She rose abruptly, and walking the floor she firmly resolved to “be wholesome” and look on the bright side of things.  In the next few weeks she busied herself with the small affairs of her household.  There was plenty to occupy her mind.  There were finishing touches to give to the rooms; there were Spring clothes to buy for Susette; and the baby was ready for short dresses and a baby carriage.  There was the life in the nursery, a cheerful little world in itself.  There was Martha, grown more friendly now, and Emily and the new waitress, Anne, and the telephone girl and the chauffeur and the clerks in various shops who had become acquaintances—­altogether quite a circle of people who greeted Ethel on her rounds.  One day as she passed a laundry shop she spied this sign in the window:  “Fine linen respectfully treated.”  And Ethel chuckled at the thought that she herself was treated like that.  On the whole it was rather pleasant, though, and she made the most of it.  She was being carefully “wholesome.”

Now it was well along in June, time for the children to go to the seashore, so she began to hunt for a place.  At the traveller’s bureaus she visited she found the clerks more than ready to give advice by the hour to this gracious young creature so stylishly clad.  And she had soon selected a quiet little resort in Rhode Island.

But what was Joe doing all this time?  She did not mean to keep prying, but for the life of her she could not help throwing out casual inquiries.  His reply was always, “Business”; and he would go on to give her details—­all of which were tiresome.  How much was he seeing of Fanny Carr and her detestable money affairs?  His manner, engrossed as it had grown, and even irritable at times, made Ethel feel he was putting her further and further out of that part of his existence which now interested him most, the part that lay outside his home.  Was it all business, all of it?  “And when I go to the seashore, he’ll be here five nights a week!” Sometimes he came in so late at night!  Business?  At such an hour?  “Now carefully, carefully, Ethel Lanier.”  But in spite of herself the smiling words of young Mrs. Grewe recurred to her mind:  “Most of them are married men.”

Ethel’s doubts, however, were all ended late one night, when at the sound of his key in the door she got out of bed and came into the doorway of her room.  Joe was standing in the hall.  He did not see her.  In fact, his eyes, when he switched on the light, seemed to see nothing in the world but the package of business papers he took from his overcoat.  His face was haggard but intent.  He turned and went into his study to work.  And any suspicion of Fanny Carr, or of any other friend of Joe’s, was swept at once from Ethel’s mind.  Her rival was his business.

And later at the seashore, where she had so many hours alone, she thought about this work of his with deepening hostility.  Her mind went back into the past.  How his office had always absorbed him.  What a refuge it had been in the months that followed Amy’s death.  “I wasn’t the one who first made him forget.  Oh, no, it was his business!” And now, as it had weaned him once from his grief for the woman who had died, it was at him again to draw him away from the woman who was living.