“Well, what do I think of Amy’s home?”

She went over in her memory her eager inspection of the apartment.  The rooms had been dark when they arrived; for they had not been expected so soon, and a somewhat dishevelled Irish maid had opened the door and let them in.  With a quick annoyed exclamation, Amy had switched on the lights; and room after room as it leaped into view had appeared to Ethel’s eyes like parts of a suite in some rich hotel.  And although as her sister went about moving chairs a bit this way and that and putting things on the table to rights, it took on a little more the semblance of somebody’s home, still that first impression had remained in Ethel’s mind.

“People have sat in this room,” she had thought, “but they haven’t lived here.  They haven’t sewed or read aloud or talked things out and out and out.”

To her sister she had been loud in her praise.  What a perfectly lovely room it was, what a wonderful lounge with the table behind it, and what lamps, what a heavenly rug and how well it went with the curtains!  When Amy lighted the gas logs, Ethel had drawn a quick breath of dismay.  But then she had sharply told herself: 

“This isn’t an old frame house in Ohio, this is a gay little place in New York!  You’re going to love it, living here!  And you’re pretty much of a kid, my dear, to be criticizing like an old maid!” She had gone into Amy’s room, and there her mood had quickly changed.  For the curtains and the deep soft rug, the broad low dressing table with its drop-light shaded in chintz, the curious gold lacquered chair, the powder boxes, brushes, trays, the faint delicious perfume of the place; and back in the shadow, softly curtained, the low wide luxurious bed—­had given to her the feeling that this room at least was personal.  Here two people had really lived—­a man and a woman.  There had come into Ethel’s brown eyes a mingling of confused delight and awkward admiration.  And her sister, with a quick look and a smile, had lost the slightly ruffled expression her face had worn in the other rooms.  She had regained her ascendancy.

It had not been until Ethel was left in her own small room adjoining, that with an exclamation of remembrance and surprise she had stopped undressing, opened her door and listened in the silence.  “How perfectly uncanny!” Frowning a moment, puzzled, her eye had gone to the only other room in the apartment, down at the end of the narrow hall.  The door had been closed.  She had stolen to it and listened, but at first she had not heard a sound.  Then she had given a slight start, had knocked softly and asked, “May I come in?” A woman’s voice with a hostile note had replied, “Yes, ma’am.”  She had entered.  And a moment later, down on her knees before a grave little girl of two who sat at a tiny table soberly having her supper, Ethel had cried: 

“Oh, you adorable baby!”

For a time she had tried to make friends with the child, but the voice of the nurse had soon cut in.  And in the motherly Scotch face Ethel had detected again a feeling of hostility.  “What for?” she had asked.  And the answer had flashed into her mind.  “She’s angry because Amy hasn’t been in to see Susette.”  And Ethel had frowned.  “It’s funny.  If I had been away three days—­”