But from such thoughts about her dress, or her tea table, flowers, the lights in the room, her mind kept darting anxiously off. All this was nothing! What should she say? "It's a woman of brains who is coming to call. Think of all she knows—and she earns her living—she has a profession of her own! How in the world shall I talk to her? She thinks me like Amy—there's Amy again! Oh, Amy, Amy, I don't want to hate you! You helped me once, you were dear to me, and you had heaps and heaps of good points! But please, please stop coming up in my life!

"Don't get into another panic, my dear. When she comes you must be natural. Your natural self—that always counts. Don't try to show off what you haven't got. Show her only what you have. Make her feel you're young and ready to learn—half mad to learn! No, that won't do—not mad, but keen for everything—interested in her life—in all she does and thinks and feels." She frowned. "No, that's too personal. And you can't be personal in New York—not very—they don't like it here. Every one's too busy. You must be interested in things—the town in general—music—books—people in a general way.

"'Here's the kind of a girl who will grow,' she must say, 'and who is worth my taking up!' But will she! Now here's that panic again! And can't you see, you little goose, this is just what may spoil everything? If you're scared, you'll lose! You've got to keep cool every minute she's here! Who is this Sally anyhow? What has she done that you won't do when you're as old as she is? . . . Yes, but don't you strike that note! No woman likes to be reminded that she is ten years older than any other woman on earth. She'll put me down as a cute young thing who has a dangerous way with men. Dwight has praised me to her, of course—but she'll put his liking down to that—the—the—the sex side! I must show her it isn't, that I've got more, that I don't want men but women now! But not too hard or eager, you know. Oh, I must watch her all the time, to see if I'm getting any hold. And then, the minute I see my chance, I must tell her my trouble—no, my big chance—all I was just on the point of doing with Joe, and could do now—if only I had her for a friend!"

Such thinking was spasmodic and often disconnected. Thoughts of Joe kept breaking in, and of what she should do if she failed with him. And again, putting down with an effort all such thoughts and fancies, she took Susette and the baby and went out for a walk in the Park. It was one of those balmy days that come in winter now and then, and Ethel sat down on a bench for a while.

But then she looked around with a start. Who was that on a bench nearby? A fat man with a black moustache, his derby hat tipped over his forehead, and his two small piggish eyes morosely and narrowly watching her. A detective—working for Fanny Carr! Ethel angrily rose and called to Susette and wheeled the baby carriage away. But just as she passed the fat man, a small fat boy ran up to him.

"Say, Pa," whined the urchin. "Buy me a bag of peanuts."

"Like hell I will," the fat man growled.

And Ethel blushed. How absurd she had been!



CHAPTER XXIII

In reply to her note, Dwight had telephoned that Sally would be there at five. Mrs. Crothers arrived at a quarter past. She was a small alert looking woman of thirty-five, slender, almost wiry, dark, with black hair worn over her temples. Her small mouth was strong and willful, but she had nice pleasant eyes. She was wearing a pretty tan hat and grey furs that she put back on her shoulders as she smiled and held out her hand.

"I'm so glad to meet you at last, my dear."

"Oh, thank you," said Ethel quickly. And then, because that sounded too grateful, she added, "Won't you sit down?" in rather a stilted little voice. This woman made her feel so young. "Now don't act like a school-girl!" With an appearance of lazy ease she turned and poked the small logs in the fire. "I do so love wood fires. Don't you?" she said, in carefully easy tones, but she did not hear the answer.

Mrs. Crothers was wearing a trim street suit of brown and dark green. "She dresses as I do, so that's all right," thought Ethel. "She's taking me in. So much the better. I'll do the same." And as they talked, she kept throwing glances at the dark face, rather narrow, the small and rather mischievous mouth, amid the grey eyes which looked as though they could be so very good-humoured and friendly. But with a little pang of dismay Ethel saw that these eyes were preoccupied and only half attending. "She has a hundred things on her mind, and she's asking, 'Now let's try to see if there's really anything here worth while.'" The preliminaries were already over. That part at least had gone smoothly enough. "We're off!" thought Ethel excitedly.

"How will you have your tea?" she asked.

"Clear with lemon."

"One lump or two?"

"Three or four."

"Oh, how funny," Ethel laughed. And then she reddened. "You little goose," she exclaimed to herself, "why did you say, 'how funny'?" She poured the tea with a trembling hand and proffered it with a plate of cakes and small toasted crumpets, dainties she had purchased with care at a smart little shop in the neighbourhood. And meanwhile she was answering the questions, pleasant but searching, though thrown out in a casual voice.

"Yes, my home was in Ohio. Such a dear old town," she said. But the next moment she bit her lips, for she had come so near to adding, "I wish I were back this very minute!" What was her visitor saying? She frowned and leaned forward attentively. Something about a small town in Vermont and the funny local politics there. "Where is she leading by that remark?" Oh, yes, suffrage! That was all right!

"Yes, indeed," declared Ethel eagerly, "I'm for suffrage heart and soul! I marched in the parade last Fall! Wasn't it glorious? Were you there?"

"Yes, I marched—"

"With the gardeners?" Ethel blushed again. "Landscape, I mean!" And her visitor smiled.

"Yes, with the gardeners," she said. "There were only four of us, but we felt like the Four Hundred." Ethel giggled excitedly.

"Wasn't it glorious?" she exclaimed. "You ninny!" she thought. "You said that once!" And she hastened to add, "And isn't it perfectly silly for men to try to keep us from marching?"

"You mean your husband doesn't approve?"

"Approve!" Ethel echoed with a sniff. "I'd like to see him disapprove. I have him in fair control, I think." And she knitted her brows in an eager way, for this was a chance to tell how she had done it.

"How long have you been married!" her visitor was asking.

"Let me see. Four years? No, two," she replied, with a quick smile. "Time does so fly along in this town!"

"It does indeed. It seems hardly any time at all since the days when your husband and I were friends."

"Oh, yes, he has often told me about you!" And Ethel shot a swift anxious look. "I know you don't like him," she wanted to add. "But if you'll only give me a chance I'll show you what I have made of this man—or was making, at least, till all of a sudden right out of the clouds there dropped a fat detective!" She laughed at the thought and then grew rigid. How silly and pointless to laugh like that! Mrs. Crothers was telling now of the old group down about Washington Square, and Ethel was listening hungrily.

"What gorgeous times you must have had," she exclaimed, "in those old days!" The next moment she turned crimson. "I've said it now. 'Old'! I knew I should!" She caught Sally's good-natured smile and felt again like a mere child.

From this moment on she would take care! She avoided personal topics, and growing grave and dignified she turned the conversation from Joe to music, concerts, the opera, "Salome," "Louise." She carefully showed she was up to date, not only in music but in other things, books she had discussed years ago in the club of the little history "prof," and others she had been reading since—Montessori, "Jean Christophe." Hiding her tense anxiety under a manner smooth as oil, she talked politely on and on, and she felt she was doing better now. So much better! No more stupid breaks or girlish gush, but a modern intelligent woman of parts. And a glow of hope rose in her breast. A little more of this, she thought, and she would be ready to break off, and with a sudden appealing smile take her new friend into her confidence, tell of her trouble and ask for advice.

But the smile came from her visitor. Mrs. Crothers had risen and was holding out her hand. And as Ethel stared in dismay at that smile, which displayed such an easy indifference to her and all her view of life, her only woman friend in New York said:

"I'm so sorry I've got to run. I hope you'll come and see me."

From the door in the hallway Ethel came back in a sort of a daze—till her eye lit on the blue china clock on the mantel.

"Seventeen minutes!" she exclaimed. And then after one quick look around, she flung herself on the sofa in tears. "I bored her! How I bored her! How stupid I was, and comic—a child! And then solemn—too solemn—all music and art—and education and—how in the world do I know what I said? Or care! I hate the woman! I hate them all! Seventeen minutes! Isn't that just like New York?"

But from this little storm she soon emerged. Grimly sitting up on the sofa, she reached out a hand icy cold, took the tea-pot and poured out a cup. It was strong now, thank Heaven! And frowning gravely into space, Ethel sat and drank her tea.



CHAPTER XXIV

"Now the one thing," she told herself, "is to keep your nerve and be sensible. For this may decide your whole life, you know. . . All right, what next? What's to be done?

"I hate Sally Crothers," she began, "but I may go to see her, nevertheless. She asked me to. Didn't mean it, of course, she was plainly bored! No, I won't do it! I loathe the woman! . . . All right, my dear, but who else can you go to? Mrs. Grewe? She's doubtless at home—but there may be that detestable hat, tall, rich and shiny, in her hall. It looked as though it owned her soul! No, thanks—not yet—not for me! . . . Though she told me you soon get used to it. . . .

"Well, how about going back to Ohio, to the little history prof, and hating all men—one and all! That sounds exceedingly tempting! . . . I won't do it, though—because if I do, it means I'm beaten here—and I'd lose Susette and the baby!—. . . Quiet, now. . . . And then there's Dwight. He will probably call up soon and ask how Sally and I got on. I could go to him this very night! How perfectly disgusting! And yet it's just what Joe deserves! What right had he to believe that of me? . . . Now please keep cool. If I go to Dwight I become exactly like Mrs. Grewe—and I'd have to give up the children.

"No, it's back to Joe on my knees, to beg him to let me stay right here. And I'll succeed—I know I will! But won't I be under Fanny's thumb? And won't I take back Amy's friends? Like a good repentant scared little girl! And eat their rich meals and chatter as they do, and dance and grow old—and push Joe on to make more money—more and more—so that I can get fat and soft—like the rest of these cats!"

Again her face was quivering. But with an effort controlling herself, she went into the nursery. And on the floor with her wee son, slowly rolling a big red ball back and forth to each other, soon again she had grown quiet, almost like her natural self. She took supper alone, and then read a novel, page after page, without comprehending. An hour later she went to bed, and there lay listening to the town—to its numberless voices, distinct and confused, from windows close by and from the street, and from other streets by hundreds and from a million other homes, and from the two rivers and the sea—voices blurred and fused in one. And its tone, to Ethel's ears, was one of utter indifference—good-humoured enough but rather bored with "young things" weeping on its breast.

"Be Mrs. Grewe, if you like," it said, "or Sally Crothers or Fanny Carr. Or go back home to your history prof. Each one of these things has been done before by so many thousands just like you. Nobody cares. You have no neighbours. Do exactly as you like."

"Thank you very much," she said. "I choose to be Sally Crothers first. And if that fails—well, between Fanny Carr and Mrs. Grewe there isn't much choice. Do you think so?"

"Oh, no," said the city. And it yawned. But Ethel lay there thinking.

"Excuse me," she spoke presently. "Sorry to annoy you again—but is there any God about?"

"None," came the sleepy answer. "Do as you like, I tell you."

She opened her eyes and sat up in bed.

"Now I've been getting morbid again! For goodness' sake let's try to be healthy and clear about this!"

And she tried to be. But for some time she made little headway. It was easy to grimly shut her teeth and resolve, "I've got to do this by myself, talk to Joe and simply make him believe me!" But as soon as she came to the details of what she should say to her husband, his face as she had seen it last—worn and nervous, overwrought—kept rising up before her. Could she convince him! "It's my last chance!" If only she knew how to go about it! She wanted to be heroic and face this crisis all alone—but she had been alone so much. Tonight it seemed to Ethel as though she had struggled alone for years. Was it all worth while, she asked herself. She could feel her courage ooze again. Her thinking grew vague and uneven. . . . And more and more the picture rose of the woman friend she had counted on having—Sally Crothers, who was so clever, an older woman who knew New York, knew what to do in such tangles as this, knew Joe, had known him back in that past which Ethel was trying to raise again. And it was exasperating! "If I could only get at her!" she thought.

Carefully, almost word by word, she went over in her mind her talk with Mrs. Crothers that day, in order to find out her mistakes.

"Do you know what I think?" she said at the end. "I think in the first part you did pretty well. You made breaks and were clumsy, and she was amused—but she rather liked you, nevertheless. At least you were a novelty. But then you went and spoiled it all by making solemn fool remarks about the world in general. And thereupon Sally arose and went. . . . All right, next time I'll be different. I won't be solemn, nor afraid of saying anything incorrect. In fact I'll revel in it! She asked me to come and see her, in a tone which added, 'Don't.' But I'll be incorrect right there. I will go to see her; and what's more, I'll go tomorrow afternoon! And I won't call up first, for she'd say she was out. I'll get into her house and get her downstairs—and I'll break right through all smoothnesses and tell her exactly how and why I've got to have a woman friend! I'll give you the chance of your life, Sally Crothers, to throw out the life-line!

"If you don't I'll—just swim about for awhile. No use in thinking of that, though."

And suddenly she fell asleep.



CHAPTER XXV

Mrs. Crothers lived in a small brick house on a side street close to Washington Square. As Ethel looked out from her automobile, how dear and homey it appeared, with such a quiet friendly face. "Now for the plunge." She went up the low steps and rang the bell. Thank Heaven it was a rainy day, for when the maid came Ethel went right in, and the rain made that seem natural. At least no door had been shut in her face. She wanted to get inside this house!

"Is Mrs. Crothers at home?" she asked. The maid was not sure. Ethel gave her a card and was shown into a long cosy room with an old-fashioned air, where a small coal fire looked half asleep. She began to look around her. The walls were lined with book-shelves, with only a picture here and there. No wall-paper. "How funny." She frowned and added, "But it's nice." There was but little furniture, and plenty of room to move about. "What a love of a mirror." It was of gilt, and it reached from floor to ceiling between the two front windows. Gravely she looked at herself in the glass. "Oh, I'm not very excited."

The maid reappeared, and said, "Mrs. Crothers asks you to excuse her. She's sick with a headache this afternoon."

"Oh, what a lie!" thought Ethel. She stood for a moment irresolute, her heart in her mouth. "I will, though!" she decided, and took out another card. "Then take her this little note," she said. And she wrote: "I know I am being quite rude—but if the headache is not too severe will you see me just for a little while! I would not bother you—honestly—but it is something so important—and it must be settled today." It took two of her cards, and even then it was horribly crowded and hard to read. "Never mind," she thought. "That's as far as I'll go. If she can't read that I'm done for!"

The maid had taken the message upstairs.

"Now I've done it, I've gone too far. I'm done for—oh, I'm done for! Well, look about you, Ethel, my love—it's the last look you'll ever get at this room! How dear it is, what taste, what a home. Books, pictures, a piano of course—and the very air is full of the things that have been said here after dinner, over coffee and cigarettes, by all the people you want to know. Not rich nor 'smart' like Newport—just people with minds and hearts alive to the big things that really count, the beautiful things! . . . Good-bye, my dears—you're not very kind."

"She'll be down in a moment," said the maid.

"Thank you!" Ethel had wheeled with a start; and again left alone, she stood without moving. "Well, here you are—you've got your chance! And how do you feel? Plain panicky! Never mind, that's just what will catch her attention! Be panicky! Oh, I am—I am!" And her courage oozed so rapidly that when her hostess came into the room, and with a smile that was rather strained, said "I am so glad to see you—" the girl who confronted her only stared, and suddenly shivered a little. Then she forced a smile and said, "How silly of me to shiver like that."

"Come here by the fire and sit down." Mrs. Crothers' voice was suddenly kind. "Now tell me how I can help you," she said.

"Thank you. Why, it's simply this. I've had trouble with Joe, my husband—just lately—in the last few days. And the trouble is so serious that—it's my whole life—one way or the other. At least it—certainly feels so! And I have no women friends I can go to. They're all his—hers, I mean."

"Hers!"

"Yes. My sister's. She is dead—but very much alive at times—through the friends she left behind her. I've been fighting them all my life, it seems—ever since I married Joe!"

"Why were you fighting them?" Ethel frowned:

"Because they—well, they were all just fat—in body and soul—the women, I mean—and the men were just making money for food and things to keep them so. Do you know what I mean—that kind of New Yorker?"

"I do," said Mrs. Crothers. "Was that the cause of your trouble with Joe!"

"Partly—yes. You see when I tried to shake them off, they wouldn't be shaken—they hung on—because Joe was growing rich all of a sudden. Oh, I got pretty desperate! But then I learned of other friends that Joe had had here long ago—before he married her, you know. And I hunted for them—one by one. I could feel they were just what he needed, you see. I mean that back among such friends I hoped he'd stop just making money and get to work—on things he had dreamed of! You understand?"

"I think so—but not fully. Go on in your own way, my dear. Don't try to think. Keep talking."

"Thank you. I was in love with him. There was nobody else, man, woman or child—except Susette. She was Amy's little girl. You see, Mrs. Crothers, when Amy died I was there—I had just come to town. So I stayed with Joe to look after Susette. Then later on I began to feel that he was beginning to care for me. And I didn't like that—on Amy's account, for I worshipped her then. So I broke away and took a job. . . . Oh, what in the world am I getting at!"

"Don't try to think. Just tell me. You took a job. What was it?"

Ethel told of Greesheimer, and then of coming back to Joe, of his poverty and of her nursing Susette, of dreaming of children, of falling in love, of marriage and the birth of her boy.

"But all the time Amy had been there. Do you understand! Like a spirit, I mean! She had Joe first! She had shaped him!"

"Yes—"

"And so when he loved me even more, I do believe, than he ever loved her—still he did the thing she would have wanted. Amy had taught him to show his love by loading money on his wife. And that was what started everything wrong. For he got rich—for my sake—and the money brought Amy's friends back in a horde! Oh, now I'm repeating! I've said all that—"

"Please say it again! You're doing so well!" Ethel told about Fanny and the rest. "I tried to like them—honestly! But I simply couldn't!" she cried.

"Why couldn't you? Tell me plainly just what it was you wanted."

"What I wanted? Plainly? Oh, dear—I can't exactly—"

"What kind of people?"

Ethel frowned.

"Not just eaters!" she exclaimed. "I wanted men and women who—well, who were seeing something big—and beautiful and real in life! Life is so hard and queer in this town—so awfully crowded and mixed up—and empty, somehow. You know how I mean? But they see something in it all. Not clearly—it's way off, you know. And they're busy of course, and by no means saints. They have their worries and their faults and pettiness—they're human, too, But they're looking for something really worth while! Oh, I can't express it—I really can't!"

"Oh, yes you can, you've done quite well," said Mrs. Crothers steadily. "And now to narrow this down to Joe, you wanted him to be like that—in his work and so in his life with you. Was that it?"

"Yes! And he used to be! You must know that!"

"Yes—I knew that. Your husband and I were once very good friends."

"That's it, and I guessed it!" Ethel cried. "I was making wild guesses in the dark. And at last I put my finger on his partner, and we had a talk. It was a talk, a hard one—but I made him believe me in the end. And he told me a little about you—and I wanted to meet you, oh, so much! But he seemed to be out of touch with you, so he took me to Mr. Dwight instead. I had always wanted to sing, you know—and the rest of it—well, Mr. Dwight must have told you."

"Only a little," was the reply. "I don't yet fully understand. How did all this bring trouble with Joe? It's something serious, you said—"

"It's something very nasty." And Ethel began telling of Fanny's revelations. In the midst of it the door-bell rang.

"One moment." And Sally went into the hall. "Whoever it is, say I've a headache," Ethel heard her tell the maid. "The same old headache," Sally remarked as she grimly pulled the portieres. They waited in a tense little silence till the visitor had gone. "And Alice," Sally called to the maid. "If any one else comes, say I'm out." She turned back to Ethel, smiling:

"Suppose you stay to supper. I'll telephone my husband to dine at his club—and we'll go right on with this talk of ours. We'll go on," she added determinedly, "until we have Joe so in our toils that he'll be yours so long as he lives."

Ethel suddenly sniffed and swallowed hard, and said, "Oh, what a dear you are to me!"

Sally looked at her queerly.

"This is to be a talk without tears, but much good sensible planning," she said. "I don't blame you a bit for having been frightened—you've been through an ugly time. But I think with a little common sense—"

"I know," said Ethel, "that's just what I need. And that is why I came to you."

"Thank you," Sally smiled again. "Now go on about Mrs. Carr."

The talk went on, with interruptions for supper and Sally's two small children, far into the evening. And Mrs. Crothers did her share—filling in for Ethel the picture of Joe's old life, his work and dreams, and his first marriage. She told of several meetings with Amy. And all the time she kept watching, probing into this young second wife, skilfully raising Ethel's hopes, her vivid freshness and her youth, her hunger for a life she saw only in dazzling glimpses.

"Do you want my advice about meeting Joe! Then here it is," she said at the end. "I needn't say don't go on your knees—"

"You needn't!"

"I thought so—you're not that kind. And I wouldn't explain too much about Dwight, and those little things you did with him. Make Joe take you on faith or not at all. Have a long talk and make him listen—don't give him a chance to say a word. Talk right on and give him the picture of his two wives, and then let him choose—between letting you go, while he takes her friends, or dropping them and keeping you and finding what he had before. I can help you in that—but before I do, I think you've got to lay a ghost. She's in the way of everything. She has been in your home long enough. And her strength is the fact that you and Joe never mention her name to each other. I wonder if you realize how great a danger that has been. At any rate I'm very sure that you must break the silence now. It has been like a spell between you."



CHAPTER XXVI

The next afternoon she sat waiting for Joe. She had come home the night before feeling so strong and sure of her course. But beginning at the moment when she came into the empty apartment, subtly and by slow degrees again her home had cast its spell, as though the rooms were haunted. "I've got to lay the ghost," she thought. She had telephoned to Joe to come, and he had replied abruptly, "All right, I'll be there about four o'clock." It was just that now. Ethel poked the logs in the fireplace until there was a cheerful blaze. As she straightened up she caught sight of her face in the mirror over the mantel. Even in the firelight how gaunt and strained it looked to her.

"Not very attractive," she grimly thought. "This has got to be done by brains, my dear."

In a moment she heard Joe's key in the door. She heard him taking off his coat and then coming slowly into the room. With an effort she turned and looked at him. His face appeared even more tense and grey than it had two days before; the nerves seemed quivering under the skin. And she felt a pang of pity. "He wasn't to blame for the way he acted, it was his wretched nerves," she thought. "He'll have a break-down after this."

"Well, Ethel!"

"Oh, Joe, I'm so glad you're here." All at once she felt herself change. She had meant to be so firm with him; but now, after one quick anxious look, in a low eager voice she said, "I'm not going to talk much of myself. It won't do any good—I'm sure it won't. I love you, Joe, and I can see you still love me. We need each other. And if we can just be sensible now—and you can only believe in me—"

"God knows I want to, Ethel!" His tone was low, but so sharp and tense that she drew suddenly closer. He turned from her and sank into a chair, with his hands for a moment pressed to his eyes. "I'm sick of this—I'm not myself. Maybe I acted like a fool. . . . Some of that stuff from Fanny Carr doesn't hold together—it's too thin." He looked up at her. "But some of it does. And what you'll have to clear up now is why you never let me know."

"The reason I didn't," she answered quickly, "goes way back into the past. And it's not only about you and me—it's about—about somebody else." She stopped and her throat contracted. She set her teeth. "We must talk about Amy for a while."

There! At last she had brought it out! And she had seen her husband flinch. For a moment both were silent.

"Why!" he asked. She swallowed hard.

"Because we never have before. We've—gone two years without speaking her name. I had no idea how bad that might be." She broke off, for her voice was trembling so. "I don't know how much you've learned in that time—about Amy, I mean—but I've learned a lot, and—I think I'd better tell you. I must, you see, or you won't understand what I've been doing lately. I couldn't have explained before, without speaking of her—and I didn't do that. But I should have, Joe, and I will now—if only you'll be patient and let me do the talking."

"Well!"

"Some of it goes so very far back." She leaned forward with a queer little smile: "Amy was good to me when I came—and I had always worshipped her—I thought she was nearly everything. She made me feel how she—loved you, Joe—she had ambition, urged you on. But—oh, I've got to try to be clear. What kind of ambition was it, Joe! What did you have before you met her? How did you used to look at your work! You were coming up to do big things—but you married her and your work all changed. You threw over ideals to make money for her. And when your partner tried to hold you, Amy tried to break up the firm. Didn't she? Don't you remember?" She waited, but he did not speak. "How hard it is for him," she thought, "to admit a thing against her. This won't be easy." But she felt a little thrill of pride in him.

"So Bill has been talking, has he," he said.

"Yes, I made him." She went on. "Amy set herself against him—and against all your other old friends. Not at first—I want to be fair to her, Joe—don't think I'm blaming just her for all this. I'm sure that at first she was different—she wanted your friends to take her in. Remember those dinners you took her to, and that week-end party up in Vermont!"

Joe looked at her sharply:

"Who told you that?"

"Sally Crothers," said Ethel. "She was there."

"Sally Crothers? You know her!" he demanded. She smiled at the startled look on his face.

"Why, yes," she replied "You see I've been hunting so hard for you, Joe, among those friends you used to have. And I did it without ever letting you know. Dwight, too—he was only one of them." She frowned, and added briskly, "Just incidental, so to speak. But I don't care to talk of him now—I'm speaking only of Amy. And from what Sally Crothers has told me, poor Amy must have had some hard times. They weren't fair to her. If they'd given her time and a real chance, everything might have been different. But they didn't, they turned her down. And feeling hurt and angry—and feeling besides how she'd have to grow—in her mind, I mean, and her interests, to take any place among people like that—I think she hesitated. You might have helped her then, perhaps—but you didn't—and Amy was lazy, Joe—that had always been a part of her. So she wouldn't make the effort. Instead of coming up to you, she made up her mind to pull you down!"

"That isn't true!" he said harshly. "And if you've been taking for God's own truth what Sally Crothers told you—"

"Stop! Please!" cried Ethel eagerly. "I didn't mean what I said just then—I put it badly—oh, so wrong! She didn't say, 'I'll pull him down.' She told herself your friends were snobs! And she said, 'I have friends who are human, and they're quite good enough for me!' So she went on with Fanny Carr. And others came, the circle grew. And it was all done day by day, and week by week. It happened—and you never knew. Nor did she. It was all so natural. But within a year she was going with people, and so were you, who cared for nothing you had wanted—women with no growth at all. They were all—oh, so common, Joe!"

"That's a bit snobbish, isn't it?"

"You can call it what you like! But I say you can find them all over town—richer and poorer, better and worse—women who want only common things—just clothes and food and what they call love—with not a wish that I can see except for money to live like that! I'm no prig, Joe! I want pretty clothes, and I want to be gay and have nice things. But you can get all I want of that and still get what is so much more!" Her voice dropped; she hurried eagerly on: "Real work you love and which makes you grow, and friends that keep you growing! Ideas and things to know about—and beauty, music, pictures—the opera—books and people, plays—and buildings! The new library—the station—the—the tower down on Madison Square! Your work, Joe! And your old friends! Men and women who really think and feel—not just alive in their bodies! I don't know much about all that. Do you, these days! Mighty little! Because she kept you away from it!"

"No!" But she caught the uncertain look in his eyes.

"Are you so sure? Why didn't she ever go to Paris? She must have been dying to go there and shop, but she never let you take her there. She was afraid to let you go near it again—the Beaux Arts work, the student life—afraid that you'd get thinking! So she kept you here and away from your friends. She even kept Crothers out of your firm. You partner fought her hard on that—and you held out—until one day Crothers came to your office and told you he had changed his mind. You remember?"

"Yes—"

"Did he give you his reason!"

"Yes—he did—"

"Did he bring Amy into it!"

"He did not—"

"He should have, Joe. For just the afternoon before, Amy had made a call on his wife—and had said things insulting enough so that her husband had to break off!"

"Sally told you that!"

"Why should she lie?" Ethel threw a quick glance into Joe's eyes. "He believes it!" she thought, and hurried on: "I've talked to her, Joe, in a way that was bound to get the truth. Oh, I've been hunting hard for you, dear! If Fanny Carr had told her detectives to follow me everywhere I've been, and not just hunt for the nastiness that was in her own mind about me—they could have shown what a hunt it has been! I had so little time, you see! You were all in the balance—you'd waited so long! Even now you've found you can't draw the plans—the ones you used to dream about! I know because I made you try! And I went to Nourse, to your old friend Dwight, and then to Sally Crothers—and asked them all to help me. And as I went on and learned about you as you used to be, I fell in love all over again with the man I found—not Amy's husband—mine, all mine!

"And I had almost got you back—when Fanny Carr, with her nasty view of me and what I was doing, brought you those perfectly rotten reports? And if you believe them, Joe, I'm through! Go to Nourse or to Sally Crothers, and they'll tell you I have spoken the truth. If you won't believe either them or me, go on alone without me—or else marry Fanny Carr. But if you do believe me and we're to go on together now, you'll have to drop Fanny for good and all, and leave Amy way behind. You'll have to take up your old friends and try to get Crothers into your firm. You may think your business is yours and not mine—but if it's my life, it's my business, too! It's like four walls around me now, and I want to break out and so do you—away from mere money! I've watched you, dear—seen what a struggle has gone on inside of you—it has worn you out! haven't you made money enough? Let's leave it, go to Paris, and get to work before it's too late for you to get back what you had! And if there's no money, never mind. It will come later on—but don't let's be afraid if it doesn't. Don't let's be afraid of pain—of fighting hard and suffering, Joe! I want more children! I want you! I want you mine, all mine, my dear—not her husband. Don't you see?"

She had been eagerly leaning toward him. Joe was staring into the fire; the look in his eyes had frightened her and made her hurry to be through.

"What is it?" she asked. And she waited a moment. "Don't you believe what I've told you, Joe?"

"Yes," he said, "I believe all that. I believe a good deal more than that." There was a little silence, and then suddenly he reached for her hand, held it tight and smiled into the fire in a twitching sort of way. "I haven't been quite as blind as you think. I've seen a good deal of what you were doing. But—" he frowned—"I'm older than you are. I know this job of mine clear through—way back to those dreams you spoke of. I've had some hard mean tussles about it—lately—and that's my only excuse for acting like a damn fool as I did—the other day. No use in talking of that any more—or of—Amy either. She's—dead."

"Joe!" Ethel whispered. Tears came in her eyes. He went steadily on:

"She had some fine points—you'll never know. There were things we needn't talk about now. But you've made me see things, too. I don't think she'll be in the way any more—I think we'll be able to speak of her."

"Of course! We must! I want to, dear!" Ethel's voice was shaking.

"Not now." With an effort he rose. "There's something else to worry about. You don't quite know me yet, you see."

"What do you mean?" She had risen, too, and caught his arm. "You're not well, Joe! You're white as a sheet!" He laughed a little.

"I'm not quite right. Something wrong in here, I guess." He pressed one hand to the base of his brain and scowled as though it hurt him. "Nothing serious, probably. But before it goes too far, I want you to know that when I get well I'm going to have a try at all that—the work you spoke of. I'm going to try—but I may be too late! I may be older than you think!" The tone of his voice was sharp and strained. "I don't know," he said. "The doctor may. About him—that's another point! It's a nerve specialist we need! Telephone your doctor and have him send one here tonight! I'm sorry, Ethel—damnably!"



CHAPTER XXVII

She got him to bed. The specialist came, and when he had examined Joe he had a talk with Ethel that left her very frightened. After that came days and nights, when Joe, as, though in delirium, said things in a jumble which revealed to her the inner chaos he had gone through in the last few weeks. He talked of Amy loyally, even pleading for her at times, excusing her. And he talked of Ethel in many moods. Now he was angry at her interference; again he saw her side of it, and then his love for her would rise. More often still, he talked about work, and here again the struggle went on. Money, money, money—figures, calculations, schemes and rivals, heavy chances. But suddenly all this was gone, and in a pitiful anger at his own futility he would storm at himself for not being able to put on paper his early dreams.

But the weeks dragged by, and at last she felt he was coming back to sanity. With his partner, then, she conspired to take Joe over to Paris in April, to stay for a year if he would agree. And as part of the conspiracy, Ethel had several meetings with Nourse and Sally Crothers, in the hope of bringing Sally's husband into the firm to be there in Joe's absence. This was far from easy, for Crothers naturally held back; he did not care to commit himself until he knew that Joe would agree. And whether Joe would agree or not was by no means certain. Watching him as his health came back, Ethel wondered how he would be when he returned to the office. How much of what he had said to her, the first night of his illness, had come only from a mind keyed up? How much of his promise would he remember? Men sick and men well are in separate worlds. She could not speak of it to Joe, for the doctor had forbidden it.

At the end of another month, however, Joe was up and about again; and soon, in spite of the doctor's instructions, he was back at his office hard at work. This of course looked ominous. What was he doing? She could not discover. For his partner, over the telephone, was far from satisfactory. Now that he had Joe back again in that beloved office of theirs, his manner toward Ethel seemed to her to be gruff and unfriendly, to say the least. "Stand-offish to the last degree—as though he believed he could handle Joe all by himself!" she thought in annoyance. At last she sent for him one day and gave him quite a piece of her mind; and although not fully successful, she at least made him acquiesce in the plan she and Sally had concocted for a little gathering to take place one night the following week. It was nearly seven o'clock upon the evening in question; and in her room, at her dressing-table, Ethel was completing her toilet. They were going to dine with the Crothers', and Joe was nervous about it.

"Come on, Ethel, hurry up!"

"Yes, love, I'm almost ready now. Are you sure the car is at the door?"

"It's been there nearly half an hour!"

"That's good. Just a minute more."

As he angrily lit a cigarette, she looked in the glass at him and smiled. "How he dreads it, poor dear," she was thinking, as he strode into the living-room, "meeting Sally and all his old friends." She frowned. "Heaven knows I dread it myself. What am I going to say to them all? And suppose they don't care for me in the least? . . . Well, it will soon be over." Presently Joe popped in at the door:

"Look here! If you're not dressed enough—"

"I'm all ready now," was her placid reply. "Don't you think I look rather nice?"

"Oh, yes. You'll do."

"Thank you, dear. Aren't you going to kiss me!"

"No! Yes! . . . Now come on!"

She threw back her head and laughed at him.

"It's beginning so well," murmured Sally to Ethel, as they went in to dinner. "Steady, my child."

"Oh, I'm all right!" was the reply, and Ethel smiled excitedly. The chorus of exclamations that had greeted Joe and herself had been so warm and gay and real. There had been no time for awkwardness. In a moment after their entrance, the hubbub of talk and laughter had gone right on as though nothing had happened. At table it continued still, and she felt herself borne along on the tide. She looked at Joe, who was on Sally's right, and she thought he was doing exceedingly well. And as for these old friends of his, as she rapidly scanned their faces, they looked far from formidable. On her left side Sally's husband, a tall dark creature with nice eyes, was telling her about the men—two or three writers, an architect and a portrait painter rather well known, whose pictures she had read about. She had already learned from Sally what the women did with themselves. They worked, they went to women's clubs, they dined and did the social side. One of them spoke for suffrage, another was a sculptress, one sang, one had a baby. They did not look solemn in the least. Everything went so naturally.

"Well, here I am at last," she thought. She kept throwing quick little glances about. Was it all so much worth while, she wondered. Yes, they were very pleasant and nice. But she had expected—well, something more, a kind of a brilliancy in their eyes and the things they were saying. For here were Art and Music, Movements, Causes and Ideas, and goodness only knew what else! Here were the people who really saw something richer and deeper in life than the sort of existence Amy had led—great bright vistas leading off from the city as it was today to some dazzling promised land. She thought of the little history "prof." They were so cosy about it here! She did not want them to be "highbrows"—Heaven forbid! But they took it all so easily!

She thought of the struggles she had been through in order to get where she was tonight, the ardent hopes and the despairs, and all the eager planning. And just for a moment there came to her some little realization of those other women still outside, in this city of so many worlds, each with her particular world, her bright and shining goal, her shrine, and pushing and scheming to get in. She recalled the fierce light in Amy's eyes and the tone of her voice: "I may be too late!" Amy had wanted only money, and people like that. But how hard she had wanted it! . . . These people took it so pleasantly; they seemed so snug in their little group. She wondered if she would become like that. No, she decided, most certainly not! And suddenly she realized that this was only one more step in the life she was to lead in this town. These people? For a time perhaps.

Then others—always others! That was how it was in New York.

Ethel gave a queer little laugh—which at once she pretended had been caused by something Sally's husband had said. And she listened to him attentively now. "There's so much time for everything! I'm only twenty-five!" she thought. She turned to the painter on her right, and was soon talking rapidly.

The moments seemed to fly away. Now they had left the men to smoke. But soon the men had followed them, and every one was smoking, and Ethel was trying a cigarette. The talk ran on, about this and that. But over on her side of the room, Sally had led the conversation back to Joe's old student days, to the Beaux Arts and life in the Quarter. Ethel heard snatches from time to time, and she kept throwing vigilant glances over at her husband's face. He seemed to be responding, with a hungriness that thrilled his wife. Again he would fall silent, with an anxious gleam in his eyes. "He's wondering if he's too old!" she thought, and she crossed the room and joined them.

Sally was cleverly drawing him out about some of those early plans of his. And though awkward at first, he was warming up. In the room the hubbub died away. "They're listening to Joe!" thought Ethel. Joe kept talking on and on. Every few moments some one would break in to ask him something, or to raise a little laugh. Ethel tingled with pride in him, and with hope for the success of her scheming.

Now the crucial time arrived. For one by one the guests had gone, till only she and Joe and Nourse remained with Sally and her husband. The moment for springing the great idea had come at last. Nourse was to do the talking. That had been arranged ahead, at a meeting of Nourse and the two wives. But all at once in a panic now, Ethel knew that Nourse would bungle it. Why had she entrusted so much to this man? Had he ever shown tact in his whole life? And why so soon? Oh, it had been rash! The evening had passed so gorgeously. Why not have waited and had other evenings to pave the way and make it sure! She tried to signal to Nourse to stop him, but he could or would not hear! Now he was getting ready to speak.

"Well," he said, rising and turning on Ethel a curious smile, "I guess it's time I was going home."

She stared at him in blank relief. So he had some sense about things, after all.

"But look here, Bill," said her husband, "before you go, let's give these scheming women of ours to understand we don't want 'em to meddle in our affairs."

"Right," growled Nourse. And a moment later the three men confronted two astonished wives, and Bill was gravely announcing, "We've done this thing all by ourselves. The firm is 'Nourse, Lanier and Crothers.' And from this night on we propose to do business without any interference from wives. Understand!" He frowned menacingly. "We settled that this afternoon. And the next thing we decided was that Joe packs up this wife of his, whether she happens to like it or not, and takes her over to Paris. See? And if she tries to keep him from work by yanking him all around to the shops—"

While Nourse growled on in his surly way, Ethel slipped quietly into the hall—where presently Sally with one arm about her was proffering a handkerchief and murmuring.

"Use mine, dear."



CHAPTER XXVIII

On the night before they sailed for France, long after she had gone to bed Ethel came out in her wrapper into the warm dark living-room. There was something she had forgotten to do, and she wanted to get it off her mind. She switched on the light by the doorway, and looked about her smiling, but with a little shiver, too.

The ghost was gone—or nearly so. Already the room had been stripped bare. Only Ethel's desk was left, and a chair or two and the long, heavy table with a lamp at either end. Amy's picture was still on the table, but it lay now on its back and looked up at the ceiling as though it knew it must soon depart. Tomorrow the movers would finish their work. Soon somebody else's things would be here, and somebody else's life would pour in and fill the room and make it new. Somebody else. What kind of a woman? Another Amy, or Fanny Carr, or Sally Crothers or Mrs. Grewe? What a funny, complicated town. On her return a year from now, Ethel had already decided to take a small house near Washington Square. How long would that experiment last! Doubtless in the years ahead she would try other homes, one after the other. "Why do we move so in New York!" She thought of that plan of her husband's for the future city street, with long rows on either hand of huge apartment buildings with receding terraces, numberless hanging gardens looking into the street below. And she wondered whether the city would ever be anything like that? "In New York all things are possible." . . .

"However." Ethel went to her desk and rummaged for paper, pen and ink. Then she took out of a cubby-hole a bulky letter and read it through. It was the "round-robin" come again on its annual journey over the land. It had been in a lonely mining camp, on a cattle ranch, in a mill town and in cities large and small. There were many kinds of handwriting here, and widely different stories of the growth, the swift unfolding, of the lives of a new generation of women. "Girls like me." She read it through.

Then she took up her pen and began to write swiftly:

"I have been here for over three years—but it was hard to write before, because everything was far from clear." She stopped and frowned. "How much shall I tell them?" An eagerness to be frank and tell all was mingled with that feeling of Anglo-Saxon reticence which had been bred in Ethel's soul back in the town in Ohio. "Besides, I haven't time," she thought.

"I feel," she wrote, "as though I were just out of danger—barely out. In danger, I mean, of nervously dashing about after nothing until I got wrinkled and old at forty—nerves in shreds. I might have done that. I have met a nerve specialist lately—and the stories he has told me about women in this town!

"However! I want to make myself clear. Am I a high-brow? Not at all. I want good clothes—I love to shop—and I propose to go on shopping. If you do not, let me tell you, my dears, that the men in New York are like all the rest—and you would soon be leading a very lonely existence! And I don't want that, I want bushels of friends—and some of them men—decidedly! I want to dance and dine about—but I don't want to be religious about it! Nor frantic and get myself into a state!

"Well, but I did start out like that. When I came here to live—" She hesitated. "No, I'd better scratch that out."

"Thank Heaven I got married," she wrote, "and fell in love with my husband." Again she stopped with a quick frown. "And I had a baby. And I began to find something real." Another pause, a long one.

"I had quite a struggle after that. I was all hemmed in—" she stopped again—"by the city I found when I first arrived. But I huffed and I puffed and I hunted about—and at last I discovered our New York—the town we girls used to dream about at home in all those talks we had! Oh, I don't mean I have found it yet—but I've felt it, though, and had one good look. I dined with some people. How silly that sounds. But never mind—the point is not me, but the fact that this city is really and truly crammed full of the things we girls used to get so excited about—Art, you know, and Music of course, and people who make these things their God. The town opens up if you look at it right—and you find Movements—Politics—you hear people talk—you see suffrage parades—I marched in one not long ago feeling like Joan of Arc! And you find men, too, who are doing things. Big schemes for skyscrapers and homes! I mean that our New York is here!"

Again there came a pause in the writing. Her eyes looked excited. She smiled and frowned. Now to finish it off!

"What I want of it all I am not yet sure—for me personally, I mean. But there is my husband, to begin with, and his work that I can help grow—and his old friends. And they are not all. I keep hearing of new ones I must meet—and they are mixed in with all those things I have discovered in the town. A few of these people were born here—but most have come from all over the country. Sometimes I shut my eyes and ask—'Where are you now, all over the land, you others who are to come to New York and be friends of mine and of my children?'

"I want children—more than one. How many I am not quite sure. That's another point—you decide these things." She frowned and scratched this sentence out. "And children grow—and the idea of bringing them up makes me feel very young and humble, too. But in that we are all in the same boat—for the whole country, I suppose, is a good deal the same. What a queer and puzzling, gorgeous age we are just beginning—all of us! I wonder what I shall make of it? What shall I be like ten years from now? How much shall I mean to my husband—and to other men and women? But most of all to women—for we are coming together so! I wonder what we shall make of it all? I wonder how much we women who march—march on and on to everything—are really going to mean in the world!

"Oh, how solemn! Good-night, my dears! A kiss to every one of you!"

She folded her letter with the rest, and then she quickly squeezed them all into a large envelope, which she addressed to Miss Barbara Wells, Bismarck, North Dakota. Ethel's eyes were very bright. She sniffed a little and smiled at herself. "Oh, don't be a baby! It's all over now, you know—I mean it's just beginning!"

She stopped for a moment by the table, with the letter in her hand, and looked down at Amy's picture. "That is all any one needs to know."

Her look was pitying, tender, but a little curious, too.

"I wonder what you were like at my age! I wonder what you went through, poor dear? . . . But it's over now—all over. All we don't like will fade away, and you'll grow so beautiful again. Susette will love her mother. . . . But she won't be just like you, my dear."

Ethel went slowly out of the room. At the doorway she switched off the light, and the bare, empty room was left in the dark. The photograph was invisible now. On the street below, a motor stopped; and there was a murmur of voices, a laugh. Tomorrow somebody else would be here.

THE END