She herself had been completely captivated by the costume when Madame Modiste had first suggested it, and when the first fittings began. But that was weeks ago, and she was accustomed to it now, and conscious in this instant of nothing but Chris, conscious of nothing but the possibility that he would have a word or a smile, at last, for her. "Stay right here, both of you--don't move a step--while I telephone Lucia Street!" said the harassed Annie, her eyes glittering with some desperate hope. She hurried away; they were alone. "Poor old Roy--he adored his father!" Chris said, with dry lips, and in a rather unnatural voice. Norma, for one second, simulated mere sympathy. Then with a rush the pride and hurt that had sustained her ever since that weary September evening in the hotel lobby vanished, and she came close to Chris, so that the fragrance and sweetness of her enveloped him, and caught his coat with both her mitted hands, and raised her face imploringly, commandingly to his. "Chris--for God's sake--what have I done? Don't you know--don't you know that you're killing me?" He looked down at her, wretchedly. And suddenly Norma knew. Not that he liked her, not that she fascinated and interested him, not that they were friends. But that he loved her with every fibre of his being, even as she loved him. The revelation carried her senses away with it upon a raging sea of emotion and ecstasy. He drew her into a dim corner of the wings, and put his arms about her, and her whole slender body, in its tilting hoops, strained backward under the passion and fury of his first embrace. Again and again his lips met hers, and she heard the incoherent outpouring of murmured words, and felt the storm that shook him as it was shaking her. Norma, after the first kiss, grew limp, let herself rest almost without movement in his arms, shut her eyes. Reason came back to them slowly; the girl almost rocking upon her feet as the vertigo and bewilderment passed, and the man sustaining her with an arm about her shoulders, neither looking at the other. So several seconds, perhaps a full minute, went by, while the world settled into place about them; the dingy, unpainted wood of the wings, the near-by stage where absorbed groups of people were still coming and going, the distant gloom of the house. "So now you know!" Chris said, breathlessly, panting, and looking away from her, with his hands hanging at his sides. "Now you know! I've tried to keep it from you! But now--now you know!" Norma, also breathing hard, did not answer for a little space. "I've known since that time we were in town, in September!" she said, almost defiantly. Chris looked toward her, surprised, and their eyes met. "I've known what was the matter with _me_," she added, thoughtfully, even frowning a little in her anxiety to make it all clear, "but I couldn't imagine what it was with _you_!"