A few minutes later she went down to dinner, which commenced auspiciously, with the old lady in a gracious and expansive mood, and her guests, old Judge Lee and his wife, and old Doctor and Mrs. Turner, sufficiently intimate, and sufficiently reminiscent, to absolve Norma from any conversational duty. The girl could follow her own line of heroic and resolute thought uninterruptedly. But with the salad came utter rout again, and Norma's colour, and heart, and breath, began to fluctuate in a renewed agony of hope and fear. It was only Joseph, leaning deferentially over Judge Lee's shoulder, who said softly: "Mr. Christopher Liggett, Judge. He has telephoned that he would like to see you for a moment after dinner, and will be here at about nine o'clock." The dinner went on, for Norma, in a daze. At a quarter to nine she went upstairs; she was standing in the dark upper hallway at the window when Chris came, saw him leave his car, and come quickly across the sidewalk under the bare, moving boughs of the old maples. She was trembling with the longing just to speak to him again, just to hear his voice. She went to her room, rang for Regina, meditating a message of good-night that should include a headache as excuse. But before the maid came she went quickly downstairs, and into his presence, as instinctively as a drowning man might cling to anything that meant air--just the essential air. They could not exchange a word alone, but that was not important. The one necessity was to be together. Before ten o'clock Norma went back to her room. She undressed, and put on a loose warm robe, and seated herself before the old-fashioned fireplace. When Regina came, she asked the girl to put out all the lights. Voices floated up from the front hall: the great entrance door closed, the motors wheeled away. The guests were gone--Chris was gone. Norma heard old Mrs. Melrose come upstairs, heard her door shut, then there was silence. Silence. Eleven struck from Madison Tower; midnight struck. Even the streets were quieter now. The squares of moonlight shifted on Norma's floor, went away. The fire died down, the big room was warm, and dim, and very still. Hugged in her warm wrap, curled into her big chair, the girl sat like some tranced creature, thinking--thinking--thinking. At first her thoughts were of terror and shame. In what fool's paradise had she been drifting, she asked herself contemptuously, that she and Chris, reasonable, right-thinking man and woman, could be reduced to this fearful and wretched position, could even consider--even name--what their sane senses must shrink from in utter horror! Norma was but twenty-two, but she knew that there was only one end to that road. So that way was closed, even to the brimming tide that rose up in her when she thought of it, and flooded her whole being with the ecstatic realization of her love for Chris, and of what surrender to him would mean.