door. As she stood there a moment longer, she had a curious feeling of
Amy's presence by her side.

"Now, my dear, we'd better go out for a walk," she told herself as she
turned away. But she threw a glance behind her.

In the weeks that followed she and Joe were more intensely alone
together than she could have imagined.

At first a few of Amy's friends kept dropping in every now and then.
But although their intentions were kindly enough, Ethel felt repelled by
them. She resented their having been Amy's friends. For swiftly and
quite unconsciously, in her resolute groping in the dark for solid
ground on which to stand, she was building up an ideal of her
sister--and these women jarred on that. They came to her direct from a
world, her sister's world, which she now vaguely felt to be cheap,
shallow, disillusioning. And she needed her illusions. By nature frank
to bluntness, she was not good at hiding dislikes; and her uneasy
visitors soon realized with relief that they were not wanted here.

Fanny Carr still came for a time. For some reason that Ethel could not
understand, this shrewd person seemed reluctant to let go her hold as a
friend. She was most solicitous about Joe and tried to come when he was
at home. But as Ethel's dislike of the woman deepened in intensity,
gradually Fanny's visits, too, grew less frequent and then ceased.

During the first week or two, Joe's partner almost every night came home
with him to dinner and took him out for evening walks. But his talk was
all of business. It seemed to Ethel that purposely Nourse shut her out
of the conversation. His manner to her, though not unkind, was like