for the woman who had
died, it was at him again to draw him away from the woman who was
living.

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

She set her lips and whispered:

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He's queer," said Joe, "and he can be ugly. Being po