"Of course you must stay here," Chris said, positively, on the one occasion when they spoke of her plans. "In the first place, there is the estate to settle, we shall need you. Then there are books--pictures--all that sort of thing to manage, the old servants to dispose of, and probably this house to sell--but we can discuss that. Judge Lee has felt for a long time that this is the right site for a big apartment house, especially if we can get hold of Boyer's plot. You had better take a suite at one of the hotels, and later we can look up the right sort of an apartment for you." Not a word of his personal hopes; missing them she felt oddly cheated. "Wolf goes to California next month," she said. Christopher gave her a sharp, quizzing look. "But I think you had decided, weeks ago, that you were not going?" "Yes--I've told him so!" she faltered. She felt strangely lost and forlorn, releasing her hold on Wolf, and yet not able to claim Christopher's support. It was contemptible--it was weak in her, she felt, but she could not quite choke down her hunger for one reassuring word from Chris. "I feel so--lonely, Chris," she said. He gave a quick, uneasy glance about the breakfast-room, where they were having a hasty three-o'clock luncheon. No one was within hearing. "You understand my position now," he said. "Oh, of course!" But she felt oddly chilled. Chris as the bereaved husband and son-in-law was perfect, of course, almost too perfect. If Wolf loved a woman---- But then the fancy of Wolf, married, and confessedly loving a woman who was another man's wife, was absurd, anyway. Wolf did not belong to the world where such things were common, it was utterly foreign to his nature, with all the rest. Wolf did not go to operas and picture galleries and polo matches; he did not know how to comport himself at afternoon teas or summer lunches at the country club. And Norma's life would be spent in this atmosphere now. She would get her frocks from Madame Modiste, and her hats from the Avenue specialists; she would be a smart and a conspicuous little figure at Lenox and Bar Harbour and Newport; she would spend her days with masseuses and dressmakers, and with French and Italian teachers. She could travel, some day--but here the thought of Chris crept in, and she was a little hurt at Chris. His exquisite poise, his sureness of being absolutely correct, was one of his charms. But it was a little hard not to have the depth of his present feeling for her sweep him off his feet just occasionally. He had, indeed, shown her far more daring favour when Alice was alive--meeting Norma down town, driving her about, walking with her where they might reasonably fear to be seen now and then.