“Come here by the fire and sit down.”  Mrs. Crothers’ voice was suddenly kind.  “Now tell me how I can help you,” she said.

“Thank you.  Why, it’s simply this.  I’ve had trouble with Joe, my husband—­just lately—­in the last few days.  And the trouble is so serious that—­it’s my whole life—­one way or the other.  At least it—­certainly feels so!  And I have no women friends I can go to.  They’re all his—­hers, I mean.”

“Hers!”

“Yes.  My sister’s.  She is dead—­but very much alive at times—­through the friends she left behind her.  I’ve been fighting them all my life, it seems—­ever since I married Joe!”

“Why were you fighting them?” Ethel frowned: 

“Because they—­well, they were all just fat—­in body and soul—­the women, I mean—­and the men were just making money for food and things to keep them so.  Do you know what I mean—­that kind of New Yorker?”

“I do,” said Mrs. Crothers.  “Was that the cause of your trouble with Joe!”

“Partly—­yes.  You see when I tried to shake them off, they wouldn’t be shaken—­they hung on—­because Joe was growing rich all of a sudden.  Oh, I got pretty desperate!  But then I learned of other friends that Joe had had here long ago—­before he married her, you know.  And I hunted for them—­one by one.  I could feel they were just what he needed, you see.  I mean that back among such friends I hoped he’d stop just making money and get to work—­on things he had dreamed of!  You understand?”

“I think so—­but not fully.  Go on in your own way, my dear.  Don’t try to think.  Keep talking.”

“Thank you.  I was in love with him.  There was nobody else, man, woman or child—­except Susette.  She was Amy’s little girl.  You see, Mrs. Crothers, when Amy died I was there—­I had just come to town.  So I stayed with Joe to look after Susette.  Then later on I began to feel that he was beginning to care for me.  And I didn’t like that—­on Amy’s account, for I worshipped her then.  So I broke away and took a job. . . .  Oh, what in the world am I getting at!”

“Don’t try to think.  Just tell me.  You took a job.  What was it?”

Ethel told of Greesheimer, and then of coming back to Joe, of his poverty and of her nursing Susette, of dreaming of children, of falling in love, of marriage and the birth of her boy.

“But all the time Amy had been there.  Do you understand!  Like a spirit, I mean!  She had Joe first!  She had shaped him!”

“Yes—­”

“And so when he loved me even more, I do believe, than he ever loved her—­still he did the thing she would have wanted.  Amy had taught him to show his love by loading money on his wife.  And that was what started everything wrong.  For he got rich—­for my sake—­and the money brought Amy’s friends back in a horde!  Oh, now I’m repeating!  I’ve said all that—­”

“Please say it again!  You’re doing so well!” Ethel told about Fanny and the rest.  “I tried to like them—­honestly!  But I simply couldn’t!” she cried.