great help to me, Mrs. Lanier."

In the glass she could see her husband; she felt his glances from time
to time. This evening after dinner they were going out somewhere. To
what, he would not tell her. There had been many of these small
surprises. . . . Now her pulse beat faster, for he had come behind
her. A sudden bending, a quick laugh, a murmur and a silence. Then at
last he let her go; but as she drew a deep, full breath and shot a side
look up at him, he laughed again, low, tensely, and bent over as before.

Left alone, she smiled again into the glass. It was hard to
believe--too wonderful--this amazingly intimate feeling, this living
with somebody, body and soul. And what a child she had been before, a
child in that solemn young resolve to marry Joe, this good, safe man,
and raise a large family carefully. It had been like a small girl
thinking of dolls. And like a small girl she had been in her panic on
the night of her wedding, she thought. How silly, ignorant, funny!
No--she frowned--it had been real, pretty ugly while it lasted. But
like a bug-a-boo it had gone. And this good, safe man had become
transformed in this amazing intimacy and had become a wild delight: a
man to laugh at, tease, provoke, and cling to, silent, in a flame; a man
to mother, study out, probe into deep with questions; a man to plan and
plan with.

"This love is to be the love of his life! It's to make us work and
grow, make us fine and awake and alive to everything worth living for!
No laziness for you, my dear, no soft, cosy kitten life! You're to be a
woman, a real one! Don't let there be any mistake about that!"

In the other room Joe was at his piano, and the music he was playing had
nothing to do with--any one else. She did not say, "with Amy." She
frowned a little and cut herself short, as she so often did in her
thinking, these days, when it touched upon her sister. She could feel
Amy here at so many points, and she did not want to be jealous.

"I wonder where we're going tonight."

What was it Joe was playing? Music she had heard before. She did not
like to ask him and so betray her ignorance. "I ought to know this!
What is it?" she asked herself impatiently. "Why, of course! It's from
'Bohême'!" She smiled as she felt he was playing to her. With the
thrill now so familiar, she felt her power over him. She remembered
little tussles in which she had been victorious. They had all been over
his business. Joe, the poor darling, had formed the idea (she did not
say from his first wife) that if a man is in love with a woman he must
express it by loading her down with things which cost a lot of money,
that he must work for her, slave for her! But Ethel was putting an end
to that. They had taken back Susette's old nurse, for it was unfair to
one's husband to be a child's slave if there was no need. But she had
refused to get other servants. Emily Giles was still in charge, and
though Emily of her own accord had gone to a shop on Fifth Avenue and
purchased caps and aprons, "the nattiest things this side of France,"
she wore them with a genial air and spoke of them as "my uniform." Ethel
took care of her own room and helped Emily with the cleaning. She had
kept expenses firmly down, and she had refused to be loaded with gifts.
When Joe had urged that his affairs were going so much better now, she
had said in her new decisive voice:

"I'm so glad to hear it, my love, for it simply means you've no earthly
excuse for staying late at your office. I don't mean I want you to
loaf, you know," she had gone on more earnestly. "I want you to work
and do, oh, so much, all the things you dreamed of doing--over there in
Paris. But I'm not going to have you make your business a mere rush for
a lot of money we don't need!" She had gone to him suddenly. "And just
now I want you so."

By these talks she had already worked a change. No more hasty
breakfasts to let him be off by eight o'clock. They had breakfasted
later and later each day; she had made an affair of breakfast. And as
at last he kissed her and tore himself away from his home, she had
smiled to herself delightedly at the guilty look in his eyes. This kind
of thing would cause a decided coolness, no doubt, between Joe and his
partner. So much the better, she had thought, for she detested that man
Nourse, and in his case she could quite openly admit, "I'm jealous of
you and your business devotion! Your time is coming soon, friend Bill!"
The office was half way uptown, and several times in the last few weeks
she had gone there for Joe at five o'clock, and once at four-thirty, as
though by appointment. She chuckled now as she recalled the black look
of his partner that day. Yes, four-thirty had been a blow!

"Where are we going this evening?"

It was delightful to be so free, she told herself repeatedly. Friends?
They didn't need any friends. For the present they had each
other--enough! "Yes, and for some time to come!" But there always came
to her a little qualm of uneasiness when her thinking reached this
point. How were friends to be found in this city?

"Oh, later--later--later!"

And rising impatiently with a shrug, she went into the nursery. The
nurse had been so glad to get back that most of her old hostility toward
Ethel had vanished. Still there were signs now and then of a sneer
which said, "You'll soon be paying no more attention to this poor bairn
than her mother did before you." And it was as well to show the woman
how blind and ignorant she was--to make her see the difference.

"Bohême" was the surprise that night. It was Ethel's first night at the
opera. And looking up at the boxes, at the women she had read about,
the gorgeous gowns and the jewels they wore, and watching them laugh and
chatter; or looking far above them to the dim tiers of galleries
reaching up into the dark; or again with eyes glued on the stage
feasting upon Paris, art, "Bohemia," youth and romance; squeezing her
companion's hand and in flashes recollecting dazzling little incidents
of the fortnight just gone by--her mind went roving into the future,
finding friends and wide rich lives shimmering and sparkling like the
sunlight on the sea. As that Italian music rose, all at once she wanted
to give herself, "To give and give and give him all!" The tears welled
up in her happy eyes.

"However! To be very gay!"

Later that evening in a café she leaned across the table and asked
excited questions about "Bohême" and Paris. What was Paris really like?
The Latin Quarter, the Beaux Arts? What did he do there, how did he
live? In what queer and funny old rooms? Did he live alone or with
somebody else? Something was clutching now at her breast. (Farrar had
sung "Mimi" that night). "Don't be silly!" she told herself. "Oh,
Joe!" she said, and she looked down at the fork in her hand which she
was fingering nervously. Then she looked quickly up and smiled. "What
man did you room with? Any one?" He was smiling across the table still.
"You inquisitive woman," said his eyes.

"No, I lived alone," he replied. "And I sat at a drafting board--with a
sweater on--it used to be cold."

"Oh, you poor dear!"

"And I worked," he continued, "like a bull pup. And along toward
morning I tied a wet towel around my head--"

"Oh, Joe!" Ethel's foot pressed his, and they laughed at each other.
"But there must have been," she cried, "so much besides! Joe Lanier,
you are lying! There were cafés--and student balls and fancy dress--and
singing--and queer streets at night!"

"That's so," he answered solemnly, "the city of Paris did have streets.
You walked on them--from place to place."

"Joe Lanier--"

"First you put the right foot forward, then the left--you moved along."

"Joe! For goodness sakes!"

"Look here. Do you know what I want to do with you?"

"No." And Ethel shook her head. She did know, precisely, and it was her
motive for all this talk.

"Take you there--and get rooms in the Quarter--not too far from the
Luxembourg--"

"Oh, Joe, you perfect darling!"

He went on describing all they would do, in the cafés and on the
streets, in old churches and at plays and at the Opera Comique, where
she must surely see "Louise." They began excitedly planning ways and
means, expenses, his business and when he could get away. He sobered at
that, and she cried to herself, "Now he's thinking of his friend Bill!
Oh, what a detestable, tiresome worm!"

Then a man who was passing their table stopped in surprise as he
recognized Joe, bowed, smiled and said something and went on, and joined
a hilarious group down the room. And Ethel saw him speak to them and
she felt their glances turned her way. Joe had grown suddenly awkward,
his face wore a forced, unnatural smile, and he was talking rapidly--but
she heard nothing that he said. The whole atmosphere had changed in an
instant.

For those people over there were some of Amy's friends, no doubt, amused
at Joe and his young second wife, amused that Joe had not had the nerve
to ask them to his wedding. Ethel could feel herself burning inside. A
mistake not to have asked them? No! What had they to do with it? What
right had they, what hold on Joe? They had been a mighty poor lot of
friends, with empty minds and money hearts, just clothes and food,
late hours and wine! They had been decidedly bad for him, had drawn him
off from his real work and plunged him into the rush to be rich! A
voice within her, from underneath, was asking, "Or was it Amy?" But she
paid no heed to that. It asked, "Are you sure they are all so bad?
Have you taken the trouble to find out?" But angrily she answered that
she wanted friends of her own, that she couldn't be just a second wife.
"I've got to be all different, new! I've got to be--and I will, I
will!" She swallowed fiercely. Besides, it was what Joe needed,
exactly! He showed already what it had meant to be rid of such friends!
Had he ever talked of Paris before, or his dreams and ambitions or
anything real? But the voice retorted sharp and clear:

"Why hide it then? Why let this foolish dangerous habit of never
mentioning Amy's name keep growing up between you and your husband? It
may do a lot of harm, you know. What are you afraid of?"

Nothing whatever, she replied. She decided to speak of it then and
there. She would be perfectly natural, and ask him, "Who are your
friends over there? Some people Amy used to know?" And she grew rigid
all at once. Her throat contracted and felt dry. Angrily she bit her
lip . . . But the habit of silence was too strong. . . . Soon,
with a carefully pleasant smile, she was attending to his talk and by
her questions drawing out more and more of his life abroad.

"His work," she thought, "that's the strongest thing to hold his mind
away from those people." And soon she had him talking of the Beaux Arts,
architecture, plans and "periods" and "styles," things she was quite
vague about, but she did not have to listen now. That was always so
safe, she told herself. She was even a little jealous of this puzzling,
engrossing work, which could so hold her husband's mind. She frowned.
That was as it should be; a man's work was his own concern. But his
living, his home, what he did at night?

"This can't go on," she decided. "There will have to be friends for
both of us. I need them, too. Oh, how I need one woman friend! And
where shall I find her? Somewhere in this city there must be just the
people I want--if only I could reach them!"

And presently she was saying aloud in a lazy careless tone of voice:

"Sometimes I get wondering, Joe, if there isn't a Paris in New York."

CHAPTER XI

It was a few weeks later. A doctor had been there and gone, and
returning into the living-room Ethel sank down on a chair with a quiet
intensity in her eyes. For some time she had not been feeling herself,
but she did not want to worry Joe, and so at last she had telephoned to
the clergyman who had married her.

"You may not remember me," she had said, "but you married me in
December. Perhaps you'll recall it if I say there were only three
friends at the church."

"Oh, yes, I remember it--perfectly."

"Thank you. I'm not quite well and I have no friends to turn to, so I'm
wondering if you could recommend a good doctor I could see."

The doctor recommended had just paid his visit. And now as the dusk
deepened she had the strangest feelings. Her year and a half in the
city seemed hurried and feverish as a dream. Her mind ran back into the
past and on into the future. Only a few days before, the round robin
letter had come again. In it the girl who had married the mining
engineer out West had told of having a baby in a little town in Montana.
Ethel had thought of the doctor then.

She rose now and got the letter and re-read it slowly. Presently she
put it down and began crying softly, though she felt neither sad nor
frightened. Her life had so completely changed. All those girl
friends, so scattered; all those years, so far behind. It was like
getting on a ship, she thought, to start across the ocean. "You can't
get off, you must go across. Oh, Ethel Lanier, how happy you'll be."
But the happiness seemed a long way off.

How quiet it was. The nurse came in with Susette from the park. Ethel
went into the nursery and kneeling down she began to unbutton Susette's
little jacket. The child's plump face was so rosy and cold. She kissed
it suddenly.

"Martha," she said, "I'll need you here for a long time now. I'm going
to have a baby."

She reddened then and held her breath. Queer, how she had blurted it
out! She had not meant to tell any one yet. But the look of dawning
joy and relief in Martha's eyes made her glad she had spoken. Plainly
the nurse had been dreading the time so fast approaching when she would
have to leave Susette, who was now nearly four years old. But all she
said to Ethel was this:

"I'm glad to hear it, Mrs. Lanier. I hope you'll be very careful now."
She shot a look as keen as a knife, which asked, "Do you really want a
child? Or are you like her? Was it a mistake?"

And Ethel went quickly out of the room. In the living-room her eye was
caught by Amy's photograph on the table. She had always kept it there.
In her cleaning she had put it back. Emily, too, had put it back. They
had never spoken Amy's name. But Ethel faced the picture now for some
moments steadily. Somehow it had lost its beauty, it looked weak and
soul-less, without power any longer over Ethel's future. "Poor Amy.
Oh, how much you missed." And she added, "I'll never be like that." For
an instant she let her mind dwell on the past, on how Susette's coming
must have been--unwelcomed by her mother.

"But this one will be welcomed! Our love is so--so different! This
will bind us, oh, so close! It's done now, you're tied for life!" She
had never felt it so before. The months of her marriage had been so
exciting, and even in the long summer's thinking her love had seemed
always a little unreal. "But this is real--inside of me!" Her fancy
went careering ahead, with joy and wonder, a thrill of dismay. "I was
so free, with my life to choose! I could have been almost anything!
But now it is settled. This is my life. We talk and we talk about
being free--and then all at once--a baby."

In the days which followed and grew into weeks and months, the feeling
of quiet remained with her. The pang of uneasiness as to how she was to
find friends for Joe and herself, was allayed and put off to the future.
He would not expect anything of her just now. And because it was
pressing upon her no longer, it became a pleasure to dream and plan for
herself and Joe and the children.

She was only twenty-four, and although Joe was thirty-six he looked
years younger. They could grow. Now she began asking him to read aloud
in the evenings, nor was the reading all "mere fluff." Though she picked
out amusing things to vary the monotony, she insisted on magazines and
books which had been recommended by the little history "prof" at home,
to whom Ethel wrote long letters. The books rather appalled her husband
at times; but using her new hold on him, she said:

"Go on, dear, now begin." And she picked up her sewing with a look which
said, "We've got to grow, you know, if we're ever to get friends worth
while or have a life worth living."

But again she would shut out all that, and smile to herself and grow
absorbed. And this habit grew to such a degree that by the beginning of
summer their reading bees had come to an end. In June she took Martha
and Susette and went to the seashore for three months. She came back in
September, and now the time was drawing near. Her husband's love grew
anxious and there came troubled gleams in his eyes.

The trained nurse had arrived. The doctor kept coming. Martha was
plainly "in a state." And Emily Giles, for all her grim ways, had
moments almost tender. All centering, swiftly centering, as the long
voyage neared its end.

CHAPTER XII

What deep relief and blessed peace. She lay on her bed, now smiling,
now inert, eyes closed, weak and relaxed, but already aware from time to
time of the beginnings within herself of new vitality, food for her
child. Her body felt profoundly changed, and so it was with her spirit.
Again the thought rose in her mind that this had settled and sealed her
life. But she was glad of the certainty. Slowly, as her strength
returned, all the vague desires and dreams of the last few months came
back, grew clear; and she planned and planned for the small boy whom the
nurse kept bringing to her bed. At such moments the new love within her
rose like some fresh bursting spring.

The city, though so vast, complex, came to be like a place full of
miracles. The voices of its ceaseless life came into her window day and
night, the hoots and distant bellows of ships, the rattle of wheels, the
rush of cars, the long swift thunder of the "L," and bursts of laughter
from the streets, and animated voices. She remembered her first night
in New York; she recalled her earlier visions of the city as a place of
thrilling aspirations, wide, sparkling, abundant lives. And Ethel
smiled and told herself:

"All the glory I dreamed of is here."

The thought came to her clearly that Amy it was who had hidden it all,
who had stood smilingly in the way and had said, "All this is nothing."
But she felt a rush of pity now for the woman who was left behind, cut
off so completely by the birth of this small son. The nurse was
bringing him into the room, and Ethel smiled at her and said:

"Ask Susette if she doesn't want to come, too."

It was only a day or two later that her husband broke his news. He had
been so dear to her, his visits had been such a joy, and although behind
his tenderness vaguely she had sensed some change, some new excitement
in his mind, in her own absorption in their boy she had attributed it to
that. But early one evening he came in with a sheaf of roses in his
arms, and when she had exclaimed at them and breathed deep of their dewy
fragrance, Joe bent over and kissed her, and said a little huskily:

"I've got some big news for you, little wife. It's big. It's going to
mean so much."

"What is it, Joe?"

She stared up intently into his eyes. He was telling her he had made
money. He was telling how the approaching birth of their small son had
made him feel he must put an end to these ups and downs, and how he had
worked and racked his brains. He told of heavy borrowing, of anxious
weeks, of a wonderful stroke of luck at last which not only made him
rich for the moment but opened the way to wealth ahead. He was speaking
of what this would mean to them here. He knew how hard it had been for
her and how pluckily she had come through without ever asking for
anything. But all that was over now. He had made money! What was the
matter? She heard it all in fragments, topsy turvy. What was wrong?
"Here is a Joe I've never known!" Still staring up into his eyes, she
saw their strange exultant light; the excitement in his husky voice
struck into her sensitive ear and jarred; and she nearly shrank from the
clutch of his hand. She lay wondering why she was not glad, till
suddenly she saw in his face his sharp disappointment at the way she was
taking his news. With a pang of alarm she roused herself and said:

"Oh, Joe, it's too wonderful! It's so sudden it strikes me all of a
heap!" And she laughed unsteadily, seized his hand and kissed it,
talking rapidly, her eyes glistening all the while with foolish tears.
Fiercely then she asked herself, "Why can't you enter in and be gay?"
But though she was doing better now and had him talking as before, again
and again she felt he was thinking how different Amy would have
been--how in an instant, laughing and crying, she would have thrown
herself into his arms!

Yes, indeed, a Joe she had never known, shaped and moulded by the wife
who had had him in those early years when a woman can do so much with a
man, can do what sets him in a groove in work and living, tastes,
ideals. "And I thought I had done so much!" But Amy's hand had still
been there; he had been her husband, all the time!

It was a relief to have him gone. Alone she could think more clearly.
"What are you so frightened about? Of being rich, you little fool?" No,
she had always wanted that, money enough to forget it existed, money to
open all the doors. "But this money is coming too soon! I'm not ready.
I'm too young! And he'll expect so much of me now. There'll be no
excuse for holding back, for going slow till I find what I want. He'll
expect me to find friends at once! But where shall I find them all of a
sudden? It isn't as though we were millionaires, really big ones, all
in a minute. The newspapers won't be very excited; the town will take
it quite calmly, quite! And for the life of me I don't see any friends
rushing at us! And yet he'll expect it! So much he'll expect! He'll
give and give and give me things and then wonder why I don't get
anywhere!" The angry tears leaped in her eyes. "Because he's different
now, he's changed! All bursting with his big success, his 'strike,' his
business--money mad! Oh, how I hate his business--and that detestable
partner, too!"

A wave of rebellion swept over her at the way she had been caught,
tangled into the life of a man and the fortunes of his business. But
then she thought of the son she had borne him, and this brought quick
remorse and tears, from which she fell into a deep sleep. And when she
awoke she found the nurse was waiting with the baby.

And the days which followed with their peace, their slow return of
health and strength, brought assurance, too, and she laughed at herself
for having been such a foolish child. She recalled her panic on her
wedding night. Then, too, she had found a Joe unknown. But had that
turned out so dreadful? He came often to her bedside now; and although
she could feel how changed he was, it no longer frightened her. She had
her wee boy; and Emily Giles and Susette and her nurse kept coming in;
and the room grew very gay, as they had little parties there.

"Who needs friends so all of a sudden!"

But one day Emily came in and grimly remarked, "There's a woman outside
who owns this apartment."

"What?"

"She acts that way. She's walking 'round that sitting-room--picking
things up and putting things down-" Emily's voice was rising in wrath.

"Emily! Sh-h! She'll hear you! Who is she? Didn't she give her
name?"

"Here's her name!" And Emily poked out a card, at which Ethel looked in
a startled way.

"Fanny Carr! Now why has she come here?"

"Will you see her or shall I tell her the flat is already rented?"

"No, no! Emily--don't be rude! She's a friend of my--my husband's!"

And a few moments later, propped up in bed with a pretty lace cap on her
head, Ethel was smiling affably at her visitor, who was exclaiming:

"My dear girl, I'm so glad to see you again! So good of you, letting me
in like this! I didn't have the least idea! I didn't know of your
baby--I hadn't even heard you were married! I've been abroad for over a
year. I got back to New York only last week and heard from one of Joe's
men friends of the luck he has had--how his business is simply booming
along! It's perfectly gorgeous, Ethel dear, and I'm so glad for you, my
child! When I heard the news--"

She talked on vivaciously. And Ethel lay back, her gaze intent on
Fanny's handsome features, on her rich lips, pearl earrings, her eyes
with their curious color, grey green, that were so sparkling and alive.
And Ethel thought to herself in dismay: "How much more attractive she
is! Was my first feeling about her all wrong, or is it that I'm getting
used to these New Yorkers? I thought she was just hard--all brass! She
isn't! She's--she's dangerous! What is she poking 'round here for?
What does she want? Is she married again? No, her name was the same on
her card. Still single--yes, and looking around--for somebody with
money!"

By the questions Fanny was asking, plainly she was trying to find what
friends Ethel had made in New York. And although the girl on the bed
talked of the town in glowing terms, in a few moments Fanny was saying:

"I'm afraid you've been rather lonely here."

"Oh, no!" And Ethel laughed merrily. "If you knew how my time is
filled--every hour! My small boy--" and she went eagerly on to show how
full her life had become.

"Oh, you darling!" Fanny laughed. And then with an envious sigh she
said, "You make me feel so old and forlorn. With all your beauty, Ethel
Lanier, and youth--your whole life starting--well, you've just got to
let me in and take you about. Oh, I know, I know, it's so wonderful
here, and fresh and new, and you're quite contented and all that. But
after all, it's a city, you know--a perfectly good one, full of
life--and people you'll like--old friends of Joe's." She went on in a
crisp gay tone to paint the pleasures of the town. And meanwhile
glancing at Ethel she thought, "What a perfect devil she thinks me, poor
child, a bold bad creature on Joe's trail--when all I want is to take
her around and help her spend her money. I need it badly enough, God
knows!"

At last she rose.

"I mustn't tire you. Good-bye, dear. You'll let me come again, of
course."

"Oh, yes, do." At Ethel's tone, Fanny smiled to herself, as deftly she
adjusted her furs. She turned to look in the mirror and her eye was
caught by the photograph of Amy over on Joe's chiffonier. She moved a
step toward it, paused, turned back, and with a good-bye to Ethel went
out.

Ethel's eyes went back to the photograph. How strong and alarming, all
in an hour, Amy's picture had become. As she looked, it seemed to take
on life, to be saying, "Money! Money at last!" And with dismay she told
herself:

"Now they'll come in a perfect horde!"

CHAPTER XIII

"Shall I tell Joe! Most certainly."

But she did not tell him all, that night. She did not say, "One of
Amy's friends was here today, and she's coming again, and more are
coming--and I hate them, every one!" She simply remarked:

"Oh, Joe, dear--Fanny Carr was here today."

"She was, eh?" he gave a slight start. "Where has she been all this
time?"

"Abroad." And Ethel answered his questions. "She'll be here a good
deal, I fancy," she ended. Joe looked annoyed and uneasy. But he did
not speak, that evening, of the memories rising in his mind. For on
both the old spell of silence was strong. Subtly the spirit of the
first wife came stealing back into the room, pervaded it and made it her
own. But her name was still unspoken.

The next day brought an exquisite baby's cap with Fanny's card tucked
inside. And in the fortnight after that, Fanny herself came several
times. She talked in such a natural way, and her smile and the look in
her clever grey eyes was so good-humoured and friendly. "She's doing it
beautifully," Ethel thought. But she pulled herself up. "Doing what
beautifully? What do I mean? One would think we were millionaires, and
Joe a perfect Adonis! Is she trying to eat us? And aren't you rather a
snob, my love, to be so sure you hate the woman before you even know
her?"

At such moments Ethel would relax and grow pleasantly interested in
Fanny's talk of Paris and Rome, or of New York. In each city Fanny
seemed to have led very much the same existence. In each there had been
Americans, and hotels, cafés and dances, motor trips and lunches, gossip
and scandal without end. But she told of it all in a humorous way that
made it quite amusing. And it was a good deal the same with the two
women, Amy's friends, whom Fanny brought to tea a bit later. Their
gossip and their laughter, their voices breaking into each other and
making a perfect hubbub at times, their smart suits and hats and dainty
boots, their plump faces, lively eyes, all were quite exciting to Ethel,
when she threw off her hostility and the uneasiness they aroused. It
felt good to be gossipy once more.

But how they chattered! How they stayed! Joe would be coming home soon
now, and she wanted them to go. But they did not go, and Ethel guessed
that it was Joe they were waiting for. She was sure of it when he
appeared. The way they all rushed at him with little shrieks of
laughter, talking together, excited as girls! "Though they're all years
older than I am!" Ethel angrily exclaimed, as she sat there matronly and
severe. She eyed her husband narrowly, and at first with keen
satisfaction she saw how annoyed and embarrassed he was. But the
moments passed, and he grew relieved, more easy and more natural, his
voice taking on its usual tone, blunt and genial. And she thought,
"He's going to like it!" For a moment she detested him then. "They'll
flatter him, make a tin god of him! No, I mean a money god! That's
what they want, his money!" She positively snorted, but no one seemed to
notice it. Now they were turning back to her and she was in the hubbub,
too. And how amiably she smiled!

When they were gone, there fell a silence which was like a sudden pall.
"He can break it! I--won't!" she decided viciously. He had gone to
their room, she had followed him there, and he was not having an easy
time. He washed and dressed without a word. But at last he came to
her.

"Look here." His arm was about her, she jerked away, but he would not
release her.

"You're the most adorable little wife that ever made a man happy," he
said. "But you're young, you know--"

"Is that a crime?"

"No, it's something those other women would all give their eye-teeth
for."

"Go on."

"But you're human, you know, and you've got to grow older--and as you do
you'll find, my dear, that it takes all kinds to make a world."

"How original!" He went on unabashed:

"And if you are to get any friends, you've got to get out and meet all
kinds--many you don't like at all--and then little by little take your
choice." He paused, and although he did not add, "After all, they're
Amy's friends, and you might at least give 'em a chance"--Ethel knew he
was thinking that, though he only ended gently, "But I guess I'll leave
it all to you. Do as you like. I'll be satisfied."

"He won't be, though," she told herself. She knew he would be
distinctly annoyed if she did not enter in. "No, I've simply got to be
nice to them. There's no keeping them away!"

And in this she was right. Flowers and gifts for the baby came, and
several more women friends; and one of them brought her husband. Nearly
always they stayed until Joe came home; and in his manner, with dismay,
she saw the hold they were getting. It was not only flattery they
used, they appealed to his loyalty to his first wife. "Don't drop us
now," they seemed to say. "We were your friends when you were
poor--when she was poor. If she had lived, just think how welcome we
should be."

Early one evening when Ethel and Joe were dressing for dinner, Emily
Giles came in with a long box of roses. Ethel thought they were for
herself.

"No," said Emily, "they're for your husband."

"For me?" Joe laughed. "There's some mistake."

"No--there's no mistake," said Ethel, in a low unnatural voice. In an
instant she had grown cold. What a fool, to have forgotten that this
was Amy's birthday! Inside the box was Fanny's card and on it she had
written, "In memory of the many times I helped you buy a birthday gift."

Ethel went quickly out of the room. It was an awkward evening.

Fanny gave a dinner soon after that to celebrate Ethel's recovery. It
was in a hotel grill room, and it was large and noisy--and noisier and
noisier--till even above the boisterous hubbub at the tables all about,
the noise of their party could be heard. At least so it seemed to
Ethel's ears. And what were they saying? Anything really witty,
sparkling? No--just chatter, peals of laughter! They were just plain
cheap and tough! how red were their faces, warm and moist their lips
and eyes!

"You're not vivid enough, that's the trouble with you! You've got to be
vivider!" she thought. "You ought to have taken that cocktail!" She
drank wine now, a whole glass of it, and tried to be very boisterous
with the man on her right, who was smiling back as though he could
barely hear her voice. "He has had too much!" she told herself. "Oh,
how I loathe you--loathe you all!"

But later, when they began to dance, she found with a little glow of
relief that she could do this rather well. Thank Heaven she had taken
those dancing lessons a year ago; and she was younger than most of these
creatures, and more lithe and supple. The men were noticing, crowding
around her. She caught a glare from one of their wives. And that glare
helped tremendously, it came like a gleam of light in the dark. She
caught Joe's admiring glances. She danced with him, then turned him
down for somebody else, kept turning him down. She threw into her
dancing an angry vim; but joy was coming into it, too. This was not so
bad, after all. "You may even grow to like all this!" But most of her
thinking was a whirl.

She went home in a taxi, in Joe's arms. She thought, "This is how he
and Amy came home. Never mind, I'm not half so weak as I thought. I
can play this game--"

And play it she did.

The next morning they slept very late. They had breakfast in bed, and
when Joe had gone she lay thinking. Her mind was marvellously clear.
It went swiftly over the night before. Yes, most of it had been simply
disgusting, the eating and drinking, those warm moist eyes. "The way
the men looked at you, held you! This is no life for you, Ethel
Lanier!" The dancing was all she cared about. She wanted that, but with
other men whom she would like to be friends with--"men who would treat
you as something more than a, than a--I don't know what!" Yes, she must
get away from these creatures, and get Joe away, too; but to do it she
must show him first that she was really willing to do her best to like
them all. The next thing was to ask them here. "It's the only way to
break their hold. Show him you're no jealous cat. And how do I know
that among them all, as I go about, I won't find a few that aren't so
tough? And through them I'll find others."

But she put off entertaining Joe's friends, for she had her hands full
now in managing just Joe alone. Amy's husband was coming to life in
him. Of that there could be no mistake. Under the spell of his
success, and still more perhaps through his pride and delight in his
handsome young wife, Joe was showing his love for her as Amy had taught
him long ago. He showered gifts upon her. He delighted in surprises.
One was a smart little town car, and this was a very pleasant surprise.
But in it he insisted upon her shopping busily. No more wearing last
year's clothes! And when she was a bit slow to move, to her dismay he
went himself with Fanny Carr, and bought for Ethel's birthday a costly
set of furs and a brooch. He nearly bought pearl earrings, too, but
Ethel took them back at once. "Fanny knows as well as I do myself that
I can't wear pearls!" she thought angrily. She exchanged them for opal
pendants. And then, in order to put a stop to Fanny's detestable
attempts "to make me look like a perfect fright," Ethel did start in and
shop. And as soon as she got well into it, what a fever it became!
Sternly eyeing herself in the mirrors of shops, she studied and made
mistakes by the score, and corrected and went on and on. "I'll look
right if kills me!"

One night she learned what Fanny Carr had had in mind when she came
"poking into our lives!" For Fanny was poor--she had long guessed that;
and Fanny had a house on Long Island, and only by a hair's--breadth now
did Ethel keep her from selling it to Joe as a surprise for his wife.

"Well, Fanny, what next?" thought Ethel that night. She had been awake
for hours, perfectly still and motionless, not to disturb her husband.
"For you are not through yet, Mrs. Carr. So long as we're rich and you
are poor and have no immediate husband, you're going to act like a
ravening wolf--aren't you, my own precious. You mean to break my hold
on him by keeping him thinking of her, of her! Now what am I to do
about it?" She frowned. She knew that she ought to talk frankly to Joe,
and get over this silly habit of never mentioning Amy's name! She grew
determined, but then weak. For what could she say to him about Amy?
What did she really want to say? "Do I know poor Amy was anything bad?
Wasn't she good to me? Would I care to try to talk against her? No.
And even if I did, you see, it would only hurt me with Joe--as it
should."

So she went on in different moods. And now she saw her sister's face
smiling out of clear violet eyes, and again she felt a small gloved hand
on her husband drawing him gently back--back and back into the past.
Why was Amy so much stronger now? "Because Fanny Carr has been clever
enough to take me out of the life I was making and pitch me into Amy's
life, where her hold on Joe was strongest. I'm in her setting. That's
the trouble!"

But she had Amy's friends to dine one night, as in her calmer moods she
knew was the only sensible course. And as they began arriving, by swift
degrees amid the buzz of talk which rose, Ethel could feel the room each
moment change and become Amy's home. And it was Amy's dinner, too. No
cooking of Emily's that night, for Joe had suggested a caterer. "The
one we've always used," he had said. And so the cocktails and the wines
and the food in many courses, the two waiters in evening clothes, and
the talk and the shrieks of mirth, were just as they must have been
before so many, many times in this room. Ethel sat affably rigid there.

And later at the piano Joe was not Ethel's husband. Nor was it her room
when they stripped up the rugs and began to dance, nor her photograph
their eyes kept seeking from time to time! She even thought she could
hear them whisper about the hostess who was dead!

And when very late they had departed, and last of all Joe had gone with
Fanny downstairs to put her in her taxi, Ethel, left alone in the room,
turned to her sister's photograph.

"I won't be like you," she tensely declared. "I won't live in your
home--with your husband--"

The picture smiled good-naturedly back

"All right," it seemed to answer, "then what do you expect to do?"

CHAPTER XIV

By the next day she had made up her mind to look for another apartment.
The move had several points in its favour. It would not only take her
away from this place where she felt the spell so strong; it would also
give her something to do. "And I need it, heaven knows!" she thought.
And besides it would provide an excuse for not seeing Amy's friends.
"I'll be worn out every evening," she decided with grim satisfaction.

She found Joe more than ready for the change. He himself had suggested
it, some weeks before, and Ethel made the most of that. "I've been
thinking over your idea of moving," she began one night. And in the
talk which followed, the intent little glances she threw at him made her
sure that in her husband's mind was a half conscious deep relief at the
idea of getting away from these rooms and their memories.

"Poor dear," she reflected tenderly, "what a place for a tired business
man--a home with two assorted wives waiting for him every night."

But when it came to looking about, to her surprise Ethel found it hard,
on her own account, to make the move. For with all its faults and
drawbacks, this was the place where she had struggled, groped and
dreamed, had married Joe and discovered him in hours she would never
forget, and here her baby had been born. The place had grown familiar.
Even the huge building, for all its appearance of being exactly like
every other on the street, had in some curious fashion taken on for
Ethel a special atmosphere of its own; and coming back from a bleak
succession of apartments she had inspected, this did at least seem more
like a home.

Joe came to her rescue. He was a part owner here, and with delight she
learned from him that a large and sunny apartment at the top of the
building was to be free the first of May. Ethel went up to see it at
once. And the arrangement of the rooms, and the way the sun flooded
into each one, made her exclaim with pleasure.

The present tenants were a young widow and her companion, a most
respectable elderly dame. The widow was about Ethel's age and
excessively pretty and stylish, and in her low sweet voice and her
manner was a peculiar attractiveness that Ethel could not analyse. She
explained that she was going abroad, possibly to be gone a year, or
she never would have given up this gem of an apartment. She seemed more
than glad to show Ethel about, and displayed a friendly interest in her
visitor's eager planning. When Ethel left at the end of an hour, the
widow smiled at her and said, with a charming little hesitation:

"I don't think you have my name. It's Mrs. Grewe. I do hope you'll
come up whenever you like, and let me help you all I can. I shall so
love to feel when I go that you and your kiddies will be here. I've
noticed them so often, down-stairs and in the elevator. And they're
both such darlings."

And at that, with a thrill of pride, Ethel felt almost as though she had
found a friend in the city at last.

They saw each other frequently, for Ethel was always running in to look
through the various rooms and puzzle and decide on curtains, rugs and
portieres. In this she was aided more than she knew by the taste
displayed in the furnishings, rich, subdued and yet so gay, that young
Mrs. Grewe had collected here. The two had animated talks, and once
when her new acquaintance suggested, "I'd be so glad if I could be of
some help in your shopping," Ethel replied, "Oh, you could! I'd love to
have you!" And they started in that day.

And yet how curious, even here. For whenever Ethel endeavoured to get
the conversation upon a little more intimate terms, Mrs. Grewe would
almost instantly become evasive and remote. And once when Ethel asked
her to "drop down and have dinner with us some night," she declined
almost with a start, as though she were saying, "Ha! Look out! I'm in
danger of letting you be a real friend!" And thinking this over, Ethel
reflected, "The only New Yorker I've met so far, whom I'd like to know,
is nice to me simply because she is going abroad in a month and so it's
safe! Has she offered to introduce me to a single friend of hers?
Well, then, don't! Keep your old friends! I don't want to eat them!"
And for days together she would leave the young widow alone.

But the latter would make pleasant advances, and soon they would be
shopping again. This acquaintance was one of the few bright spots in a
season which for Ethel was full of anxious worries. For it was by no
means easy. Amy had been a shopper who simply could not resist pretty
things, and so her apartment was crowded with furniture and bric-a-brac.
"How much can I get rid of without offending Joe?" asked Ethel. He was
the kind of man who says nothing. He would not object, but he would
feel hurt. It took the most careful probing to find how far she could
safely go. And she was tempted by the shops. In her smart town car,
with plenty of money and with young Mrs. Grewe at her side, it was
almost impossible to resist the adorable things she discovered. "No
wonder Amy bought too much." But there they were, all Amy's
belongings, and to be rid of each table, each chair, each rug, meant
the most careful thinking.

"Nevertheless," she told herself. "That apartment upstairs is to be my
own home."

In the meantime her new occupation was working out wonderfully as an
excuse for not going about in the evenings. She was so dead tired every
night. No need to feign fatigue, it was real. She even had to call in
her physician, in the first "draggy" days of Spring; and he warned her
that she was doing too much, it was too soon after the birth of her
child. She was glad when Joe happened to come in and overhear the
doctor. He became the same old dear to her that he had been a year
ago. And with eagerness, tired though she was, she took pains every
evening to dress in ways that she knew he liked. And at times it was
almost like a second honeymoon they were having. She used the baby,
too, and Susette; she often persuaded Joe to come home in time for
Susette's supper, or better still for the baby's bath. And all this was
so successful that even when her spring fever was gone she still stayed
at home in the evenings.

But in the meantime, what about friends? "I'm lazy," she thought, "I'm
not facing it! I'm just putting it off--and it's dangerous!" For Joe
was out so much at night. Over half the time he did not get home until
the children were in bed, and often after a hurried dinner he would
leave by eight o'clock--for business appointments, he told her, at some
club or some café. He was putting through another big deal. At times,
despite her efforts, angry suspicions would arise. He was dealing with
some men from the West. No doubt they had to be entertained. She had
heard a little of such entertaining from travelling men she had known at
home. "Oh, Ethel Lanier, don't be so disgusting!" But after all, a man
so tense all day in his office needed some gaiety at night.

She began to suggest going out in the evenings. They went to
"Butterfly" and "Louise," and each evening was a great success. But
within a few days Fanny Carr called up and asked them to dinner and the
play. Ethel made some excuse and declined. She did not mention it to
Joe, but that night he said gruffly, "Sorry you turned Fanny down." And
Ethel looked at him with a start. So Joe was seeing her these days!

"I haven't been feeling very strong, Joe," she said in an unnatural
tone.

"You've been to the opera twice this week," was her husband's grim
rejoinder.

And this was only one little instance of many that made Ethel sure that
Fanny Carr was still about. She was getting at Joe through his business
side, going to his office. She had asked him to sell her house on Long
Island, and through this transaction she had tangled him into her
affairs. A lone woman, defenceless in business, needing the aid and
advice of a man. "Oh, I can almost hear her lay it on--her
helplessness!" And Ethel fairly ground her teeth. For Fanny, only the
day before, having called and noticed that a sofa and a rug were
missing, had asked to what dealer Ethel had sold them. "Now," thought
Ethel, "she'll buy them herself, and then she'll ask Joe to drop in for
tea at her hotel apartment--'on business,' of course-but the rug and
sofa will be there! Poor Amy's things! Oh, yes, indeed, Fanny is
clever enough! If only she would take his money--and get out and leave
us alone!" Ethel had some lonely grapples with life. She was right, she
angrily told herself, in wanting to go slowly until she could discover
real friends; but on the other hand she admitted that Joe had reason for
being impatient. At thirty-seven it is hard for a man to change his
habits, and Amy had accustomed Joe to crave excitement every night.
Even Ethel herself, in some of her moods, felt restless to go about and
be gay. And again and again the youth in her rebelled against the trap
into which she had fallen.

"The minute I even propose a play, I show him I'm well enough to go out.
And then he asks, 'Why not Amy's friends?' And he remembers the mean
little things that Fanny Carr must have told him--the beast!--and so he
says, 'I see it all. Ethel is only bluffing. Now that I'm rich she's
trying to make me drop the friends and the memory of the wife who stood
by me when I was poor.'"

Ethel even went out twice to their detestable parties, in the faint hope
of finding one woman at least she would care to know. But if there had
been any such, Fanny was careful to leave them out.

Friends, friends, friends of her own! Where to find them? On the
streets, as she went about at her shopping, she saw so many attractive
people, and she drew their glances, too. She had developed since her
marriage; she had a distinctive beauty, and she had learned how to
foster that. Almost always she felt the hungry eyes of men, good, bad
and indifferent, rich men, beggars, Christians, Jews. But that of
course was only annoying. Ethel wanted women friends. On the street,
from her elegant little car, she could see women who were walking glance
at her with envy, just as she herself had done in her first year in the
city. The thought brought a humorous smile to her lips. And looking at
the constant stream of motors passing, she inquired, "How many of us are
there, in this imposing procession, who haven't a single friend in
town?" How they all passed on. How coolly indifferent, self-absorbed!
Was there no entering wedge to their lives?

But her youth would rise with a sudden rush in her warm body, so smartly
dressed, so tingling with ardent health, and glancing into the glass in
her car and making a little face at herself, she would exclaim:

"Oh, fiddlesticks! All this is going to have a nice fine happy ending!
Nothing awful is to happen to me!"

At one such time, as though interrupted, she leaned quickly and
graciously forward, as she had seen women do in the Park, and bowed with
a cordial little smile--to a vacant lot--and then turning back to the
imagined friend at her side, she said sweetly, "Excuse me, dear. What
were you saying? Why yes, we'd love to. Thursday night? What time do
you dine?" A lump rose in her throat. "Now, Ethel, Ethel, you soft
little fool--you're only twenty-five, you know. And of all the adorable
babies waiting in a nursery--"

One day she found Fifth Avenue crammed and jammed with a huge parade.
She had her chauffeur get as close as he could, and with intent and
curious eyes she watched the suffragists march by. What hosts and hosts
of women, how jolly and how friendly. Oh, what a lark they were having
together! Why not join them, then and there? For an instant she
thought of leaving her car and falling right in with some marching
group. "But how do I know they won't turn me down?" She waited and lost
courage. Soon she saw marching ahead of one section a smartly dressed
woman whose photograph she had often seen in the papers. At this
Ethel's courage oozed again, and with a pang of envy she thought:

"Oh, yes, this is all very fine for you! You're so safe and settled
here; you've got position--everything!"

In a moment she felt this was small and mean. The envy and the
bitterness passed. She watched other women, such confident, easy,
bright-looking creatures--not at all like Amy's set--who looked as
though they could preside at big meetings or at their own tables at
home, and be gracious and say witty things to the clever men at their
sides. Behind them came whole regiments of women and girls of a simpler
kind. Some of them earned their own living, no doubt--yes, and had to
work hard to do it.

"Wouldn't they do? Look at that one! Wouldn't I like her for a
friend?"

In a flash Ethel remembered the little history "prof" at home, who had
begged her girls to live and grow.

"Now, Ethel Lanier, you're going to get right out of this car and fall
into line--friends or no friends!"

In a moment, scowling to keep up her nerve, she was pushing through the
standers-by right out into the Avenue; and feeling like a public sight,
she tried quickly to get into line.

"You can't march here! Our line is full!" a voice said sharply. Ethel
gasped and reddened, turned blindly to the file behind.

"Do you want to march with us?" somebody asked.

"Yes! Oh, thank you!"

"Fall right in. That's right, my dear--here, take one of my flags."

"You're awfully kind!"

"Hooray for the vote!"

Through eyes a little misty Ethel saw striding along at her side a
sturdy little old lady in black. And she blessed her fervently. It was
a thrilling marvellous time. In less than ten minutes she felt herself
boon companions with every one in her line. But then, before she
realized what it was that had happened, her group had reached the end of
their march and had melted suddenly into a throng of chattering laughing
women. Ethel stared about her blindly.

"Never mind," she decided, "I'm going to see more of this!"

And the next day she presented herself at suffrage headquarters.

"I want to work," she said to a girl at a desk. The girl looked up at
her busily.

"All right, go to that table," she answered. And at a long oak table,
one of a dozen women and girls, Ethel folded envelopes and addressed
them for about three hours. Down at the end, two girl companions
chatted and laughed at their labour. But the rest were just busy.
"Hand me those envelopes, if you please." And so it was all through the
room. She came back the next morning and the next; and as she worked,
her expression was grim. "It isn't their fault," she decided. "They
want the vote, they don't want me."

And she turned forlornly back to the work of moving up to her new
apartment.

The first of May was drawing near, and she saw signs of restlessness, as
thousands of New Yorkers prepared to change their quarters. Moving,
always moving. Did they never stop in one place and make it a home?
The big building in which Ethel lived took on an impersonal air, as
though saying, "What do I care? I'm all concrete, with good hard steel
inside of that." What a queer place for people's homes! People moving
in and out! Curiously she probed into its life. She had long ago made
friends with the wife of the superintendent, and through her Ethel
collected bits about these many families so close together and yet so
apart; all troubles kept strictly out of sight, with the freight
elevator for funerals, cool looks and never a word of greeting. "Keep
off," writ clear on every face.

"It isn't real, this living! It can't last!" she exclaimed to herself.
"They'll have to work out something better than this--something, oh,
much homier!" She thought of the old frame house in Ohio. "That's
gone," she declared, with a swallow.

Her acquaintance with young Mrs. Grewe was still the one bright spot at
such times. When Ethel felt blue she would go upstairs to the sunny new
home that was to be hers; and there the blithe welcome she received
restored her own belief in herself. Mrs. Grewe would often lead her to
talk of her home in Ohio, the eager dreams and plans of her girlhood;
and on her side, the young widow gave pictures of life in London and
Paris as she had seen it so many times. They still shopped together
occasionally.

But one afternoon about six o'clock, as Ethel's car drew up at the door
and she and her one friend got out, Joe came along--and with one quick
angry look he hurried into the building. Quite furious and ashamed for
him, Ethel turned to her companion--but Mrs. Grewe smiled queerly and
held out her small gloved hand.

"Good-bye, my dear, it has been so nice--this afternoon and all the
others." Her tone was a curious mixture of amused defiance and real
regret. Ethel stammered something, but in a moment her friend was gone.

Upstairs she met Joe with an angry frown, but to her indignant
reproaches he replied by a quizzical smile.

"Look here, Ethel." He took her arm, in a kind protecting sort of way
which made her fairly boil. "Look here. I can't let you go about with
a shady little person like that. I didn't know you'd picked her up.
Now, now--I understand, of course--you met her up there in the new
apartment. What a fool I was not to have thought of it."

"Thought of what? For goodness sake!"

"She won't do, that's all."

"Why won't she?" Ethel's colour was suddenly high and her brown eyes had
a dangerous gleam. Joe looked at her, hesitating.

"Yes," he said, "you're the kind of a girl who has to be told the truth
now and then. She's the mistress of one of our big millionaires."

Ethel stared at him blankly.

"I don't believe it!" she cried. "Her taste! The way she dresses!
Her--her voice--the things she says!"

"I know, I know," he answered. "That sort is rare and they come high.
I've talked to her--"

"Oh, you have, have you! Then why shouldn't I?"

"Because, my dear, I'm one of the owners of this building. My talks
were brief--just business."

"What business had you letting her in?"

"Because times were bad three years ago and tenants weren't so easy to
find. What harm has she done? This isn't a social club, you know--"

"I know it isn't! Nobody speaks--or even smiles!" A lump rose in
Ethel's throat. "And she was so nice and friendly!"

"I'll bet she was--"

"I won't believe it!" Now her face was reddening with
self-mortification. "Do you mean to tell me--living like that--with a
companion, even--a prim old maid who looks as though she had left Boston
only last night--"

A twinkle came into her husband's eyes: "My dear, the friend of a big
millionaire always keeps some one from Boston close by." His arm went
around her. "Poor little girl. I guess I won't have to say any more--"

"Perhaps you will and perhaps you won't!" Now again she was nearly
choking with rage and with hurt vanity. Her one and only companion!
The only woman she had been clever enough to find! That kind! Oh-h!
Suddenly she turned to Joe to tell him that if he could give her no
friends she'd pick and choose just where she liked! But quickly she
remembered that he would answer, "Haven't I tried?" She turned away,
broke into tears and left the room.

Out of the little storm that followed, she emerged at last with the
thought, "Well, I must see her, anyway, in the work of moving into her
apartment. And am I sorry? Not at all! She was good to me--at least
she was that! And besides," reflected Ethel, with the same caution and
relief which she had so despised in New Yorkers, "she's going soon.
It's safe enough."

The talk occurred the next morning, up in the new apartment. There were
no awkward preliminaries, for Mrs. Grewe's whole manner had changed.
Quite a bit of its careful refinement was gone, and in its place was a
rather bitter frankness.

"I quite understand--you needn't explain," she said at once. "Your
husband has made a fuss, hasn't he? And this is good-bye. Too bad,
isn't it?"

"Yes--it is." Ethel hesitated, then all at once she beamed on
her friend. "I want you to know," she stoutly declared, "that neither
is my husband my boss nor am I a prig! Back in school, we girls--we
used to talk--and read and discuss things--Bernard Shaw--" Her hostess
smiled:

"Oh, Shaw, my dear, is a dear, witty man--and he's so funny and so fair.
But to live with him--ugh!--rather icy!" She laughed. "See here. No
matter what you have read, you've never met me until now. I mean the
big Me that thrills all girls--who speak about me in whispers. Well,
then, just for a minute, meet me--look at me and see what I am." On her
piquante little face was a look of friendly challenge. "We've had such
fine little shopping bees, and I'd like you not to be sorry. And what I
want to say is this:

"I was just like you. I came from a small town--I had my dreams--I
reached New York--I married." She smiled. "Not once but twice. I was
divorced. And my second was a love of a man, and we had such a blissful
honeymoon. It lasted a year and a half, and then--he got taking
things--dope--and that made it hard. It ended in another divorce. The
next man didn't marry me. Meant to, you know, but hadn't time. Then he
passed on--" with a wave of her hand--"and now I'm here." A humorous
smile came over her face. "And for the life of me I can't see how
changed it is from when I was married. The same sort of apartment, only
it's nicer--the same ocean liners and hotels--the same cafés where one
can dance exactly as one did before." Again she wrinkled up her brows.
"The only real difference I can see is that when I was married like you,
my husband only told me the truth once in a while--as yours did last
night--while now they tell it all the time. Oh, I'm wise, I'm wise, my
dear--for one so young. I'm twenty-eight. How old are you?"

"I'm twenty-five."

"Three years behind. Well, on the whole I guess I'd stay married if I
were you. It's so nice, if he's still in love with you. But the minute
he isn't, or makes any fuss, or gets ugly or mean, remember this." And
her sweet, clear voice grew impressive. "Remember then you can never be
sure what he's really doing in this town. I know--because they tell
me--and most of them are married men. And second, and last and
always--remember, my dear, that with your figure and your face and your
lovely hair which you do so well, you don't have to put up with any man!
You can get right out whenever you please! And the only trouble will be
to choose your next from all the others who will come crowding about
you! And whether you make him marry you--well--I honestly think there's
not much choice." She rose and said, with a strange little smile.

"Now that I've had my little revenge on your beast of a husband for
spoiling it all, when I wasn't doing the least bit of harm and was
leaving anyhow this week--let's say good-bye and each get to our
packing."

"She was once like me. I could be like her," thought Ethel late that
night. She had been lying awake for hours. "I could be--but I won't!"
she declared. "She had read Shaw. How funny! . . . I think it's a
mighty big mistake to let young girls read Bernard Shaw. Susette
certainly shan't!" Her lips compressed. In a moment she was frowning.

"How easily Joe changed about from loving Amy to loving me. Here he
lies asleep at my side. Where was he today? What do I know? . . .
Oh, Ethel Lanier, don't be a fool and let every cheap little woman you
meet get you thinking things! Such silly things! . . . I do wish
that odious Fanny Carr would get out of my life and stay out! . . .
You'd better be very careful, Joe." She had risen on her elbow now, and
by the dim light from the window she could just see her husband's face.
"Because if you're not very good to me--remember that a person whom you
yourself consider one of the very best of her kind--told me that I--"

She dropped back. All at once her face was burning.

"Oh, how I loathe all this!" she thought. "And how silly and untrue!
Do you want to know where you and I are different, little Mrs. Grewe?
I'll tell you! I have a baby! And when he grows up he's going to have
this same man still for a father! So there! I'm not sure about
anything, even God, any more in this town--it's all a whirl! But I've
got a baby, and Susette, and for them I'm going to have a real
home--keep wide awake, make friends I'll love--and grow and learn and
march in parades--and go to the opera in a box--and go to concerts, go
abroad, shop in Paris--love my husband--be very gay--make friends,
friends--I will, I will--I won't be downed--I'll beat this cat of a
city--

"However. Now I'll go to sleep-."

CHAPTER XV

She did not see Mrs. Grewe again, she did not want to see her. It was
not until from the telephone girl she learned that the charming young
widow was gone, that Ethel went up to her new home. In a little while
her furniture would begin to pour in, but as yet the rooms were empty,
flooded with warm sunshine. She looked about and thought of the life
which had been here, and then of Mrs. Grewe's advice and her last
smiling admonition. She could almost hear the voice.

"Is every place I live in to be haunted?" Ethel asked herself. And then
with a humorous little scowl: "Now see here, young woman, the sooner you
learn that every apartment in this city has a complete equipment of
ghosts, the better it will be for you. I don't care who lived here, nor
how she lived nor what she said. I don't need her advice, and her life
is not to affect mine in the slightest!" She stopped short. Of whom was
she speaking, Mrs. Grewe or Amy? There were two of them now! Both had
given her advice, and in each case the life portrayed had been very much
alike, so much so as to be rather disturbing. Things were certainly
queer in this town!

"Very well, my dears," she said amiably, "if I must be haunted, it's
much more gay and sociable to have two instead of one. Remember tea
will be served at five, and from the present outlook there's little
chance of our being disturbed by the intrusion of any live woman in New
York."

"At least the ghosts are friendly." She suddenly compressed her lips and
looked about: "However!" She went to the telephone in the hall: "Please
hurry up those porters! I'm up here waiting to begin!"

And in the days that followed, she was far too engrossed in "settling"
to spare any time for brooding on phantoms. "A home of my own and a
life of my own, to be lived with my own husband!" But when at last they
were settled, and Joe in a dear, genial mood had gone about admiring,
and taking no notice apparently of the scarcity of Amy's things--he
turned to Ethel with an air which was meant to be easy and natural:

"Well, now that we're taking a fresh start, the time has come for a
little talk."

"What about?" she asked, endeavouring to make her smile as easy as his.

"It will take about one minute." His gruff voice was low and kind. "I'm
not going to force my friends on you. If you want to make friends of
your own, go ahead. And when you get them let me know--and they'll be
mine, too, if I have to break a leg in the effort. I'll dance in front
of them, so to speak, until they're all enchanted. But in the meantime,
on your side, I want you to let me down easy with these people I once
knew. I don't want to hurt them or be a cad. A few I may keep in touch
with for years."

"Fanny!" flashed into Ethel's mind.

"And all I ask of you is this. You'll soon be going away for the
summer. Let's do the decent thing--just once--and have a little party
here. I give you my word we won't do it again."

"All right, Joe--that's fair, of course--and I'll do my best to make it
exactly what you want."

And in the dinner that she gave, Ethel lived up to her bargain. The
dinner was large; there were twenty guests. The caterer was as before,
and so were the food and the flowers. And all through the evening Ethel
was gracious and affable. But behind her affability, hidden but subtly
conveyed to each guest, was a serene good-bye to them. This was their
dismissal. Did they all feel it, every one? To her at least it seemed
so. Again and again she caught the men throwing looks of regret at Joe,
and the women glancing about the rooms as though in search of what was
gone. Amy's things! Oh, more than that. The whole atmosphere was
gone. This was the home of the second wife.

"Well, dear, did I live up to our bargain?" she asked her husband when
they were alone.

"You did," said Joe. He looked at her then in such a puzzled, masculine
fashion. What she had done and how she had done it was plainly such a
mystery to him. "You did," he repeated loyally. She slipped her arms
about his neck.

"Thank you, love," she answered. And in a moment or two she murmured,
"Have them again in the Fall if you like."

"No," said Joe. "Once was enough."

"Now," she asked herself the next day, "let's try to see what all this
means." She was almost speaking aloud. She was growing so accustomed to
these sociable little chats with herself. "It means that I am getting
on. But Fanny Carr will still be about. She won't come here except
just enough to keep up appearances, but she'll still have her business
dealings with Joe in the management of her property. He means to keep
in touch, he said, 'with a few of them'--meaning her, of course--and his
tone conveyed quite plainly that I am to leave him alone in that until I
can produce friends of my own. Whereupon, my dear," she threw up her
hands, "we come back to exactly the same point at which we have been all
along. Where am I going to find friends?" And she gave an angry,
baffled sigh. "Oh, damn New York!"

As she glared viciously about the pretty, sunny living room, the image
of its former tenant rose up in her memory. And Ethel's expression
changed at once, became intent and thoughtful. How much more attractive
was Mrs. Grewe than were any of Amy's set. Immoral? Yes, decidedly.
But what did "immoral" mean in this town? Who was moral? Fanny Carr?
Did these wives and divorcees do any good with their "moral" lives? She
recalled what Mrs. Grewe had said: "And whether you marry or whether
you don't, for the life of me I can't see any difference." And again:
"With your face and figure, my dear, you don't have to put up with any
one man." Ethel sat frowning straight before her.

"What kind of a life am I going to find? I'm going to stay with my
husband--that's sure. I'm in love with him and he with me. That much
is decided."

She rose abruptly, and walking the floor she firmly resolved to "be
wholesome" and look on the bright side of things. In the next few weeks
she busied herself with the small affairs of her household. There was
plenty to occupy her mind. There were finishing touches to give to the
rooms; there were Spring clothes to buy for Susette; and the baby was
ready for short dresses and a baby carriage. There was the life in the
nursery, a cheerful little world in itself. There was Martha, grown
more friendly now, and Emily and the new waitress, Anne, and the
telephone girl and the chauffeur and the clerks in various shops who had
become acquaintances--altogether quite a circle of people who greeted
Ethel on her rounds. One day as she passed a laundry shop she spied
this sign in the window: "Fine linen respectfully treated." And Ethel
chuckled at the thought that she herself was treated like that. On the
whole it was rather pleasant, though, and she made the most of it. She
was being carefully "wholesome."

Now it was well along in June, time for the children to go to the
seashore, so she began to hunt for a place. At the traveller's bureaus
she visited she found the clerks more than ready to give advice by the
hour to this gracious young creature so stylishly clad. And she had
soon selected a quiet little resort in Rhode Island.

But what was Joe doing all this time? She did not mean to keep prying,
but for the life of her she could not help throwing out casual
inquiries. His reply was always, "Business"; and he would go on to give
her details--all of which were tiresome. How much was he seeing of
Fanny Carr and her detestable money affairs? His manner, engrossed as
it had grown, and even irritable at times, made Ethel feel he was
putting her further and further out of that part of his existence which
now interested him most, the part that lay outside his home. Was it all
business, all of it? "And when I go to the seashore, he'll be here five
nights a week!" Sometimes he came in so late at night! Business? At
such an hour? "Now carefully, carefully, Ethel Lanier." But in spite of
herself the smiling words of young Mrs. Grewe recurred to her mind:
"Most of them are married men."

Ethel's doubts, however, were all ended late one night, when at the
sound of his key in the door she got out of bed and came into the
doorway of her room. Joe was standing in the hall. He did not see her.
In fact, his eyes, when he switched on the light, seemed to see nothing
in the world but the package of business papers he took from his
overcoat. His face was haggard but intent. He turned and went into his
study to work. And any suspicion of Fanny Carr, or of any other friend
of Joe's, was swept at once from Ethel's mind. Her rival was his
business.

And later at the seashore, where she had so many hours alone, she
thought about this work of his with deepening hostility. Her mind went
back into the past. How his office had always absorbed him. What a
refuge it had been in the months that followed Amy's death. "I wasn't
the one who first made him forget. Oh, no, it was his business!" And
now, as it had weaned him once from his grief for the woman who had
died, it was at him again to draw him away from the woman who was
living.

There had been a time when it was not so, when she could keep him late
at breakfast and make him come home early at night, still fresh enough
to read and talk, discuss things, go to the opera, take up his music,
plan a trip to Paris. "Oh, yes! Then we were making a start!" But now
this wretched work of his had got him worse than ever before--and she
blamed his partner for that. She recalled how Nourse had disliked her,
she remembered what Amy used to say about the man's worship of business.
Yes, with his detestable greed for money, only money, Nourse was
doubtless driving Joe. "You're making him just a business man, without
a thought or a wish in his head for anything beautiful, really fine,
ambition, things he dreamed of and told me about when he was
mine--things that would have led us both to everything I wanted--"

She set her lips and whispered:

"All right, friend Bill, then it's you or it's me!" And all the rest of
the summer she set herself determinedly to breaking up the partnership.

"Joe, dear," she said pleasantly, when he had come out for the week end,
"why don't you ever bring your partner with you over Sunday?" And at his
quick look of surprise, "It seems too bad, I think," she added, "never
to have him with us."

"I thought you didn't like him," he said. Ethel gave a frank little
smile.

"I didn't--but that was a year ago. And besides, he didn't like me, you
see. But people do change, I suppose--and as long as he means so much
to you, I should so like to be friendly."

It turned out just as she had expected. Nourse declined the invitation.
"I'm sorry," she said when her husband told her. She felt her position
strengthened a bit. At another time she suggested that Joe's partner be
asked to spend the rest of the summer with him in the apartment back in
town. It was doubtless so much cooler at night than Nourse's bachelor
quarters. And Emily Giles could take care of them both. But this
overture, too, Bill Nourse declined. She could just imagine him doing
it, the surly, ungracious tone of his voice, the very worst side of the
man shown up. Joe often now looked troubled when Ethel talked of his
partner.

But toward the end of the summer in one such talk he gave her a shock.
It was after Nourse had again refused an invitation to come to the
seashore.

"He's queer," said Joe, "and he can be ugly. Being polite is not in
Bill's line. I told him so myself today--and we had quite a session.

"Oh, Joe, I'm sorry," Ethel said.

"You needn't be. Bill Nourse and I will stick together as long as we
live." Ethel looked at him sharply, but he did not notice. "Because,"
he said, "with all his faults, his queerness and his grouches, Bill has
done more than any man living to--well, to keep something alive in
me--in my work, I mean--that I want later on--as soon as I've made money
enough." She stared at him.

"You mean that he--your partner--wants something more than money?" It
was a slip, but she was stunned. He turned and looked at her and asked,
in a voice rather strained and husky:

"Do you think Bill cares about money alone?"

"Why, yes!"

"That's funny." But Joe's laugh was grim. "If Bill had had his way with
me, I'd have had a name as an architect that would have been known all
over the country--instead of being what I am, a gambler in cheap real
estate."

She questioned him further, her manner alert, her eyes with a startled,
thoughtful look. But he did not seem to want to talk.

"Then why," she asked herself in a daze, "if Bill is so against this
business, does he keep at it day and night? Oh, yes, we'll have to look
into this--as soon as I get back to town! You've got to come and see
me, and explain yourself, friend Bill." She frowned in such a puzzled
way. "You, a friend? How funny!"

CHAPTER XVI

The week after Ethel's return to town, she was surprised one afternoon
when in response to a note she had sent him her husband's partner came
to see her. She had thought it would be more difficult.

"Joe won't interrupt us," he said. "I put work in his way. He'll be
home late."

Tall, gaunt and angular, somewhat stooped, Nourse stood looking down at
her; and as, perplexed and excited, Ethel scanned his visage, so heavy
in spite of its narrow lines, she saw an expression in which contempt
was tempered by a sort of regret and weariness. And of course he was
awkward, too. She said to herself, "Be careful now."

"Won't you sit down?" she asked him.

"Thank you." And he took a seat.

"I wanted to see you," she began, but Nourse interrupted her.

"Would you object," he asked her, "if I do the talking for a while?
I've got it fairly clear in mind, just what I want to say to you."

"Why, yes, of course, if you prefer," she said, a little breathlessly.

"Well, Mrs. Lanier, I think I know about what you want--and I'm here to
say that I'll help you to get it--if in return you will leave us alone."
He stopped for a moment, and went on: "In the last few months, it has
seemed to me, you've been doing your best to bring on a clash between me
and your husband. Every week in the office is worse than the last. I
don't blame you for that, from your point of view. You felt I was
trying to make him eat and sleep in his office. I was--and I am. But
my point to you is that it won't be for long, and I'm doing this really
on your account--to get money enough to satisfy you." She looked up in a
startled way, but he went on unheeding. "You and I must understand each
other. Tell me how much you really need--and we'll get it, Joe and I.
And then I'll give him back to you nights--and in the daytime you leave
him to me."

He glanced at her with a weary dislike which gave her an impulse to say
to him, "Isn't this rather insulting?" But she did not speak. For
looking at him sharply, she caught in the man's heavy eyes a certain
grim, deep wistfulness which drew her a little in spite of his speech.
And she felt very curious, too.

"What do you think I really want?" she asked him, then. Her voice was
low.

"Money," he said.

"Where did you get that idea?"

"From your sister," he replied. "She sent for me, too--long ago."

"What for?"

"Money. She told me that we were not making enough--that I was holding
her husband back--from 'his career' she called it. She said that if I
kept him out of a certain job that meant money quick, she would break up
our partnership. She said she could do it, and she was right. My hold
on Joe wasn't in it with hers."

"What was your hold on him? What do you mean?" asked Ethel. Again her
voice was low. Nourse looked down at his big hands and answered very
quietly:

"I'm afraid you wouldn't understand." She bit her lip.

"But until I do learn what you want of Joe," she retorted sharply, "I'm
afraid that I can't tell you how much money I shall need." He glanced up
at her, puzzled. "Suppose you try me," she went on. And as the man
still frowned at her, "I learned the other day," she said, "that you
knew Joe long before he was married. I want you to tell me about that."

Little by little she drew him out. And as in a reluctant way, in
sentences abrupt and bald, he answered all her questions, again and
again did Ethel feel a little wave of excitement. For Nourse was
speaking of Joe's youth--of college and later of Paris, and then of a
group of young men in New York, would--be architects, painters and
writers who had lived near Washington Square; of long talks,
discussions, plans, and of all night work in the architect's office
where he and Joe had worked side by side. Joe had been a "designer"
there; he had been the brilliant one of the two, and the more
impassioned and intense and bold in his conceptions. There was a
feeling almost of reverence in the low, rough voice of Joe's friend. He
told how Joe had risen, until in a few years he became the chief
designer for his firm; and of how from other firms offers had come. To
keep him his employers had been forced to raise his salary, and to do
much more than that, for money didn't appeal to him then. They had
given him more important work--"job after job, and Joe made good." The
climax of this rising had come one night in the rooms they shared, when
Joe told his friend he had made up his mind to set up an office of his
own, though he was only twenty-nine.

"And he offered me a partnership." The big man's voice was husky now,
as, in a little outburst with a good deal of bitterness in it, he spoke
of the glory of the work of which he and Joe had once been a part. He
seemed appealing to Joe's wife to see, for God's sake, what it was in
Joe that had been lost. Then he stopped and frowned and stared at her.
"Oh, what's the use?" he muttered. But Ethel's voice was sharp and
clear:

"Oh, if you only knew," she cried, "how much good this is doing! I
won't stop to explain but--please--go on!" Her brown eyes threw him a
fierce appeal. And again she had him talking. He told of a plan for
apartment buildings Joe had conceived in those early days. "I don't say
it was practicable, I give it just to show you what the man had in him,"
he said. "Big ideas that strike in deep, the kind that change whole
cities." Instead of a street like a canyon with sheer walls on either
side, the front of each building was to recede in narrow terraces, floor
by floor, so letting floods of sunlight down into the street below and
giving to each apartment a small terrace garden. As she listened, Ethel
grew intent. It was not the mere plan that excited her, she was giving
small heed to the details. But this had in it what she had craved ever
since she had come to the city--beauty and creative work--and this had
been in Joe's "business"!

"There was only one point against it," she heard Nourse saying
presently. "Those terraces took a lot of space. Each one meant so much
rent was lost. For years, till the plan took hold of the town, it was a
money loser. . . . And Joe met your sister then." The voice had
changed, and its hostile tone brought Ethel back with a sharp turn. The
man, as though uneasy at the revelations he had made, was looking at her
as at first, with suspicion and dislike. "I won't go into details of
how she got her hold on Joe. You know how that's done, I suppose. I'm
speaking of the effect on his work. He soon put off that plan of
his--and any others of the kind. For now he had to have money. And he
has been putting it off ever since--not dropping it, he'll tell you,
only putting it off till he's rich. But if he isn't rich enough soon,
it'll be too late. For that part of him is nearly dead.

"But to go back to your sister. It was not only his money, it was his
time she needed. First it was a wedding trip, and after that late
hours--a short day in his office. And he wasn't half the man he had
been. He was thinking of the night before, and then of the night that
was coming. She came for him at five o'clock." He saw Ethel start, and
he added, "Just as you did later on.

"And when he did wake up to work, it was different--it was for money
alone. He began to throw over his ideals, and very soon there was only
me to hold him back. You see, he had had so many friends before he met
your sister, men and even women, too, who had been a spur to him. But
when he brought his wife around, they wouldn't have her, turned her
down--and that made her bitter against them all and she kept Joe from
them. All but me. I stayed in the office, and now and then I got some
of his friends and we would take him out to lunch. But then even that
stopped. Joe hadn't time. He was too busy getting the cash.

"He had dropped all pretence of any work that was really worth while,
and had turned his art into a business. He became a real estate gambler
and an architect, all in one. He got to speculating in land--and what
he built on it he didn't care, so long as it produced the cash. Oh, it
wasn't all at once, you know, you can't strangle the soul of a man in a
hurry--but by the time your sister died, the buildings Joe was putting
up were just about as common and cheap as the average play on
Broadway--crowd pleasers. He had lost his nerve. Everything had to be
popular. Play safe each time, on the same old flats that every woman
seems to love. A woman is conservative. To have and to hold, to get
and keep, to stand pat with both eyes shut--that's the average woman in
this town. And Joe had to play her.

"And because he still had a soul in him--and a stomach that turned--he
began to vary the dulness of it by becoming sensational. He did daring
things, cheap daring things--no real originality in it, but it took on
and caught the eye. Pictures of his buildings got into the real estate
pages of the Sunday papers. He hired a press agent then and went after
the publicity. And all I need to tell you of that, is that just the
other day the press agent came into the office with a scheme for a
string of buildings up on the new part of the Drive. They were to be
patriotic--see?--named after the presidents of our country--cheap and
showy terra-cotta--main effect red, white and blue." Ethel leaned back
with a little gasp. But Nourse added relentlessly, "And Joe didn't turn
him down."

She stiffened sharply in her chair and looked at Nourse with indignant
eyes, as though he alone were to blame.

"You mean to say my husband could even consider such a plan?"

"Why not? There's money in it--big--the publicity value would be
immense. It would make his name a joke of course, with every architect
in town--but think of all the talk, free ads! And that means tenants
pouring in--and money! Don't you like it? She would have--your sister
would, I mean. It was just such a scheme on a smaller scale that made
her send for me one day and tell me I could keep hands off or else get
out of the office. I gave in because I couldn't go--I couldn't quite
make up my mind to the fact that Joe was done for. So I stuck--and she
tried to break me--again and again. But Joe, for all the change in him,
had a loyal streak not only for me but for all he had once meant to do.
Even still he kept saying he'd just put it off, and that when he'd got
the money he'd turn back and we'd begin.

"And when his wife died, I began to have hope. The only blot on her
funeral was the fact that you were there--and you told me you intended
to stay. Her sister--the same story. I soon shook that off,
however--for I saw the way he turned to his work as a refuge from his
grief for her. I had my chance and I took it. When his mind was dull
and numb I began to slip in changes. And each change meant better work
and less easy money. And soon I was making headway fast; for Joe had
never cared for money for himself, but only for her--and she was dead.
So he let our profits go down and down, while what we did got more worth
doing. It even began to take hold of him--of the old Joe that was still
there.

"But after nearly a year of that, I had to laugh at myself for a fool.
For Joe began wanting money again, and I knew he was thinking of
marrying you. I fought, of course, and for a time I had some hope of
beating you. I remembered you as you had been at the time of your
sister's funeral. You had seemed so young and weak to me. But later,
when you were his wife and began taking half his time, keeping late
hours, draining him--for you women can drain a man, you know--then I
knew that you were strong, your sister's sister. I gave in. Or I
should say I took the only chance that was left. I threw over the
things we had dreamed of and got him to work for money hard--harder than
he'd ever done. I drove him! Why? Because I got him back that way.
By making him work for money for you I began to get him away from you.
In time I even got him to stay in the office late at night. I got him
to keep away from you nights. And there was more than that in my
scheme. For now we're making money enough to satisfy even you, I think.
I'm not sure--I'm never sure--your sister taught me never to be.
Perhaps you can't be satisfied. But if you can, I see a chance. Tell
me how much you really need. We'll get it. And then for the love of
God leave us alone before it's too late--before what's in the man is
dead!"

Nourse finished and rose, looking down at her. She sat rigid, keeping
herself in hand. Again and again she had been on the point of bursting
out, for the sheer brutality of so much he had told her had made it very
hard to sit still. But then as he had spoken of Amy, Ethel had kept
silent, watching his face intensely. How much Amy must have done to
have aroused such bitterness! A sense of reality in his talk, a clear
and sudden consciousness of having the real Amy held up here before her
eyes, had gripped Ethel like a vise. Till now she had no clear idea of
how much Joe had sacrificed. But all that finer side of him, that early
life, those dreams, those friends, had all been known to Amy. And Amy
had been willing to lose them all, to crush them out, for money, only
money, and money for such an empty life! Ethel shivered a little. Her
sister's picture was complete.

"No," she said, looking up at Nourse, "I'm not going to leave you alone.
What I've got to do now is to try my best to make you feel what I really
want, and what a mistake you've been making. Please listen, while I try
to be clear." Her expression was strained as she looked at him. She
smiled a little. "I am not like my sister. I'd rather not say much
about her now. She--had her good points, too--she's dead. And all you
need to know is this. You were wrong about me in those first months--I
was trying to get away from Joe. I had my own dreams and I wished to be
free. I even tried to earn my living. I worked for a while. But the
man I worked for--frightened me--and that threw me back on Joe. He was
poor then, so I nursed his child and ran his home on very little. And I
liked that. Believe me--please! I liked that! And I think the main
reason for it was that I was falling in love, not with her husband but
with the man whom you were bringing back to life. It was that in him,
that kind of ambition and that kind of life and friends, that I
wanted--oh, so hard! I was groping about to get them--but it's not easy
in New York. And meanwhile we were married, and about that part of it
you were right. I was selfish, I did want him all. I let everything
go, kept everything out--especially his business. I was jealous of you
as I was of his wife--of everything past--I wanted him new!

"Then my baby came, and it was a time when I did a good deal of
thinking. I--thought out my sister. I saw how different we were. What
she wanted I didn't want at all. So I set to work to change him--and I
thought I was doing it all by myself--just as you thought you were doing
it. Each of us was working alone--and we thought we were working in
spite of each other--against each other. I was against you in his
office, you were against me in his home. And because you hadn't any
idea of what I was trying, you made him work for money for me--to buy me
off! But I don't want money--alone, I mean! And when he came and said
he was rich, it frightened me--I wasn't ready--I had no friends! And so
the money only brought back my sister's friends in a perfect horde--and
with them her memory--her influence--her husband!

"Oh, can't you understand what I mean--and how I'm placed and what it's
like? Can't you believe that I want in him exactly what you want
yourself? But it hasn't been easy! Don't you see? I am only a second
wife! She's here--she has been--all the time--like a ghost--and we
never speak her name! But if you will only work with me--"

She stopped with a quick turn of her head. They listened, and heard
Joe's key in the door. In a moment he had entered the hall.

"Hello. Who's here?" he asked at once.

"It's I," said his partner, quietly, going out to meet him. And sitting
there rigid, she heard him continue in gruff low tones, "Something I'd
forgotten--a point in those Taggert specifications. I want to clear it
up tonight."

CHAPTER XVII

What impression had she made? How far had she overcome the heavy weight
of dislike and suspicion Amy had rolled up in his mind? As Ethel's
thoughts went rapidly back over the things Nourse had told her, again
and again with excitement she felt what a help he could be if he would.
Here lay the gate to her husband's youth.

"If only he'll believe in me! Shall I send for him? No," she decided.
"If there's any hope, he'll come again."

She waited three days. Then he telephoned, "Can I see you today at four
o'clock?" She answered, "Yes, I'll be very glad." And she felt a little
faint with relief as she hung up the receiver.

When he came in, that afternoon, one glance at him made her exclaim to
herself, "He half believes! He's puzzled!"

"Well, Mrs. Lanier," he began at once, with more friendliness now in
his heavy voice, "if I've made any mistake about you, I'm sorry. But
you must show me first. If you're real about this, you look to me like
a woman who would have thought it all out in the last few days and
formed a plan. What is it?"

His abruptness rather took her breath for a moment. Then she said,
"Yes, I have a plan, but so have you. What is it?" At her quick retort
she saw a smile of grim relish come over his large features.

"My plan is simple," he replied. "Leave Joe to me. Keep him quiet at
night so he can work, and I'll show you another husband." She shook her
head.

"He'd only make more money."

"Tell him you don't want it, then!" She smiled at him.

"Too simple," she said. He looked at her.

"I thought it would be too simple for a woman," was his answer.

"It's worse than that," she replied. "It's blind. You've never been
married--apparently--not even to one woman--while Joe, you see, has been
married twice. To you a man's life is all in his office--but half of
Joe's is in his home--and you'll have to change that half of him, too.
I told you her friends are about--and they have her memory on their
side--and so I can't get rid of them until I get some friends of my
own."

"Then get them."

"How? Go out on any street and call up, 'Heigh there' at the windows?"
She leaned forward quickly and sternly: "The friends I want are the
people he knew--the ones you told me of. That's my plan. Put me in
touch with some of them, and let me bring them in touch with Joe. And
I'll show you a different partner." He looked at her.

"Well, that's too simple, too," he said.

"Why is it?" she demanded.

"Because in those first years of his marriage I went to them so often,
in just the way you're thinking of. I got some of the men he used to
know to come to his office and take him to lunch. And it did so little
good they quit. They all got sick of it--and they're through."

Ethel leaned forward intensely:

"But it will be different now! Before, they had Amy here working
against them! I'm here now, and I'll be on their side!" He frowned, and
she cried impatiently, "You don't believe me, do you! You don't believe
I can do anything--or even that I want to!"

He looked at her for a moment.

"Yes," he said, "I almost do."

"Then please give me a chance," she said, very low. And by her eager
questions she began to draw out of Nourse the information she wanted.
It did not come easy, for the past seemed buried deep in his memory. As
one by one he spoke of Joe's friends he would add, "But he's dead," or,
"He's gone West." He had kept track of them, after a fashion, but he had
seen them little of late. What a lonely life he had led, she thought.
She wondered if he had grown too old and hopeless to be of any help.
She fought down her discouragement.

"There was Crothers," he was saying. "He's an architect, and he's doing
good work. He never had Joe's boldness, but he always had a fine sense
of things, and at least he has stuck to his ideals. He could do more to
bring Joe back than any other man I know."

"Then we must get him!"

"That will be hard."

"Why will it?"

"Because some years ago I tried to get Crothers into our firm. The two
of us together might have kept Joe from the mere money jobs and made it
a firm to be proud of. Crothers was ready to come in, and I had nearly
succeeded in bringing Joe to agree to it."

"Then what was the matter?"

"Your sister. Joe had told her he was thinking of some move in his
business which would keep him poor awhile. And she flew into quite a
rage. That was another time she sent for me." Nourse leaned grimly back
in his chair. "She told me that if I ruined her husband's 'career,' as
she called it, she'd break us apart once and for all. She wouldn't have
Crothers in the firm--not only because it meant money lost, but because
Crothers' wife had turned her down." Ethel looked at him sharply.

"Oh--he has a wife," she said.

"Yes, and she wasn't your sister's kind. She was a college woman who
wanted to be a great painter--and when the painting petered out, she
shut her jaw and said, 'Never mind. If I can't paint landscapes I can
make them.' And she took up landscape gardening. She married Burt
Crothers soon after that, but she stuck to her work and in course of
time it fitted in with her husband's. He and Sally have struggled along
up-hill, and though they've never made much money they've had a lot of
fun out of life."

"She sounds so nice," Ethel hungrily murmured.

"Oh, yes, she's nice enough," he said, "until you go against her. Then
Sally gets mad, and stays that way. And she got that way," he added,
"when we turned her husband down. She hadn't liked your sister. In
fact, when Joe married and brought his wife and the Crothers together,
it wasn't a go. She called your sister 'hopeless.' And when Joe's wife
came back at her by keeping Crothers out of our firm, then war was
declared."

Nourse broke off and looked at Ethel.

"So you see what you're up against," he said. "Yes, I see," said Ethel.
At every door to her husband's youth, Amy seemed to be barring the way.
She gave an impatient little shrug. "If I could only show them!"

"What?"

"That I'm different! And the hole I'm in! And what it is I want in
Joe! . . . Can't you go and talk to them?" There was impatience again in
her eyes. He saw it and smiled wearily.

"You think I'm mighty weak," he said, "with not much fight left in me.
You're right, I guess. But you don't know what I've been through in the
last seven years. I stuck to Joe--and they didn't like that. Sally
said I had knuckled down to Joe's wife. So she hasn't asked me there in
years. And if I were to go to her now, I'm afraid my opinion of you
wouldn't count."

There was another silence. Again that dull weight of discouragement
fell, and again she shook it from her.

"Nevertheless," she said quietly, looking him full in the face, "I mean
to have Crothers in our firm." She saw the mingled liking and
compassion which came in his eyes, and she bit her lip to keep down the
wave of self-pity which arose in her.

"Perhaps you will," she heard him say. His voice sounded a long way
off. She brought herself back to him with a jerk.

"Of course I will! We will, I mean! You and I are to work together,
you know. Now will you please tell me," she continued grimly, "one
person who knew my husband and who will be so very kind as not to call
for the police the minute I come into view?" A moment later she started
forward. "Oh, please!" she cried. "Do that again! You chuckled!
Don't deny it! Go on and really laugh with me!" Her voice, unsteady and
quivering, broke into a merry laugh, and in this Joe's partner joined.
Then she said sternly. "You give me a friend!"

Nourse thought for a moment. "There's only one left on the list," he
replied.

"His name, please--"

"Dwight."

"Business?"

"Music. He shows rich girls how to sing. She stared at him.

"But look here," she said emphatically. "I'm a rich girl--I'm very well
off--and I certainly propose to sing! I used to, in the choir at
home--and I was told I had quite a voice! And I meant to take lessons
in New York--of a tall dark man with curly hair--"

"Dwight," said Nourse, "is fair and fat."

"Never mind. Then he probably has blue eyes. And they twinkle at
you--in the friendliest way--"

"Young woman, I'm your husband's friend."

"Never mind if you are. You're not enough. I want more of his friends.
Now tell me--where did the fat man study? Abroad?"

"In Paris."

"Oh!" she cried. "Were he and Joe together there?"

"They were, for a while--"

"Oh, how nice!" She laughed at him. "What a dear you've been to me,"
she said. "You like me, don't you!"

"Yes--I do."

"Quite a good deal!"

"All right," he said. She was watching his face. "This is new to him,"
she was thinking.

"You believe I don't want money!"

"Yes--"

"Nor friends like Amy's!"

"You don't seem to."

"And I don't. I want friends like you and this Mr. Dwight--and that
odious Sally Crothers who won't even let me in at her door. And her
husband--yes, he'll do. Why how the circle widens!"

"So far," Nourse reminded her, "I'm the only circle you've got."

"Yes, and a very nice one. And now you're going to be a dear, and go to
this man Dwight and say what a remarkable voice I have--and tell him all
my other points, and the hole I'm in and the money I have. Don't forget
that--the money I have--for my acquaintance with Mr. Dwight leads me to
believe that wealth is a great inducement with him. It makes his blue
eyes twinkle so."

"Very well," Nourse answered grimly. "But when you get them twinkling,
what are you going to do with him?"

"Sing with him," was her firm reply. "And between songs _talk_ with
him--of Paris and my husband, and the great ideals I have--and the
delicious dinners I have--for he's fat, you know, and he loves his
meals--and then ask him to come to dinner, of course." She scowled.
"That," she said severely, "is all I can tell you at present. My plans
for resurrecting Joe will have to be made as I go along--step by step
and friend by friend." All at once she turned on him fiercely. "There's
that pity again in your eyes! 'Oh, how young,' you are thinking. Then
let me tell you, Mr. Bill Nourse, that you are not to pity me! If you
do," she cried, "the time will come when you will be pitying
yourself--for being cast off like an old leather shoe--from one of the
most brilliant and attractive circles in this town! Do you know what
you almost do to me--you, the one friend I have in New York? You make
me feel you've almost lost your faith and hope in everything--that
you're nearly old! You make me wonder if I'm too late--whether my
husband is nearly old, and the dreams he had in him cold and gone! You
scare me--and you've got to stop! You've got to be just exactly as
young as I am--this very minute! You've got to borrow some youth from
me--for I have plenty to go around--and help me make this fight for
friends! It may not come to anything--for the soul of this city is hard
as nails! This music man may turn me down--or be perfectly fat and
useless! Who knows? But how can I tell till I meet the man? And when
will you go and see him? Today or tomorrow? I haven't very much time,
you know, for any more shilly-shallying! I want some action out of
you--"

She faced him flushed and menacing, and he took her hand and said:

"You'll get it. Where's your telephone!"

"Right there in the hall!"

"I'll call up Dwight."

"Wait! Is he married?"

"No."

"Thank God!"

CHAPTER XVIII

The next morning at eleven o'clock she met Dwight in his studio, and in
a brisk pleasant businesslike way she began to tell him of her
voice--what singing she had done at home and how she had always meant to
take lessons when she should come to New York to live.

"To find out how much of a voice I really have, you know," she said.
Her manner was more affable now. "But my husband and my baby have kept
me rather busy, you see, and so I've put it off and off--until just
lately I began to look about and make inquiries. And then by good luck
I learned of you--from my husband's partner."

"You're Joe Lanier's wife, aren't you?" he asked.

"His second," she said with emphasis. And a moment later she told
herself, "Yes, his eyes do twinkle, and he seems to be quite nice. He
isn't so excessively fat, and he has a big wide generous mouth, and I
like his eyes. But he thinks my coming like this a bit queer, and he's
wondering what's behind it." She downed her excitement and went on in
the same resolute tone she had used with such success on Nourse. No
personal conversation just yet, she would show him she meant business.
And so she stuck to the lessons.

"If you'll take me as a pupil," she said, "I'd like to begin
immediately."

"Let me try your voice," he proposed. He went to the piano, and there
his manner had soon changed. From genial and curious it grew
interested. He spoke rather sharply, asking her to do this and that,
and she felt as though she were being probed. "You have a voice," he
said, at the end. "Not a world shaker," he added, smiling, "but one
that interests me a lot." She beamed on him.

"You'll take me, then?"

"Assuredly."

"Oh, that's so nice." They decided on the time for her lessons. Then
she glanced at her wrist watch. "Will you see if my car is waiting!"
she asked. "I had him take the nurse and baby up to the Park--and he
ought to be back by now, I think." But as Dwight went to the telephone,
she added excitedly to herself, "Now if that idiot of a chauffeur is as
late as I told him to be, you and I will have quite a talk, Mr.
Dwight."

"It isn't here yet," he informed her.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I'll have to walk." She smiled and held out her hand
to him. "Will you send the chauffeur home!"

"If you like," he replied good-humouredly. "But I'd much rather you'd
wait here--if you have nothing pressing." And as she hesitated, "It's
not only your voice, you know--I used to be quite a friend of Joe's."

"Oh, yes, I remember his telling me. Over in Paris, wasn't it?"

Soon they were talking easily. Dwight had lit a cigarette, and Ethel
could see he was studying her. She tried to look unconscious.

"I've wanted to go to Paris all my life," she told him. "How long is it
since you left?"

"Only a year." She looked at him.

"Is there a Paris in New York?"

"I'm not sure yet--I'm new, you see."

"So am I," she confided frankly. And at that he gave her a swift glance
which made Ethel add to herself, "Yes, he could be very personal."

She asked him what he had found in New York as a contrast, coming from
abroad. She spoke of the high buildings here, and from that she passed
quite naturally to her husband's business.

"It isn't the work I'd like for him," she said with a regretful sigh.
"Joe is getting to be like all the rest--he's making too much money."
She waited a moment and added, "I should so like him to be as he was
when you knew him."

"I'll be curious to see how he has changed. You must let me see him,"
Dwight replied.

"Why yes, of course."

"Over in Paris he had so much. He was such a wonderful lad for
dreams--with the most exuberant fancy in the way he used to talk of New
York and what he wanted to do back here--to use the backyards and the
roofs and turn them into gardens. This town, when Joe got through with
it--well, from an aeroplane it was to look more or less like a bed of
roses--or a hill town in Italy. But that was only his lighter vein.
When his fancy was really, working hard, he took department stores,
hotels and huge railroad terminals and jammed them all together into one
big building. How deep in the earth it was to have gone I really can't
remember, nor how far up into the skies. But there was a garden at the
top--or a meadow or prairie or something."

"Yes," thought Ethel, "I'm going to like him."

"Joe could talk of his plans all night," Dwight went on good-naturedly.
"And keep a poor lazy musician like me from my piano where I belonged."

"Was it you who taught him to play?" she asked.

"On the piano? It was," he replied. "Isn't his touch amazing? And so
thoroughly Christian, too."

"Christian?"

"Yes. He doesn't let his right hand know what his left hand is doing."
They laughed. And from that laugh she emerged with eagerness in her
brown eyes.

"Oh, please go on," she begged him. "I had no idea you knew him so
well. Did he do nothing but talk over there?"

"He did--he worked like a tiger. Joe could stand more hard labour in
one consecutive day and night than any fellow I ever met. And he could
do it night after night. I remember dropping in on him for coffee and
rolls one morning. A chap named Crothers and myself--" Ethel started at
the name--"had just come home from the 'Quatres Arts Ball.' We found Joe
in his room with the curtains drawn--he didn't know it was morning yet.
He had a towel bound round his head and was building an opera house for
Chicago--or Kansas City--I'm not sure which. And he wasn't just
dreaming of building it in his successful middle age--he was building it
now, in a terrible rush, as though Kansas City were pushing him hard.
Joe didn't live in the future, you see--he took the future and made it
the present, and then lived in the present like mad."

Dwight tossed away his cigarette.

"But you say it's money now."

"Yes," she replied. "It's money." He smiled at her dejected tone.

"I wouldn't be so sad," he remarked. "Money isn't as bad as it seems."

"Oh, yes, and I want it," Ethel declared. "But I want the others so
much more!"

When her car had come, she rose and said, "You and Joe must get together
some time. Couldn't you call him up some day and get him to lunch with
you?"

"Gladly." They went to the door.

"But don't be disappointed," she said, "if you find him changed even
more than you think. Money has such a pull on a man."

"I know, but I rather like it."

"What?"

"Oh, don't be so indignant, please. I am an artist--honestly. But some
of these men I've met over here--well, they fascinate me. Such
boundless energy and drive ought to go into a symphony. Plenty of drums
and crashing brass. Good-bye, Mrs. Lanier," he added. "This has been
a lucky day for me."

"Thank you. Don't forget about Joe. And meanwhile--till next Tuesday."

As she settled back in her car she thought,

"All right, Ethel, very good."

Twice a week, that autumn, she went to Dwight for lessons. But until
some time had passed, she did not mention it to Joe.

"When you meet him," she said to Dwight, "I'd rather you wouldn't speak
of my lessons. I want my singing to be a surprise. And besides, I'd so
much rather that any old friends of my husband's come to him through his
partner. It seems so much more natural."

"I see," said Dwight. "But he doesn't," she thought, "and I'll have to
explain."

"Later, of course, I'll tell him," she said, "But just now, in the state
he's in, if you or any one else of his friends who knew him as he used
to be should come and say, 'Sent by your wife, with her compliments and
fervent hopes of your speedy resurrection '--oh, no, it wouldn't do at
all." Dwight was watching her curiously.

"How many of us are there!" he asked. She looked at him in a
questioning way.

"Of us," he explained, "Joe's old friends, who are to dig him up, you
know."

"Only you, at present--and of course his partner. He smiled:

"Bill Nourse is not a very brisk digger."

"Well," she remarked, in a casual tone, "if you know of brisker diggers
about--people who knew him--"

"Say no more. I'll search the town." Their eyes had met for an instant.
"Yes," she thought, "I'm getting on."

Dwight lunched with Joe soon after that, and later in the studio he and
Ethel had a talk.

"In a good many ways," he assured her, "he struck me as the same old
Joe--friendly and hospitable--he insisted on ordering quite a meal. But
we didn't eat much of it. We talked."

"Of Paris!"

"Very much so. There's a lot of Paris in him yet." And he told of their
long conversation.

"Now," she said, when she rose to leave, "if you'll just keep at him
occasionally--while his partner does the same at the office, and I do
what I can at home--"

"You insist on his being home every night?"

"That depends," said Ethel gravely.

"Suppose I take him some night to my club. We have quite a number of
architects there."

"Oh, wonderful! How good of you!"

"Mrs. Lanier," said her teacher, "I'm under your orders--digging for
gold."

He took Joe to his club on the following night, and later several times
for lunch.

"Joe likes it," he reported. "And he has already met some chaps who
knew of him and his earlier work, not only in Paris but over here, he
was one of the most brilliant designers in the city, I find--and a good
many men were disappointed when he threw over his true profession and
went after ready cash. How would you like me to put up his name?"

"For club membership?"

"Precisely."

"I'd like it, sir.

"And I obey."

"This is getting rather intimate," Ethel told herself that night.
"Never mind, my love, you've been perfectly honest. He knows very well
what you're after. And if he likes you and wants to help, so much the
better."

Some days in the studio she stuck severely to her voice and showed him
she meant business. She was practising quite hard, and her progress was
by no means slow. But on other days half the hour at least was spent in
learning from her new friend about "a Paris in New York." Dwight was
already finding one, although he had been here less than a year. In
this teeming city of endless change he had found a deep joy of creation,
of newness, youth and boldness that made even Paris seem far behind.
"It's all so amazingly big," he said, "with such revealing chances
opening up on every side!" How simple it was for him, she thought, with
a little pang of envy. A young musician with plenty of talent, easy
manners, single, free. As he spoke of his club friends and some of
their homes that were open to him, the glimpses exasperated her. Here
were the people she wanted to know, a little world of artists,
architects and writers, and goodness only knew what else. She was still
rather vague about them. To her surprise she discovered that many were
after money, too. "Decidedly," her teacher said. "Excessively," he
added.

"But at least," she rejoined, defending them, "when they get the money
they know how to spend it on something better than food and clothes!
They really live--I'm sure they do--and have ideas and really grow!" She
caught her breath. What an idiot, to have said so much! "I'm so glad,"
she added lamely, "that you got my husband into your club. It's bound
to do so much for him." She threw a sharp little glance at Dwight, and
scowled, for she thought she detected a smile.

"He's doing something for the club," Dwight was saying cheerfully.
"Some of those chaps are a bit too refined and remote for this raw crude
city of ours. And Joe is getting back enough of his old vim and
passion, his wild radical ideas of what may still be done with the town,
so that he jars on such sensitive souls--makes 'em frown and bite their
moustaches like the husbands in French plays. On the other hand some
are decidedly for him. I hear them discuss him now and then."

"Oh, how nice!" sighed Ethel.

At times she grew so impatient to get Joe into this other world. But
she had to be very careful. Repeatedly she warned herself that Dwight,
for all his Paris past and his present friendliness, was very fast
becoming a New Yorker like the rest: making his way and climbing his
climb, and wanting no climbers who had to be carried. "Ethel Lanier,
the first thing you know you'll be dropped like a hot potato," she
thought. "There's nothing unselfish about this man. Don't make him
feel he has you on his hands." And she would grow studiously abstract
and detached in her talk about the town. But it kept cropping up in
spite of her, this warm eagerness to "really live."

"It's funny," she said to Dwight one day. "I had thought of music and
all that I wanted as being so different from Joe's work. But now in
this city that you seem to know, I find that what I've wanted most is
just what he ought to want in his work! The two go together!"

"Exactly!"

"The city Joe once lived in." She frowned. "There are so many cities in
New York. But I don't want to try to get into his, until I can do it
through Joe himself. People will have to want me because I'm the wife
of Joe Lanier."

"I think they'll want you more than that." His tone was most reassuring.
"But I like the way you are going about it. It's so delightfully novel,
you see--conspiring to make your husband find his friends all by
himself--so that when he has found them he'll come to you with a beaming
smile and say, 'Woman, I bring you wealth and fame and friends in
abundance. Take them, love, and bless me--for I have done all this for
you.'"

Ethel smiled. "I don't like you to joke about it," she said.

"Very well," he agreed, "let's get back to the serious work of his
resurrection. You asked me to recruit other brisk diggers, and I've
hunted about quite a bit. There's that chap Crothers and his wife, but
so far they're the best I can do--and the Crothers pair seem rather
blind. They can't see the old Joe for the new."

"You mean they think he's hopeless," Ethel scornfully put in.

"Oh, we'll make them open their eyes in time. I drop in on them every
now and then. I had Crothers to the club last week, and let him hear
some of the gossip about the emerging Joe Lanier."

Often he talked of the early group of students over in Paris, of their
ideas, ambitions, and their youthful views of life, which for all their
gaiety had been so fervid and intense. But to Ethel, because she
herself was still young, their dreams seemed very wonderful. Some she
had hungrily read about long ago with the history "prof" at home. But
the world which the little suffragist had revealed to her pupils had
been more heroic and severe. This was warmer, dazzling, this had
beauty, this was art! And yet not weak nor tame nor old--this was
gloriously new in the way it jabbed deep into life and talked of really
changing it all. This was youth! And her own youth responded and she
made it all her own. She was reading now voraciously, with a sparkle
and gleam of hope in her eyes. She was coming so very close to her
goal, or rather the gate of her promised land.

At times she grew impatient at her teacher's calm, and the good-natured
easy smile with which he looked upon all this. "Oh, why not get
excited!" she thought. She felt the old dreams a bit cold in him, as
they had been in her husband. And in dismay she would ask herself:

"Are they all too old? Is just the fact that I'm ten years younger than
Joe and his friends going to mean that I'm too late--to bring back what
was in him!"

CHAPTER XIX

But all this was as nothing compared to the intensity, the ups and
down, in her relations with Joe himself. He often looked tired and
harassed. "What's the matter with me?" he seemed to ask. And she felt
his two sides combatting each other. On the one hand were the
influences of Nourse and Dwight and the men at the club, to which he
went nearly every day. He took part in discussions there, long
rambling talks and arguments. And his old ideals were rising hungrily
within him. But meanwhile the business man in Joe kept savagely putting
the dreamer down, and for days he would plunge into his work and the
fever of the money game. Joe had been so successful of late; and she
knew that in his office that odious press agent was for ever at him.
From Nourse she learned that her husband was even still considering the
scheme for a row of buildings named after the presidents. And Ethel had
a sinking of heart.

"If he does that, I'm lost," she decided. But she would shake off such
fears, as she felt again the old Joe emerge, the Joe of dreams and
startling plans. And she grew excited as she thought:

"Oh, if he'll only let himself go! I don't want him just nice and tame
and refined! I don't want only friends like that! I want--I want--"

What she wanted was still exceedingly vague, and Ethel could not put it
in words. It had something to do with the teachings of the little
history "prof" at home. She wanted the artist in him to rise, the
creative soul of him! Cautiously she probed his thoughts--now tender
and maternal toward him in his tired moods, now alive and interested as
she got him talking. Bits came out. Joe was so plainly tortured by the
struggle going on inside. She felt at once pity and admiration, and was
deeper in love with him than she had ever been before. She felt the
excitement of a fight with hope of victory close ahead. She took care
in her dress and manner to give him little surprises at night, and by
her cheery comradeship and her warm beauty of body and soul, Ethel drew
him on and on. At such times she would often lose all memory of her
scheming and would give up to her love, which had become a passion now.

But always she came back to her plan. Not openly, for she had to be
careful; she worked at him in little ways. She stirred his youth and
his cast-off dreams by her own youth and zest for it all. She got him
to tell her of Nourse and Dwight, the old friends she herself had put on
his trail, and of new friends he had met in his club--"the club I
elected you to," she exulted. But the next instant she would add, "Oh,
Ethel, you're so ignorant! If you only knew about his work!" And
knitting her brows she would listen hard while he talked of steel
construction. As with her encouragement he talked on rapidly, absorbed,
Ethel would clutch at this and that. She learned of books and magazines
on architecture here and abroad. Stealthily she noted them down, and
those she could not purchase she hunted up in libraries. Nourse was a
great help to her here. He came to see her now and then; and though he
still had his discouraging moods, at other times he was friendly and
kind. Enjoying this conspiracy with the charming young Mrs. Lanier, he
expressed his gallantry by bringing her books of appalling size. But
some had beautiful illustrations that set her to imagining. Eagerly she
groped her way deep into the history of the building of cathedrals and
palaces in times gone by. And the long majestic story of man's building
on the earth thrilled her to the very soul. Joe must make his place in
it all!

When on coming home at night he dumped a pile of work on the table, she
would unobtrusively slip some book beside it. She grew to know which
ones tempted him most. He had been surprised and amused at first at her
interest in architecture--and secretly a little disturbed, suspecting
what lay behind it. But as autumn drew on he read more and more of the
books she kept putting in his way. While he read she would sit with a
novel or sew. She would glance up with some remark, and they would talk
and then read on. Subtly she made the atmosphere. She often brought
Paris into their talks. She spoke longingly of the shops and plays, and
all she wanted to see over there. And she almost succeeded in making
him promise to take her over the following spring.

Joe was happy at such times, when she could make him leave business
alone. And although he had many relapses, when night after night he
would sit by the table planning more horrible "junk for the Bronx," with
an inner smile she saw how often her husband scowled at such labour now.
She heard of changes in the office.

"We 're still building junk," Nourse confided one day, "but it isn't
quite as bad as before. Joe wants the money just as hard, but he's
plainly jarred by some of the jobs. He even fought his press agent last
week!"

One night Joe suggested awkwardly:

"Suppose we try Bill Nourse again. Let me bring him home to dinner, I
mean. He isn't especially cheery, God knows--but he seems so damnably
lonely this fall."

"Very well, dear--if you want to," she sighed. She had told Nourse to
hint he was lonely.

When Nourse came to dinner that Saturday night, Joe was surprised and
delighted at the way his partner seemed to get on now with his wife.
The visit indeed was such a success that it was not long before Joe
proposed bringing home "an old pal of mine--fellow named Dwight." To
this, too, Ethel assented, and when Dwight arrived one night she greeted
him very graciously.

"I feel as though I knew you," she said. "I've heard Joe talk of you so
much."

To Joe's delight they got on like old friends. And when Dwight spied
the piano there and learned of her interest in music, he insisted on
trying her voice, and was loud in his praise of its promise. Before he
left, it was arranged that she should come to his studio and take
lessons twice a week. Openly his pupil now, she could speak of him to
Joe, and he came to dine with them often.

How smoothly things were working out. If there were any cloud upon the
horizon it was the occasional presence of Amy's old friend, Fanny Carr.
Fanny had been abroad through the summer, but in October she had
returned. She had come to see Ethel several times, in the same
determinedly friendly way; and Nourse reported that she was going
frequently to see Joe at his office about her eternal money affairs.
And the fact that Joe never spoke of it only made the matter worse. For
Joe still had his money side, and Fanny knew how to flatter him so. He
still had his loyalty to his first wife, and Fanny so cleverly played to
that. "And he likes her, too--clothes, voice, perfumery and all!" Ethel
would declare to herself in anger and vexation. Oh, these women who
used sex every minute! how could men be so easily fooled?

"You can't change a man in a minute," she thought. "Remember Amy had
him five years." Amy had planted so deep in him the feeling that money
is everything; she had got the fever into his blood. And Fanny was
there to keep it alive by her flattery of his money success. And for
Ethel, even still, it was decidedly unsafe to criticize Joe in some of
his moods. As autumn changed to winter, these moods grew much more
frequent. What was worrying him? She couldn't find out. She sent for
Nourse and asked him, "What's going on in the office?"

"The press agent is pushing him hard," was Nourse's gloomy answer, "for
that row of patriotic atrocities up on Riverside Drive." Ethel squirmed.

"But he won't!" she cried. "He couldn't!"

"Oh, yes he could," Joe's partner growled. "There's so much money in
it!"

"If he puts that through I'm done for!" Ethel told herself that night.
"His name will be a perfect joke--among all the people I want to know!
And they'll all keep away from us as though he were running a yellow
journal! And then her friends will crowd about--because we'll be so
rich, you see! Oh, damn money! Damn! Damn!"

She was lying sleepless on her bed, and Joe was sleeping by her side.
She sat up now and looked at his face in the dim light from the window.

"If you get very rich," she thought, "and middle-aged and very fat in
body and soul, get to care only for building 'junk' and for going about
with Amy's friends--I wonder what would I do then." Again the words of
young Mrs. Grewe came up in her mind: "You can get out whenever you
choose." She frowned. "But there are the children. And besides, I love
you, Joe--yes, more than ever, and in a queer way! I'm fighting for
what I love in you, but at the same time I love you all--every bit of
you!" Breathing quickly now, she sank back on her pillow, and there she
soon grew quiet again. "So we'll fight it out once and for all. You've
got to drop this plan of yours." One evening that same week when Nourse
had come to dinner, she led the talk by slow degrees to that other plan