“Yes, I marched—­”

“With the gardeners?” Ethel blushed again.  “Landscape, I mean!” And her visitor smiled.

“Yes, with the gardeners,” she said.  “There were only four of us, but we felt like the Four Hundred.”  Ethel giggled excitedly.

“Wasn’t it glorious?” she exclaimed.  “You ninny!” she thought.  “You said that once!” And she hastened to add, “And isn’t it perfectly silly for men to try to keep us from marching?”

“You mean your husband doesn’t approve?”

“Approve!” Ethel echoed with a sniff.  “I’d like to see him disapprove.  I have him in fair control, I think.”  And she knitted her brows in an eager way, for this was a chance to tell how she had done it.

“How long have you been married!” her visitor was asking.

“Let me see.  Four years?  No, two,” she replied, with a quick smile.  “Time does so fly along in this town!”

“It does indeed.  It seems hardly any time at all since the days when your husband and I were friends.”

“Oh, yes, he has often told me about you!” And Ethel shot a swift anxious look.  “I know you don’t like him,” she wanted to add.  “But if you’ll only give me a chance I’ll show you what I have made of this man—­or was making, at least, till all of a sudden right out of the clouds there dropped a fat detective!” She laughed at the thought and then grew rigid.  How silly and pointless to laugh like that!  Mrs. Crothers was telling now of the old group down about Washington Square, and Ethel was listening hungrily.

“What gorgeous times you must have had,” she exclaimed, “in those old days!” The next moment she turned crimson.  “I’ve said it now.  ‘Old’!  I knew I should!” She caught Sally’s good-natured smile and felt again like a mere child.

From this moment on she would take care!  She avoided personal topics, and growing grave and dignified she turned the conversation from Joe to music, concerts, the opera, “Salome,” “Louise.”  She carefully showed she was up to date, not only in music but in other things, books she had discussed years ago in the club of the little history “prof,” and others she had been reading since—­Montessori, “Jean Christophe.”  Hiding her tense anxiety under a manner smooth as oil, she talked politely on and on, and she felt she was doing better now.  So much better!  No more stupid breaks or girlish gush, but a modern intelligent woman of parts.  And a glow of hope rose in her breast.  A little more of this, she thought, and she would be ready to break off, and with a sudden appealing smile take her new friend into her confidence, tell of her trouble and ask for advice.

But the smile came from her visitor.  Mrs. Crothers had risen and was holding out her hand.  And as Ethel stared in dismay at that smile, which displayed such an easy indifference to her and all her view of life, her only woman friend in New York said: 

“I’m so sorry I’ve got to run.  I hope you’ll come and see me.”