Norma in answer gave him a report upon her own affairs, and spoke of Aunt Kate and Rose and Rose's children. She did not realize that a tone almost pleading, almost apologetic, crept into her eager voice while she spoke, and told its own story. Chris watched her closely, his eyes never leaving her face. All around them moved the confusion and congestion of Sixth Avenue; overhead the elevated road roared and crashed, but neither man nor woman was more than vaguely conscious of surroundings. "And are you happy, Norma?" Chris asked. "Oh, yes!" she answered, quickly. "You are a very game little liar," he said, dispassionately. "No--no, I'm not blaming you!" he added, hastily, as she would have spoken. "You took the very best way out, and I respect and honour you for it! I was not surprised--although the possibility had never occurred to me." Something in his cool, almost lifeless tone, chilled her, and she did not speak. "When I heard of it," Chris said, "I went to Canada. I don't remember the details exactly, but I remember one day sitting up there--in the woods somewhere, and looking at my hunting knife, and looking at my wrist----" He looked at his wrist now, and her eyes followed his. "--and if I had thought," Chris presently continued, "that a slash there might have carried me to some region of peace--where there was no hunger for Norma--I would not have hesitated! But one isn't sure--more's the pity!" he finished, smiling with eyes full of pain. Norma could not speak. The work of long months had been undone in a short hour, and she was conscious of a world that crashed and tumbled in utter ruin about her. "Well, no use now," Chris said. He folded his arms on his chest, and looked sternly away into space for a minute, and Norma felt his self-control, his repression, as she would have felt no passionate outburst of reproach. "But there is one thing that I've wanted for a long time to tell you, Norma. If you hadn't been such a little girl, if you had known what life is, you could not have done what you did!" "I suppose not," she half-whispered, with a dry throat, as he waited for some sign from her. "No, you couldn't have given yourself to any one else--if you had known," Chris went on, as if musing aloud. "And that brings me to what I want to say. Marriage lasts a long, long time, Norma, and even you--with all your courage!--may find that you've promised more than you can perform! The time may come----