And all this fitted in so well with the picture Joe was making of the wife who had been so true to him, who had never had a thought or a wish for anything but his career.  How cheerfully she had given up all sorts of pleasures, trips abroad, a house in the country, summer vacations.  Year after year she had spent the hot months almost wholly in town because he could not afford to leave, although she herself had had many chances to go to friends in the mountains or up along the seashore.  Instead she had stayed with him in town; and in the evenings always she had been waiting, good-humoured and gay, ready to stay home or go out; with never a word of complaint for the delay of his prosperity, but only encouragement and praise.

At times, as Joe talked on and on, in this mood of hungry wistful love and humility and self-reproach, Ethel would bring herself back with a jerk to the Amy she had known; but again she would feel herself borne along upon the tide of his belief, and she was glad that it was so.  So the picture grew.  Nor was it only when they talked.  For often in long silences, when she thought he was reading his paper, she would glance up from her book and find him staring into the past.  And again at the piano, smoking and playing idly, his music made her realize how his mind was groping back through the years, picking and choosing here and there what he needed to build up his ideal.

This music at times made her curious, wondering what kind of a man he had been before Amy took him in hand.

“Where did you learn to play like that, Joe?” He frowned a little.

“Oh, long ago.”

He did not seem to care to go back of his marriage.  So Ethel let him continue his building; and though at times she smiled a little at some of his fond recollections, still her own deep adoration of her older sister, the whirl of happy memories of that vivid month in town, and the sense of all that Amy had been planning to do for her, combined now with her desperate loneliness to put Ethel in a mood where she gladly and loyally believed almost anything good of her sister.

Christmas was only one example of many similar incidents.  They had a small Christmas tree for Susette, and they hung up her stocking as well, and went out Christmas Eve and bought candy canes and dogs and dolls and picture books.  And although this was Ethel’s idea, it was made to appear as only the thing which Amy would have done had she lived.

So in these two hungry souls, groping for something bright and deep and strong upon which they could live, swiftly and unawares to them both the picture of Amy was stamped deep, idealized and beautified.  In life it had been fascinating, but now it was almost heroic as well.  It was as though the small gloved hand, which Ethel had noticed so many times, in death had increased the power of its light, firm, tenacious hold.