There had been a time when it was not so, when she could keep him late at breakfast and make him come home early at night, still fresh enough to read and talk, discuss things, go to the opera, take up his music, plan a trip to Paris.  “Oh, yes!  Then we were making a start!” But now this wretched work of his had got him worse than ever before—­and she blamed his partner for that.  She recalled how Nourse had disliked her, she remembered what Amy used to say about the man’s worship of business.  Yes, with his detestable greed for money, only money, Nourse was doubtless driving Joe.  “You’re making him just a business man, without a thought or a wish in his head for anything beautiful, really fine, ambition, things he dreamed of and told me about when he was mine—­things that would have led us both to everything I wanted—­”

She set her lips and whispered: 

“All right, friend Bill, then it’s you or it’s me!” And all the rest of the summer she set herself determinedly to breaking up the partnership.

“Joe, dear,” she said pleasantly, when he had come out for the week end, “why don’t you ever bring your partner with you over Sunday?” And at his quick look of surprise, “It seems too bad, I think,” she added, “never to have him with us.”

“I thought you didn’t like him,” he said.  Ethel gave a frank little smile.

“I didn’t—­but that was a year ago.  And besides, he didn’t like me, you see.  But people do change, I suppose—­and as long as he means so much to you, I should so like to be friendly.”

It turned out just as she had expected.  Nourse declined the invitation.  “I’m sorry,” she said when her husband told her.  She felt her position strengthened a bit.  At another time she suggested that Joe’s partner be asked to spend the rest of the summer with him in the apartment back in town.  It was doubtless so much cooler at night than Nourse’s bachelor quarters.  And Emily Giles could take care of them both.  But this overture, too, Bill Nourse declined.  She could just imagine him doing it, the surly, ungracious tone of his voice, the very worst side of the man shown up.  Joe often now looked troubled when Ethel talked of his partner.

But toward the end of the summer in one such talk he gave her a shock.  It was after Nourse had again refused an invitation to come to the seashore.

“He’s queer,” said Joe, “and he can be ugly.  Being polite is not in Bill’s line.  I told him so myself today—­and we had quite a session.

“Oh, Joe, I’m sorry,” Ethel said.

“You needn’t be.  Bill Nourse and I will stick together as long as we live.”  Ethel looked at him sharply, but he did not notice.  “Because,” he said, “with all his faults, his queerness and his grouches, Bill has done more than any man living to—­well, to keep something alive in me—­in my work, I mean—­that I want later on—­as soon as I’ve made money enough.”  She stared at him.

“You mean that he—­your partner—­wants something more than money?” It was a slip, but she was stunned.  He turned and looked at her and asked, in a voice rather strained and husky: