heeled
on her:

"How odious!"

"I can't help it--he's my friend!"

And the next moment, with Joe in the room, both women were talking to
him at once--angrily, incoherently, almost shoving each other away. But
only for a moment. It was too disgusting! Ethel left off and stood
rigid there, while Fanny talked on rapidly. She was speaking of how
Ethel had cut off Joe from Amy's friends. Ethel heard only bits of
this, for it all seemed so confused and unreal. But she noticed how
nervously tired he looked, all keyed up from his day at the office. She
remembered that his partner was out of town on business, that Joe had
been running the office alone. "He will be hard to manage," she
thought. He interrupted Fanny in a sharp, excitable tone.

"What's it all about?" he asked.

"It's time you saw where you stand, Joe Lanier. Look at this girl. I
don't blame her, God knows. Look how young she is, and then look at
yourself. Here, take a look at yourself in that mirror. Are you still
young? Can't you see the lines, the gray hairs, Joe? They're
coming--oh, they're coming! Can you supply all the love she wants?"

"Fanny?" he snapped out her name in so ugly a voice that she lost no
time. She shoved those papers into his hands and began to tell him what
they were. But Joe refused to read them and grew each moment angrier.

"Joe!" cried Fanny sharply. "When you brought Dwight to dinner here, he
met your wife as though for the first time. Did you know they had been
friends for months?" And at his startled look, she added, "If you
didn't, you'd better read all this!" There fell a sudden silence.

"I'll explain everything--when we're alone," Ethel managed to put in.
How queer and thick her own voice sounded.

Now Joe had gone into the hall with Fanny. Curtly he said good-night to
her. The door closed, and there was silence again. Why didn't he come?
He must be standing there in the hall trying to get hold of himself.
Oh, how terribly hurt he must feel! But she checked the sudden lump in
her throat. "Remember now--just common sense!" This was a time for
keeping clear! But Joe had come back into the room, and passing the
gilt mirror into which Fanny had told him to look, he stopped a moment.

"Don't do that, Joe!" In an instant, in spite of herself, her love for
him rose up in a wave, with fear and pity and anger, too. She came to
him, and her voice was shaking. "Oh, Joe--Joe! Can't you see it's all
lies? It's so loathsome--every w