—in three or four, anyway, I would be where Aunt Annie is; or at least I would if Chris and I were married—he could do anything! I suppose," she added, with youthful recklessness, "I suppose there are lots of old fogies who would never understand my getting separated from Wolf, but it isn't as if he didn't understand, for I know he does! Wolf has always known that it took just certain things to make me happy!"
Something petty, and contemptible, and unworthy, in this last argument smote her ears unpleasantly, and she was conscious of flushing in the dark.
"Well, people have to be happy, don't they?" she reasoned, with a rising inflection at the end of the phrase that surprised and a trifle disquieted her. "Don't they?" she asked herself, thoughtfully, as she crept in at the side door of the magnificent, cumbersome old house that was her own now. No one but an amazed-looking maid saw her, as she regained her room, and fifteen minutes later she was circulating about the dim and mournful upper floor again. Annie called her into her room.
"You look fearfully tired, Norma! Do get some sleep," her aunt said, with unusual kindness. "I'm going to try to, although my head is aching terribly, and I know I can't. To-morrow will be hard on us all. I shall go home to-morrow night, and I'm trying to persuade Leslie to come with me."
"No, I shan't! I'm going to stay here," Leslie said, with a sort of weary pettishness. "My house is closed, and poor Chris is going to begin closing Aunt Alice's house, and he doesn't want to go to a club—he'd much rather be here, wouldn't he, Norma?"
Something in the tired way that both aunt and niece appealed to her touched Norma, and she answered sympathetically:
"Truly, I think he would, Aunt Annie. And if little Patricia and the nurse get here on Sunday, she won't be lonely."