She looked into the closets.  In Joe’s she found some of Amy’s things.  She put them back in her sister’s closet and then gently closed the 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 that of the cook and the nurse.  “The less you meddle here,” it said, “the better it will be for Joe.  Leave him to me.”

Gleams of this feeling came in his eyes.  It showed now and then so openly that even Joe took notice.  He stopped bringing his partner home, and he drew closer to Ethel now, as together they cherished the memory of the woman who was gone.

And slowly, in this companionship, this loneliness, this quiet, Joe grew very real to her, and appealing in his grief.  Everything else seemed so remote—­but he was close.  “He needs me.”  It was a bright spot in the dark.  At times this darkness had no end, it stretched away to eternity; but at least she did not face it alone.  Of Joe’s grief she could have no doubt.  Each week his blunt strong features displayed more lines of suffering; his high cheek-bones showed hard and grim.  He was grateful, affectionate at times, but more often silent, and she saw in his eyes what frightened her.  He had so few resources here.  In his office was his work, just as it had always been; but at home there was nothing; his wife was gone, and he seemed restless to get out.