"Norma, I hope it won't!" he interrupted himself to say, bitterly. "I try to hope it won't! I try to hope that you will come to love him, my dear, and forget me! But if that time does come, what I want you to remember is this afternoon, and sitting here with me in the car, and Chris telling you that whenever--or wherever--or however he can serve you, you are to remember that he is living just for that hour! There will never be any change in me, Norma, never anything but longing and longing just for the sight of you, just for one word from you! I love you, my dear--I can't help it. God knows I've _tried_ to help it. I love you as I don't believe any other woman in the world was ever loved! So much that I want life to be good to you, even if I never see you, and I want you to be happy, even without me!" He had squared about to face her, and as the passionate rush of words swept about her, Norma laid her little gloved hand gently upon his big one, and her blue eyes, drowned in sudden tears, fixed themselves in exquisite desolation and despair upon his face. Once or twice she had whispered "I know--I know!" as if to herself, but she did not interrupt him, and when he paused he saw that she was choked with tears, and could not speak. "The mad and wonderful sacrifice you made I can't talk about, Norma," he said. "Only an ignorant, noble-hearted little girl like you could have done that! But that's all over, now. You must try to make your life what they think it is--those good people that love you! And I'll try, too!--I do try. And you mustn't cry, my little sweetheart," Chris added, with a tenderness so new, and so poignantly sweet, that Norma was almost faint with the sheer joy of it, "you mustn't blame me for just saying this, this once, because it's for the last time! We mustn't meet----" His voice dropped. "I think we mustn't meet," he repeated, painfully and slowly. "No!" she agreed, quickly. "But you are to remember that," Chris reiterated, "that I am living, and moving about, and going to the office, and back to my home, only because you are alive in the world, and the day may come when I can serve you! Life has been only that to me, for a long, long time!" For a long minute Norma sat silent, her dark lashes fallen on her cheek, her eyes on the hand that she had grasped in her own. "I'll remember, Chris! Thank you, Chris!" she said, simply. Then she raised her eyes and looked straight at him, with a childish little frown, puzzled and bewildered, on her forehead, and they exchanged a long look of good-bye. Chris raised her hand to his lips, and Norma very quietly slipped from her seat, and turned once to smile bravely at him before she was lost in the swiftly moving whirlpool of the subway entrance. She was trembling as she seated herself in the train, and moved upon her way scarcely conscious of what she was doing. But Chris did not move from his seat for more than an hour.