It was ten o'clock the next day, a silent gray day, when Aunt Kate let herself into the apartment, and "let out," to use her own phrase, a startled exclamation at finding her young daughter-in-law deeply asleep in her bed. Norma, a vision of cloudy dark tumbled hair and beautiful sleepy blue eyes, half-strangled the older woman in a rapturous embrace, and explained that she had come home the night before, and eaten the chicken stew, and perhaps overslept—at any rate would love some coffee.
Something faintly shadowed in her aunt's welcome, however, was immediately apparent, and Norma asked, with a trace of anxiety, if Rose's babies were well. For answer her aunt merely asked if Wolf had telephoned.
"Wolf!" said Wolf's wife. "Is he home?"
"My dear," Mrs. Sheridan said. "He's going—he's gone!—to California!"
Norma did not move. But the colour went out of her face, and the brightness from her eyes.
"Gone!" she whispered.
"Well—he goes to-day! At six o'clock——"
"At six o'clock!" Norma leaped from her bed, stood with clenched hands and wild eyes, thinking, in the middle of the floor. "It's twenty-two minutes past ten," she breathed. "Where does he leave?"
"Rose and I were to see him at the Grand Central at quarter past five," his mother began, catching the contagious excitement. "But, darling, I don't know where you can get him before that!—Here, let me do that," she added, for Norma had dashed into the kitchen, and was measuring coffee recklessly. A brown stream trickled to the floor.
"Oh, Lord—Lord—help me to get hold of him somewhere!" she heard Norma breathe. "And you weren't going to let me know—but it's my fault," she said, putting her hands over her face, and rocking to and fro in desperate suspense. "Oh, how can I get him?—I must! Oh, Aunt Kate—help me! Oh, I'm not even dressed—and that clock says half-past ten! Aunt Kate, will you help me!"