And Alma.  Almost she tiptoed through these months.  Not that her scorching awareness of what must have lain low in Louis’ mind ever diminished.  Sometimes, although still never by word, she could see the displeasure mount in his face.

If she entered in on a tete-a-tete, as she did once, when by chance she had sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of a room through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off that night to share her own lace-covered-and-ivory bed.

Again, upon the occasion of an impulsively planned motor trip and week-end to Long Beach, her intrusion had been so obvious.

“Want to join us, Alma?”

“Oh—­yes—­thank you, Louis.”

“But I thought you and Leo were—­”

“No, no.  I’d rather go with you and mamma, Louis.”

Even her mother had smiled rather strainedly.  Louis’ invitation, politely uttered, had said so plainly, “Are we two never to be alone, your mother and I?”

Oh, there was no doubt that Louis Latz was in love and with all the delayed fervor of first youth.

There was something rather throat-catching about his treatment of her mother that made Alma want to cry.

He would never tire of marveling, not alone at the wonder of her, but at the wonder that she was his.

“No man has ever been as lucky in women as I have, Carrie,” he told her once in Alma’s hearing.  “It seemed to me that after—­my little mother there couldn’t ever be another—­and now you!”

At the business of sewing some beads on a lamp shade Carrie looked up, her eyes dewy.

“And I felt that way about one good husband,” she said, “and now I see there could be two.”

Alma tiptoed out.

The third month of this she was allowing Leo Friedlander his two evenings a week.  Once to the theater in a modish little sedan car which Leo drove himself.  One evening at home in the rose-and-mauve drawing-room.  It delighted Louis and Carrie slyly to have in their friends for poker over the dining-room table these evenings, leaving the young people somewhat indirectly chaperoned until as late as midnight.  Louis’ attitude with Leo was one of winks, quirks, slaps on the back, and the curving voice of innuendo.

“Come on in, Leo; the water’s fine!”

“Louis!” This from Alma, stung to crimson and not arch enough to feign that she did not understand.

“Loo, don’t tease,” said Carrie, smiling, but then closing her eyes as if to invoke help to want this thing to come to pass.

But Leo was frankly the lover, kept not without difficulty on the edge of his ardor.  A city youth with gymnasium-bred shoulders, fine, pole-vaulter’s length of limb, and a clean tan skin that bespoke cold drubbings with Turkish towels.

And despite herself, Alma, who was not without a young girl’s feelings for nice detail, could thrill to this sartorial svelteness and to the patent-leather lay of his black hair which caught the light like a polished floor.