death had increased the power of its light, firm, tenacious hold.


Ethel began to feel more free, for Joe was no longer on her mind. More
than once, in fact, she was surprised at the way he seemed to be
settling down. She felt a deeper change in him, something she did not
understand. The worn harassed expression she had so often seen on his
face while his wife had been alive, the look of a man driven and drained
of his vitality, was now gone; and in its place was an unconscious look
of content. He often stayed very late at the office; and more and more
in his evenings at home he went to his desk and became absorbed in
documents and blue print plans.

"What a refuge a man's business is," she thought with a twinge of envy.

And wistfully she began to look about for some resource for herself.
She felt the youth within her rise, but the city seemed so vast and
strange. In her loneliness the big building of which her present home
was a part, seemed doubly huge, impersonal, hard; and so did every other
building on that block appear. She felt lost, left out amid ceaseless
tides of gaiety on every hand. She took long determined walks, and on
these walks she donned the smart attractive clothes that she had bought
with Amy. She strove to keep her mind on the sights, the faces of
people afoot and in cars, the adorable things in shop windows. And she
chatted busily to herself in order to keep on admiring. This old habit
of hers, of soliloquy, had grown upon her unawares, as a refuge from her
loneliness. Sometimes she even talked aloud. Sturdily she told
herself:

"You've only begun. You'll get up out of this, Ethel Knight--just wait.