In the other room Joe was at his piano, and the music he was playing had nothing to do with—­any one else.  She did not say, “with Amy.”  She frowned a little and cut herself short, as she so often did in her thinking, these days, when it touched upon her sister.  She could feel Amy here at so many points, and she did not want to be jealous.

“I wonder where we’re going tonight.”

What was it Joe was playing?  Music she had heard before.  She did not like to ask him and so betray her ignorance.  “I ought to know this!  What is it?” she asked herself impatiently.  “Why, of course!  It’s from ’Boheme’!” She smiled as she felt he was playing to her.  With the thrill now so familiar, she felt her power over him.  She remembered little tussles in which she had been victorious.  They had all been over his business.  Joe, the poor darling, had formed the idea (she did not say from his first wife) that if a man is in love with a woman he must express it by loading her down with things which cost a lot of money, that he must work for her, slave for her!  But Ethel was putting an end to that.  They had taken back Susette’s old nurse, for it was unfair to one’s husband to be a child’s slave if there was no need.  But she had refused to get other servants.  Emily Giles was still in charge, and though Emily of her own accord had gone to a shop on Fifth Avenue and purchased caps and aprons, “the nattiest things this side of France,” she wore them with a genial air and spoke of them as “my uniform.”  Ethel took care of her own room and helped Emily with the cleaning.  She had kept expenses firmly down, and she had refused to be loaded with gifts.  When Joe had urged that his affairs were going so much better now, she had said in her new decisive voice: 

“I’m so glad to hear it, my love, for it simply means you’ve no earthly excuse for staying late at your office.  I don’t mean I want you to loaf, you know,” she had gone on more earnestly.  “I want you to work and do, oh, so much, all the things you dreamed of doing—­over there in Paris.  But I’m not going to have you make your business a mere rush for a lot of money we don’t need!” She had gone to him suddenly.  “And just now I want you so.”

By these talks she had already worked a change.  No more hasty breakfasts to let him be off by eight o’clock.  They had breakfasted later and later each day; she had made an affair of breakfast.  And as at last he kissed her and tore himself away from his home, she had smiled to herself delightedly at the guilty look in his eyes.  This kind of thing would cause a decided coolness, no doubt, between Joe and his partner.  So much the better, she had thought, for she detested that man Nourse, and in his case she could quite openly admit, “I’m jealous of you and your business devotion!  Your time is coming soon, friend Bill!” The office was half way uptown, and several times in the last few weeks she had gone there for Joe at five o’clock, and once at four-thirty, as though by appointment.  She chuckled now as she recalled the black look of his partner that day.  Yes, four-thirty had been a blow!