“His work,” she thought, “that’s the strongest thing to hold his mind away from those people.”  And soon she had him talking of the Beaux Arts, architecture, plans and “periods” and “styles,” things she was quite vague about, but she did not have to listen now.  That was always so safe, she told herself.  She was even a little jealous of this puzzling, engrossing work, which could so hold her husband’s mind.  She frowned.  That was as it should be; a man’s work was his own concern.  But his living, his home, what he did at night?

“This can’t go on,” she decided.  “There will have to be friends for both of us.  I need them, too.  Oh, how I need one woman friend!  And where shall I find her?  Somewhere in this city there must be just the people I want—­if only I could reach them!”

And presently she was saying aloud in a lazy careless tone of voice: 

“Sometimes I get wondering, Joe, if there isn’t a Paris in New York.”

CHAPTER XI

It was a few weeks later.  A doctor had been there and gone, and returning into the living-room Ethel sank down on a chair with a quiet intensity in her eyes.  For some time she had not been feeling herself, but she did not want to worry Joe, and so at last she had telephoned to the clergyman who had married her.

“You may not remember me,” she had said, “but you married me in December.  Perhaps you’ll recall it if I say there were only three friends at the church.”

“Oh, yes, I remember it—­perfectly.”

“Thank you.  I’m not quite well and I have no friends to turn to, so I’m wondering if you could recommend a good doctor I could see.”

The doctor recommended had just paid his visit.  And now as the dusk deepened she had the strangest feelings.  Her year and a half in the city seemed hurried and feverish as a dream.  Her mind ran back into the past and on into the future.  Only a few days before, the round robin letter had come again.  In it the girl who had married the mining engineer out West had told of having a baby in a little town in Montana.  Ethel had thought of the doctor then.

She rose now and got the letter and re-read it slowly.  Presently she put it down and began crying softly, though she felt neither sad nor frightened.  Her life had so completely changed.  All those girl friends, so scattered; all those years, so far behind.  It was like getting on a ship, she thought, to start across the ocean.  “You can’t get off, you must go across.  Oh, Ethel Lanier, how happy you’ll be.”  But the happiness seemed a long way off.

How quiet it was.  The nurse came in with Susette from the park.  Ethel went into the nursery and kneeling down she began to unbutton Susette’s little jacket.  The child’s plump face was so rosy and cold.  She kissed it suddenly.

“Martha,” she said, “I’ll need you here for a long time now.  I’m going to have a baby.”