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 th