But the weeks dragged by, and at last she felt he was coming back to sanity.  With his partner, then, she conspired to take Joe over to Paris in April, to stay for a year if he would agree.  And as part of the conspiracy, Ethel had several meetings with Nourse and Sally Crothers, in the hope of bringing Sally’s husband into the firm to be there in Joe’s absence.  This was far from easy, for Crothers naturally held back; he did not care to commit himself until he knew that Joe would agree.  And whether Joe would agree or not was by no means certain.  Watching him as his health came back, Ethel wondered how he would be when he returned to the office.  How much of what he had said to her, the first night of his illness, had come only from a mind keyed up?  How much of his promise would he remember?  Men sick and men well are in separate worlds.  She could not speak of it to Joe, for the doctor had forbidden it.

At the end of another month, however, Joe was up and about again; and soon, in spite of the doctor’s instructions, he was back at his office hard at work.  This of course looked ominous.  What was he doing?  She could not discover.  For his partner, over the telephone, was far from satisfactory.  Now that he had Joe back again in that beloved office of theirs, his manner toward Ethel seemed to her to be gruff and unfriendly, to say the least.  “Stand-offish to the last degree—­as though he believed he could handle Joe all by himself!” she thought in annoyance.  At last she sent for him one day and gave him quite a piece of her mind; and although not fully successful, she at least made him acquiesce in the plan she and Sally had concocted for a little gathering to take place one night the following week.  It was nearly seven o’clock upon the evening in question; and in her room, at her dressing-table, Ethel was completing her toilet.  They were going to dine with the Crothers’, and Joe was nervous about it.

“Come on, Ethel, hurry up!”

“Yes, love, I’m almost ready now.  Are you sure the car is at the door?”

“It’s been there nearly half an hour!”

“That’s good.  Just a minute more.”

As he angrily lit a cigarette, she looked in the glass at him and smiled.  “How he dreads it, poor dear,” she was thinking, as he strode into the living-room, “meeting Sally and all his old friends.”  She frowned.  “Heaven knows I dread it myself.  What am I going to say to them all?  And suppose they don’t care for me in the least? . . .  Well, it will soon be over.”  Presently Joe popped in at the door: 

“Look here!  If you’re not dressed enough—­”

“I’m all ready now,” was her placid reply.  “Don’t you think I look rather nice?”

“Oh, yes.  You’ll do.”

“Thank you, dear.  Aren’t you going to kiss me!”

“No!  Yes! . . .  Now come on!”

She threw back her head and laughed at him.

“It’s beginning so well,” murmured Sally to Ethel, as they went in to dinner.  “Steady, my child.”