"There is just one chance in ten—one chance in a hundred—that I might!" she said to herself, going upstairs, after Chris and Acton, who presently returned to the dining-room, had begun an undertoned conversation. And with a sudden flood of radiance and happiness at her heart, she sat down at her desk, and wrote to Wolf.
The note said:
Wolf Dear:
I have been thinking very seriously, during these serious days, and I am writing you more earnestly than I ever wrote any one in my life. I want you to forgive me all my foolishness, and let me come back to you. I have missed you so bitterly, and thought how good and how sensible you were, and how you took care of us all years ago, and gave Rose and me skates that Christmas that you didn't have your bicycle mended, and how we all sat up and cried the night Aunt Kate was sick, and you made us chocolate by the rule on the box. I have been very silly, and I thought I cared—and perhaps I did care—for somebody else; or at least I cared for what he stood for, but I am over that now, and I feel so much older, and as if I needed you so. I shall have a tremendous lot of money, and we'll just have to decide what to do with it, but I think I know now that there won't be any particular pleasure in spending it. We'll always love the old car, and——But it just occurs to me that we could send poor Kitty Barry to the hospital, and perhaps ship them all off somewhere where they'd get better. Aunt Kate would like that. But won't you come up, Wolf, and see me? I'll meet you anywhere, and we can talk, on Monday or Tuesday. Will you write me or wire me? I can't wait to see you!
She cried over the letter, and over the signature that she was his loving Nono, but she mailed it with a dancing heart. The road had been dark and troubled for awhile, but it was all clear now! The wrong had been—the whole wretched trouble had been—in her thinking that she could toss aside the solemn oath that she had taken on the bewildering day of her marriage almost a year ago.
Never since old, old days of childhood, when she and Wolf and Rose had wiped the dishes and raked the yard, and walked a mile to the twenty-five-cent seats at the circus, had Norma been so sure of herself, and so happy. She felt herself promoted, lifted above the old feelings and the old ways, and dedicated to the work before her. And one by one the shadows lifted, and the illusions blew away, and she could see her way clear for the first time in more than three years. It was all simple, all right, all just as she would have had it. She would never be a petted and wealthy little Leslie, she would never be a leader, like Mrs. von Behrens, and she would never stand before the world as the woman chosen by the incomparable Chris. Yet she was the last Melrose, and she knew now how she could prove herself the proudest of them all, how she could do these kinspeople of hers a greater favour than any they had ever dreamed of doing her. And in the richness of renouncing Norma knew herself to be for the first time truly rich.
Chris saw the difference in her next day, felt the new dignity, the sudden transition from girl to woman, but he had no inkling of its cause. Leslie saw it, and Annie, but Norma gave them no clue. At luncheon Annie, who had joined them for the meal, proposed that Leslie and Norma and the Liggetts come to her for a quiet family dinner, but Norma begged off; she really must see Aunt Kate, and would seize this opportunity to go home for a night. But leaving the table Norma asked Chris if she might talk business to him for a few minutes.
They sat in the old library, Chris sunk in a great leather chair, smoking cigarettes, Norma opposite, her white hands clasped on the blackness of her simple gown, and her eyes moving occasionally from their quiet study of the fire to rest on Chris's face.
"Chris," she said, "I've thought this all out, now, and I'm not really asking your advice, I'm telling you what I am going to do! I'm going to California with Wolf in a week or two—that's the first thing!"
He stared at her blankly, and as the minutes of silence between them lengthened Norma noticed his lips compress themselves into a thin, colourless line. But she returned his look bravely, and in her eyes there was something that told the man she was determined in her decision.
"I don't quite follow you, Norma," he said at last with difficulty. "You mean that all the plans and hopes we shared and discussed——" He faltered a moment and then made another effort: "Now that whatever obstacles there were have been removed, and you and I are free to fulfill our destinies, am I to understand that—that you are going back to your husband?"