“He won’t be, though,” she told herself.  She knew he would be distinctly annoyed if she did not enter in.  “No, I’ve simply got to be nice to them.  There’s no keeping them away!”

And in this she was right.  Flowers and gifts for the baby came, and several more women friends; and one of them brought her husband.  Nearly always they stayed until Joe came home; and in his manner, with dismay, she saw the hold they were getting.  It was not only flattery they used, they appealed to his loyalty to his first wife.  “Don’t drop us now,” they seemed to say.  “We were your friends when you were poor—­when she was poor.  If she had lived, just think how welcome we should be.”

Early one evening when Ethel and Joe were dressing for dinner, Emily Giles came in with a long box of roses.  Ethel thought they were for herself.

“No,” said Emily, “they’re for your husband.”

“For me?” Joe laughed.  “There’s some mistake.”

“No—­there’s no mistake,” said Ethel, in a low unnatural voice.  In an instant she had grown cold.  What a fool, to have forgotten that this was Amy’s birthday!  Inside the box was Fanny’s card and on it she had written, “In memory of the many times I helped you buy a birthday gift.”

Ethel went quickly out of the room.  It was an awkward evening.

Fanny gave a dinner soon after that to celebrate Ethel’s recovery.  It was in a hotel grill room, and it was large and noisy—­and noisier and noisier—­till even above the boisterous hubbub at the tables all about, the noise of their party could be heard.  At least so it seemed to Ethel’s ears.  And what were they saying?  Anything really witty, sparkling?  No—­just chatter, peals of laughter!  They were just plain cheap and tough! how red were their faces, warm and moist their lips and eyes!

“You’re not vivid enough, that’s the trouble with you!  You’ve got to be vivider!” she thought.  “You ought to have taken that cocktail!” She drank wine now, a whole glass of it, and tried to be very boisterous with the man on her right, who was smiling back as though he could barely hear her voice.  “He has had too much!” she told herself.  “Oh, how I loathe you—­loathe you all!”

But later, when they began to dance, she found with a little glow of relief that she could do this rather well.  Thank Heaven she had taken those dancing lessons a year ago; and she was younger than most of these creatures, and more lithe and supple.  The men were noticing, crowding a round her.  She caught a glare from one of their wives.  And that glare helped tremendously, it came like a gleam of light in the dark.  She caught Joe’s admiring glances.  She danced with him, then turned him down for somebody else, kept turning him down.  She threw into her dancing an angry vim; but joy was coming into it, too.  This was not so bad, after all.  “You may even grow to like all this!” But most of her thinking was a whirl.

She went home in a taxi, in Joe’s arms.  She thought, “This is how he and Amy came home.  Never mind, I’m not half so weak as I thought.  I can play this game—­”