“Let’s go somewhere,” he would mutter.

She went with him for strolls in the evenings.  Often they walked on and on till both were ready to drop with fatigue, but she stuck doggedly by his side.  One evening they passed the open door of a church.  It was lighted, and the deep low rumble of an organ floated out.  Joe stopped a moment irresolute, and then started to go inside.  But a glance through the door revealed to him that the church was nearly empty; and he turned away as he would have turned from any show on Broadway which was so obviously “not a hit.”

“Sometimes on Sunday mornings I seem to hear ’em, preachers, droning and shouting all over the land,” he told her once.  “What’s in it?  What do they know about God or where you go when you are dead?  Nothing, no more than you or I!”

His voice was harsh and bitter then, but the next instant it was kind.  With his arm about her he was saying: 

“Don’t, Ethel—­please—­don’t take it like that!  I was a brute!  I won’t again!  I’ll keep it inside!  I’m sorry, dear!”

“Oh, Joe,” she whispered, “if we only knew!”

So these two faced eternity.

But only at moments.  They looked away.  For she saw how good it was for Joe to have the distractions that he craved; and so on their long walks at night she took him to the noisy streets, or into the movies, where his mind appeared to stop and find some rest.  Best of all, she discovered, was to go with him in the small car which he used for his business.  Driving this car through crowded streets amid a clamour and blare of horns and shouts and peals of laughter, the look on Joe’s face made Ethel see how this dulled his grief, how he lost himself and his questionings and became a mere part of the town.  What a glamourous seething town!  There was something terrific to her in its laugh.  If you stopped to think and ask yourself, “What are we all doing here?” how soon it jostled you back into line!

So passed another fortnight.  Then Joe grew quieter, and with relief she saw he was ready to stay home.  She herself felt tired and relaxed; and it was good to sit at home on these December evenings and feel that both had partly emerged from the sea of doubts in which they had been plunged.  He had come out of it, she soon learned, with an image of his wife that even Ethel vaguely felt was swiftly becoming so ideal as to have little or no resemblance to the woman who had died.  But eagerly she helped him in this building of Amy’s memory.  She dwelt upon Amy’s appealing side, her lovable moods, her beauty and dash, her unerring instinct for pretty things, her unselfishness, her anxious planning for Ethel’s good.