"Why, Joe, dear, how nice!" she sighed. "Go on and tell me. What will it mean?" He held up his hand.

"Hold on a minute, can't you? Let me make my little speech. I've made it so many times in my mind."

"All right, you poor dear, just start right in."

"Well," said Joe, "it begins like this." And his face grew a little portentous, with humour and a deeper feeling mingled awkwardly together. "You've been about as good to me as one fellow could be to another. I know what a hell it must have been, and the stiff upper lip was all on your side. I don't want to talk about it, but—when Amy died the life went out—of my business too. Later I got back my nerve, and because my job was all I had left I tried to make it more worth while. I've got a few old dreams in me—I mean I've always wanted to build something better than flats in the Bronx. So I—well, I took a chance and failed. I'm in debt and my only chance to scrape through is to cut down here as low as we can. I've figured out our expenses, and—"

He walked for a moment. She quickly rose, went to him and took his arm and said:

"A very fine speech. We'll go in to our dinner now—and later we'll get a pencil and paper, and we won't stop until everything's right."

There came for Ethel busy days.

The next morning she went to the nursery and told the nurse she would have to go. "I'm sorry," she added and then stopped short, startled by the woman's face. The way her eyes went to Susette made something leap in Ethel's breast. The nurse wheeled sharply:

"What have I done! What's the matter with me?" Her voice was strained.

"Nothing. There has been nothing at all." Ethel found it hard to speak. "You've been—quite wonderful with Susette. The trouble is that Mr. Lanier has found he must cut expenses."

"Oh. Then why am I the one?" She broke off and grew rigid, but her thought struck into Ethel's mind: "Why am I the one? Why don't you go! What good are you here?"

"I'm sorry," Ethel repeated. "I wish I could keep you, but I can't. I'll have to take care of Susette myself—"

"You?"

"Yes, and you'll have to teach me how."

"I won't!"

"You mean you'll let her suffer because you haven't shown me things? No, no, I'm sure you'll be sensible. You'll stay on a few days and help me, and meanwhile I'll do all I can to find you a good position. I only hope I can get you back again in the autumn. You see it may only be for a time." She went to the nurse, who now had her arms about the child. "I'm so sorry. Remember I want you back."

There were tears in Ethel's eyes as she left the nursery. "Whew!" She went into her own small room. "I wonder if I'll ever feel like that about a child?" She stared a moment and added, "That was real enough, poor thing." She drew a resolute breath. "Well, no use in feeling like a criminal, my dear. Now for the cook and the waitress."

She rather took satisfaction in that, for she had disliked both of them keenly. She gave them until the end of the week, and in the meantime telegraphed for Emily Giles, who for over five years had helped her keep house for her father at home. Of medium height, spare, thin chested and thin lipped, her hair already streaked with grey, Emily had been less a servant than a grimly devoted friend. Since Ethel's departure, she had been head-waitress at the small hotel.

"Emily will come," thought Ethel, "unless she's dead or paralysed."

And Emily came.

"Well, Miss Ethel, here I am," she said on her arrival. She said, "Miss Ethel" quite naturally, although she had always said "Ethel" before. But her tone made it sound like, "Well, kid, here I am. Now let's see what kind of a mess it is you want me to get you out of."

With the aid of a book entitled, "How To Live Well On Little," together they puzzled and contrived.

"The things that have gone on in this kitchen," Emily muttered more than once, as her sharp grey eyes peered here and there, now into drawers and closets, now at the many unpaid bills. "When that cook of yours wasn't grafting she must have been getting drunk on your wine." As the record was unfolded of years of careless extravagance, Ethel would frown and turn away, for it seemed disloyal to pry so deep. Poor Amy was dead and buried.

With Emily she went marketing, and they beat down and bullied mankind. Emily was so good at that. And at home they worked out a schedule of housekeeping on a rigidly economical scale, dividing the work between them. All this was rather pleasant. The trouble came in the nursery, where more than once the face of the stricken woman there made it hard to keep one's mind keen and clear for all the intricate details of the careful mothering in this room, from which barely a sound had ever gone out to disturb the peace of Amy's home.

But it was soon over. The nurse had taken her departure and Ethel had moved to the nursery. And now the routine of her day brought such a change in Ethel's life as deeply affected her future course—though at first she had but little time to stop for self-analysis. At five in the morning she was roused by the low, sweet chirrup of Susette, who was peering over the edge of the crib. And her day from that time on was filled with a succession of little tasks, which at first puzzled and wearied her, made her often anxious and cross, but then attracted her more and more. What a change from the month before, from Mr. Greesheimer to Susette! She became engrossed in the washing and dressing and feeding of her tiny charge. Anxiously she watched Susette for the slightest sign of illness; and in this watching she grew to know the meaning of certain looks and gestures, baby talk. Susette became a person, wee but very intimate.

In the park on those lovely days of May, Ethel liked to feel herself a part of the small world of nurses and mothers who chatted or sewed while children played and motor cars went purring by. There were little distractions; for Susette was a sociable creature, and the small friends she discovered brought Ethel into conversation with the women who had them in charge. Several of the mothers were French—very French in the way they dressed, in the way they sewed, in their quick gestures, shrugs and smiles and their pretty, broken English. They lent a piquant novelty to motherhood in Ethel's eyes.

At times she thought of Amy. Why had Amy missed all this! How had she been able to keep away from this adorable child of hers! Ethel saw in the windows of shops the most tempting garments for small girls. And Amy had had money to spend! Susette's wardrobe was "simply pathetic!" And often, sitting in the Park and watching on the road nearby the endless procession of automobiles and the women like Amy so daintily clad, and puzzling and remembering innumerable little things from her first gay month in town—in Ethel's mind the picture of the sister she had adored began to change a little, and to lose its hold upon her. Amy beautiful, indolent toward Susette and the household; Amy tense, with a jealous, vigilant light in her eyes, when it was a matter of Joe and her love or the money so passionately desired.

But these recollections she would dismiss with excuses for her sister. "There are two kinds of women," Ethel sagely told herself. "Mothers and wives. And she was a wife. It may be I'm a mother." And little by little, in spite of herself, her worship of her sister changed to a pitying tolerance. The question, "Shall I ever be like that? "—once so full of eagerness—had already been answered unconsciously. "Poor Amy, she's dead. She lived her life. I'm going to live another."

Just what life it was to be was as unsettled as before. For as she grew used to this mothering, the old adventurous hunger for life welled up again within her. For long periods she forgot the child and sat frowning into space, her mind groping restlessly for ways and means to find herself and get friends of her own, independence, work and gaiety, a chance to grow and "be somebody here!" She had her angry, baffled moods.

But from these Susette would bring her back. "What's your life to be, you poor little dear? And if you don't worry, why should I!" And resolutely she would turn to the small, absorbing life of the child.

This went on for many months. It changed her feeling toward the town, for now she had a foothold here. It changed her feeling toward Amy, whose picture had begun to blur. But that queer sensation of intimacy, of being in her sister's place, was even deeper than before. For now she was mothering Amy's child—her child and her husband.



CHAPTER VIII

For a time she had seen little of Joe. She had been absorbed in her new work; and Joe, in his business troubles. But as he began to see light ahead, again he took notice of things at home; and rather to his own surprise he enjoyed the change that had been made. The simpler ways appealed to him. He and Emily got on famously. And he began to notice Susette, to come home early now and then, in time to see her take her bath or to sit on the floor and build houses of blocks, he knew about building houses, and he could do fascinating things which made his small daughter stare at him in grave admiration.

"How dear he is with her," Ethel thought. Although she was barely aware of the fact, her own new tenderness for the child had tightened the bonds between her and its father. His blunt, affectionate kindliness appealed to her often in a way that even brought little qualms of doubt. She would look at Joe occasionally in a thoughtful, questioning manner.

He stayed home again in the evenings now; and while she sat at her sewing, often he would look up from his paper or his work to make some brief remark to her; and the conversation thus begun would somehow ramble on and on while his work lay forgotten. But almost always, unknown to them both, the spirit of Amy was in the room, and the influence of her memory was shown in Joe's attitude toward his home. For in spite of his enjoyment of the simpler regime, he revealed a feeling of guiltiness at not being able to give to Ethel the easy lot he hind given his wife. As business improved he began to suggest getting back a nurse and a waitress. And it was all that Ethel could do to dissuade him.

"His idea of being nice to a woman," she told herself impatiently, "is to give her expensive things, and above all keep her idle." She did not add, "Amy taught him that." But it was in the back of her mind.

He often talked of his business, he tried to explain to her the details of speculative building, real estate values and the like. And listening and watching his face, she felt his force and vitality, his doggedness, the fight in him. She recalled Amy's eager faith in Joe as a man who was "simply bound to make money." And at times she said to herself, "What a pity." Still, it was all rather puzzling. For his talk of the growth of the city, his view of its mighty pulsing life, restless, heaving, leaping on, gripped her more than ever before. And moreover, now that Amy was dead, Ethel soon began to feel another Joe emerging out of some period long ago. With a new and curious eagerness to find in him what her sister had never known (an eagerness she would have disclaimed with the utmost indignation), she began to probe into Joe's past. And in answer to her questions he threw out hints of old ideals in which the making of money had played only a second part. He had meant to be an architect, a builder of another kind. Instead of putting up "junk in the Bronx," he had meant to do something big and new, something bold and very French, "to make these infernal New Yorkers sit up and open their cold grey eyes." At times he rather thrilled her with hints of his early bachelor life in New York and Paris, his student days.

About this time, one evening, he brought his partner home to dinner, but the experiment proved even more of a failure than it had in the past. Nourse made Ethel feel as before his surly, jealous dislike of her presence in Joe's home. And Ethel's hostility redoubled. She recalled what Amy had told her of his tiresome worship of work, its routine and its dull detail. No wonder Joe's ideals had died, with such a man in his office.

"What a pity you're his partner," her manner plainly said to him, for she was not good at hiding dislikes. And to that his gloomy eyes rejoined, "What a damned shame it you were his wife."

But Nourse did not come again. And with business dropped out of their talk, she and Joe turned to other things—small happenings of the household, amusing incidents of the day, and little problems to be solved. They were well into the summer by now, and Susette ought to go to the seashore. They began to discuss seaside hotels, and chose a place along the Sound. It was decided that Emily should stay here to look after Joe, and that he should run up for his week-ends. In the meantime, as his business improved, he began to bring Ethel little surprises, candy or spring flowers, and to take her out in his car at night. They went to the theatre several times. And everything which was said or done upon such occasions gave Ethel food for thinking.

At the seashore, with Susette on the beach, hour after hour, she thought about Joe and about herself. This thinking was long and curious. It was confused, barely conscious at times, all mingled with the long bright waves that came rolling in from the shining sea. The picture of her sister's face kept rising up before her there—of Amy in her bedroom good-humouredly talking and smiling, and teaching Ethel how to get on; of Amy with her husband, throwing swift, vigilant glances at him, kissing him, nestling in his arms. In her thinking Ethel grew hot and cold, with jealousy, swift self-reproach and a new, alarming tenderness. She thought of Joe, of his every look, his smile and the tones of his gruff voice; of Joe grief-stricken and half crazed, of Joe awakening, coming back. Again with a warm rush of feelings, not unmingled with dismay, she would go over in her mind their talks and the queer, almost guilty expression that had often come in his eyes. For Amy had always been in the room.

For this thinking, fresh fuel was given by Joe's weekly visits here. There was not much talk of Amy now, her name had subtly dropped away, but Ethel could feel it behind the talk. "It would always be there!" she would cry to herself. "Well, and why not?" she would demand. "Why be such a jealous cat? Would you let that hold you back?" It was all so involved, this Amy part, with Ethel's own earlier visions of happiness and a love of her own. Was this really love—this queer, leaping feeling, up and down, hot and cold, uncertain, tense, unhappy, hungry, undecided?

"Oh, if I could only make up my mind!"

When with Joe, she had many moods. In some she grew resentful toward him for forcing this upon her. But soon she would grow repentant. Her manner, from cool friendliness, would change in a few moments; and her eyes would grow absorbed, attentive, now to Joe and now to herself, grave, wistful, sad, and then suddenly gay—though they only talked of little things, of Susette, the beach, the city, the coming winter, household plans, his work, half spoken aspirations. Any one watching them in these talks might have thought she was his wife.

Again came that disturbing sense of intimate relationship to her sister who was dead. "I'm stepping into Amy's shoes." But this feeling began to be left behind. It was back in the past; she was looking on. One day, when Susette had bumped her head and her aunt was comforting her, suddenly in a revealing flash came the thought, "I love you, oh, so hard, my sweet! But I want another one all my own!"

When in September she and Susette went back to Joe in the city, all this grew more intense and clear. For he would not give her much longer now; she saw that he had made up his mind. She felt his strength and tenderness, his hunger for her growing. Sometimes it was frightening, the power he was gaining. A touch of his hand and she would grow cold. One evening when she had a headache, Joe bent over and kissed her.

"Good-night," he said, and left the room—left her burning, trembling. She pressed both hands tight to her cheeks, pressed the hot tears from her eyes.

At other times, she told herself, "Yes, I'm going to marry him. But there's nothing to be so excited about—or scared like this. I know him now, I know just what he is and what he is not. He is not a good many things I had dreamed of, but he's so dear and kind and safe. And I want to have children." Gravely wondering, she would look ahead. "You're no longer a child, my dear. Be strong and sensible. This is real. . . . It's getting rather cold tonight. I must run in and see if Susette is warm."

She still felt Amy's presence. Out of the various rooms certain pictures, chairs and vases forced themselves upon her attention. For some time past she had disliked them. It seemed to her at moments as though she could not have them here.

She knew what they were waiting for now. It was nearly the end of October, and the day which both dreaded was nearly at hand, the anniversary of her death. They spoke not a word to each other about it, except once when Joe said gruffly:

"There's a bad time coming for both of us. Let's try not to be morbid about it." As it drew nearer she felt, she must speak. She felt how this unspoken name of her sister would keep rising, rising, between them for the rest of their lives. It was uncanny, it was like a spell, the force of this unspoken name; and she thought, "I must break it!"

And yet she did not speak. She had little opportunity, for she saw very little of Joe that week. When the dreaded night arrived, he did not come home until very late. From her room she heard him come in, and presently by the silence she knew he had settled himself to work. She barely slept, rose early and dressed herself with a resolute air. But already Joe had gone.

It was a beautiful morning. With Susette she went to a florist's shop and had the child pick out some flowers. Then they went out to Amy's grave. And a moment came to Ethel there, an overwhelming moment, when something seemed bursting up in herself and crying passionately:

"I can't!"

But a little miracle happened. For Susette, who was only three years old and understood nothing of all this, took half the purple asters from Amy's grave, and turning back confidingly she put the rest in Ethel's hand—and then saw a sparrow and chased it, and laughed merrily as it flew away.

At night when Joe came home, although he did not speak of the flowers, she knew that he too had been at the grave. He appeared relieved, the tension gone.

"Now is the time to speak of her." And Ethel looked up with a resolute frown. . . . But once again she put it off. Soon they were talking naturally.

Weeks passed, and the memory of that day dropped swiftly back behind them. And there came a night when Joe, close by her side, had been talking slowly for some time, his voice husky, strained and low, and she had been sitting very still. She turned at last with a quick little smile, said:

"Yes, Joe, I'll—marry you—and—oh, I'm very happy! Please go now, dear! Please go—go!"

And when he had gone she still sat very still.

From that night the name of her sister was not spoken between them—was not spoken for nearly two years.

She grew used to being held in Joe's arms, to his kisses and to his voice that had changed, to the things he said and the way his eyes looked into hers. That hunger, it was always there, and growing, always growing! The feeling she'd never had before, that—"We're to be parts of one another!"—deepened, thrilled her with its depth, dazzled and confused her mind.

One day she went to Amy's room, and slowly began looking over the clothes. From the closet and the drawers, in a careful, tender way she took the shimmering little gowns and dainty hats and slippers, silk stockings, filmy night-gowns—and packed them into boxes. All were to be given away. "I couldn't!" Her throat contracting, she turned away with a sharp pang of pity and of jealousy and of a deep, deep tenderness.

She lavished her love upon Amy's child. What adorable little garments she bought for Susette, those autumn days. And at night, bending over her cradle, Ethel would whisper to her, "Oh, I'm dreaming, dreaming, dear!" And to Susette this was a huge joke, and they would laugh at it like mad. "Oh, my precious loved one! What a fine, happy life we'll lead!"



CHAPTER IX

They were married early in December. There were no preparations to be made, for a wedding is nothing without friends, and they had none but Amy's and though Joe said nothing to Ethel about it, she knew he had not sent them word. "It's better," she thought. She herself wrote to a few girl friends, but they were scattered all over the country. No one of them would be coming East. And at times she felt very lonely. With memories of weddings at home and of her dreams for one of her own, which she had planned so often, she begged Joe to let her be married in church, and Joe gave in good-naturedly. He did not go to the minister who had buried Amy a year before, but to one who had a small Presbyterian church on the next street. There he soon arranged to be married. But then, in his ignorance of such matters, Joe said, in his blunt, off-hand way:

"I like to settle these things ahead. So if you'll just name the amount—" he stopped. For the clergyman straightened up as though at an insult. Joe reddened. "Look here," he blurted, "I didn't mean—"

"Oh, that's all right." The other man was smiling queerly. "How long have you been in New York?" he asked.

"Nine years."

"Ever been inside of a church?"

"No, I can't say that I have."

"Then why do you want to get married here?"

Joe smiled frankly. "The bride's idea."

"I thought so," said the preacher. A glint of humour came into his eyes. "You asked me what it would cost to get married. If you'll go down to City Hall, it will cost you exactly two dollars. But if you care to be married here—well, there's an old scrub-woman I know who for nine years every Sunday has come to this church and put a quarter in the plate to keep this institution going for you. And if you care to use it now it will cost you just what it has cost her. Figure it out and send me a check, or else go down to City Hall."

"I'll pay up," was the prompt reply.

At home he told Ethel about it with keen relish at the joke on himself. And Ethel smiled rather tensely and said:

"Don't let's make a joke of it, dear. Let's make it as much of a one as we can."

But there was little or nothing to do. And the next afternoon in church it felt so queer and unreal to her as she stood with Joe in front of the pulpit. Behind her in the shadowy place were only Susette and Emily and the building superintendent's wife. No long rows of faces—caring. Only the hard murmur of the busy street outside. No excited whispers here, no music and no flowers, no bridesmaids and no wedding gown.

"I pronounce you man and wife."

Then what?

She took Susette tight in her arms for a moment. Then Emily—thank God for her!—was whispering fiercely in her ear:

"It's going to be all right, my dear! In a minute you're going to laugh or cry! Laugh! It's better! Laugh! . . . That's right!"

Joe had his small car waiting outside; and waving good-bye to Emily, who was taking Susette to the park, they sped away to the river and off into the country. Soon they were talking excitedly.

It was after dark when they returned, and as had been already planned they went to a cafe to dine, a gay place crowded full of people, music throbbing, voices humming. Ethel wanted it like that. She wanted to be lifted through. Joe alarmed her now. "Oh, don't—don't be so considerate!" she wanted to exclaim to him. "What good does it do?" As they smiled at each other, again and again she had to fight down an impulse to cry—or shiver. She would bite her lips and turn away and watch people, then turn quickly back and start talking rapidly.

At home, alone in Amy's room, she sat at the dressing table there, her movements swift and feverish. She had often looked at herself of late in her mirror in the nursery, but now she did not look into the glass. Her hands were cold. In a very few minutes she called to Joe.

And a little later, on her old bed by the cradle in the nursery, she lay violently trembling and staring intently up at the ceiling.

"What has happened?" she asked. "Whose fault was it? Mine?" With a strange thrill of fear and repulsion, she clenched her teeth and held herself until the fit of trembling passed. "Is this real, Ethel Knight? Do you mean to say this is what love is—just this, just this?" She shook her head and bit her lips. She asked, "Am I tied to this man for life? I am not! I can't be! This isn't real—it isn't me!"

The night was a blur, like a bad dream. Once she remembered jumping up and quickly locking the nursery door. But that was the beginning of a return to her senses. "I needn't have done that," she thought. "It wasn't fair. It was even rather insulting." This thought made her quieter. And later, as the night wore on, a feeling of having been unjust and foolish little by little emerged from the chaos and began to steady her. But again the old dismay and dread and loathing would come back with a rush. All at once her body from head to foot would grow cold and rigid. And the power which a year ago with her sister she had excitedly sensed as the driving force of this whole town, now loomed brutal, savage! The thought rose suddenly in her mind, "Amy. She was his wife! Five years!" And then in a revealing flash, "Her love was like that! She taught him!"

With a bound that feeling of intimacy with her sister leaped to a climax—burned!

It was long till she could quiet herself. She had to do it by walking the floor. . . . Thank heaven for the daylight and the small, round face of Susette peering over the edge of the crib. Soon she had the child in her bed and they were looking at pictures.

Later she went back to her husband. It cost her no slight effort of will, and it was a relief to find him gone. On her dresser he had left a note:

"I am sorry, dear—it was all my fault. I was a fool—a clumsy fool. But remember there is plenty of time—and be certain absolutely that everything will be all right."

She read it more than once that day, and it helped her prepare for the evening. When Joe came home and took her in his arms, she knew at once that he meant her to feel there was nothing to be afraid of.

"I've got to be down at the office tonight," was all he said. But in his voice, low, kind and reassuring, like that of a big brother, there was a promise which gave her a thrill of gratitude and deep relief. With it came some self-reproach, which caused her again to struggle, alone, and then go to Amy's room to sleep. She lay listening there for hours, carefully holding herself in check. When she heard his key in the hall door, she sharply stiffened, held her breath. . . . She heard him go into the small guest room which had been hers a year before. . . . And then she cried softly to herself. With the blessed relief of it, her love for Joe was coming back.



CHAPTER X

One evening about two months later Ethel was dressing for dinner. As usual they were dining alone, but long ago she had taken the habit of dressing each night as though there were people coming. Amy had taught her to do that; and after the death of her sister she had always made a point of "keeping up" for Joe's sake, although often it had been an effort. But it was no effort now. She had been here for nearly an hour, absorbed in this pleasant, leisurely art that had such a new meaning and delight. To keep being different, revealing her beauty in new ways, to see if he'd notice, to laugh in his arms and feel her power over Joe, had brought back her old zest for pretty clothes, and she had been wearing all the things she had bought when she first came to town. Last year's clothes, for they still smilingly called themselves "poor," although Joe was doing much better now. Last year's clothes, and the styles had changed, but in ways which Joe, poor dear, was too blind to notice.

The room in which she was dressing had somehow assumed a different air. Although in the main it was the same as when Amy had been here, and her picture was still on Joe's chiffonier—still subtly by degrees it had changed. Some of Ethel's clothes were lying about, her work-bag and a book or two; the dressing table at which she was sitting had been covered in fresh chintz, and Ethel's things were on it. Joe's picture and Susette's were here, and a droll little painted bird was perched above the mirror.

As she glanced into the glass, gaily she thanked herself for the charms which she was deftly enhancing—in the glossy black hair, smooth and sleek, in the flushed cheeks and the red of her lips and the gleaming lights in her brown eyes. She nodded approvingly at herself. "You're a 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 'Boheme'!" 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.

"Boheme" 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 cafe she leaned across the table and asked excited questions about "Boheme" 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 cafes—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 cafes 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 sonic 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, cafes 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 a round 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 I 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 cafe. 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 cafes 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!"