She stopped short, and the blood left her heart suddenly, and rushed back with a pounding that almost dizzied her.
"I don't want to marry Chris Liggett," she whispered, aloud. And then she widened her eyes at space, and walked on blindly for a little way. "Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris!" she said. "Oh, what shall I do?"
An agony almost physical in its violence seized her, and she began to move more rapidly, as if to wear it out, or escape it.
"No, no, no; I can't care for him in that way," said Norma, feeling her throat dry and her head suddenly aching. "We can't—we cannot—like each other that way!"
The rest of the walk was a blank as far as her consciousness was concerned. She was swept far away, on a rushing sea of memories, memories confused and troubled by a vague apprehension of the days to come. That was it; that was it; they loved each other. Not as kinspeople, not as friends, not as the Chris and Norma of Alice's and Leslie's and Annie's lives, but as man and woman, caught at last in the old, old snare that is the strongest in life.
Bewildered and sick, she reached the cool, great colonnaded doorway of the hotel. And here she and Christopher came face to face.
He was coming out, was indeed halfway down the stone steps. They stood still and looked at each other.
Norma thought that he looked tired, that perhaps the hot week in streets and offices had been hard for him. He was pale, and the smile he gave her was strained and unnatural. They had not seen each other for ten days, and Norma, drinking in every expression of the firm mouth, the shrewd, kindly eyes, the finely set head, felt sudden confidence and happiness flood her being again. It was all nonsense, this imagining of hers, and she and Chris would always be the best friends in the world!
"Alice is perfectly splendid," Norma said, in answer to his first questions, "and Leslie's baby is much less fat and solid looking, and getting to be so cunning. Where is Aunt Marianna?"
"Upstairs," he answered with a slight backward inclination of his head. "We had a most satisfactory day, and you and she can get off to Great Barrington to-morrow without any trouble."