“I see,” said Dwight.  “But he doesn’t,” she thought, “and I’ll have to explain.”

“Later, of course, I’ll tell him,” she said, “But just now, in the state he’s in, if you or any one else of his friends who knew him as he used to be should come and say, ’Sent by your wife, with her compliments and fervent hopes of your speedy resurrection ’—­oh, no, it wouldn’t do at all.”  Dwight was watching her curiously.

“How many of us are there!” he asked.  She looked at him in a questioning way.

“Of us,” he explained, “Joe’s old friends, who are to dig him up, you know.”

“Only you, at present—­and of course his partner.  He smiled: 

“Bill Nourse is not a very brisk digger.”

“Well,” she remarked, in a casual tone, “if you know of brisker diggers about—­people who knew him—­”

“Say no more.  I’ll search the town.”  Their eyes had met for an instant.  “Yes,” she thought, “I’m getting on.”

Dwight lunched with Joe soon after that, and later in the studio he and Ethel had a talk.

“In a good many ways,” he assured her, “he struck me as the same old Joe—­friendly and hospitable—­he insisted on ordering quite a meal.  But we didn’t eat much of it.  We talked.”

“Of Paris!”

“Very much so.  There’s a lot of Paris in him yet.”  And he told of their long conversation.

“Now,” she said, when she rose to leave, “if you’ll just keep at him occasionally—­while his partner does the same at the office, and I do what I can at home—­”

“You insist on his being home every night?”

“That depends,” said Ethel gravely.

“Suppose I take him some night to my club.  We have quite a number of architects there.”

“Oh, wonderful!  How good of you!”

“Mrs. Lanier,” said her teacher, “I’m under your orders—­digging for gold.”

He took Joe to his club on the following night, and later several times for lunch.

“Joe likes it,” he reported.  “And he has already met some chaps who knew of him and his earlier work, not only in Paris but over here, he was one of the most brilliant designers in the city, I find—­and a good many men were disappointed when he threw over his true profession and went after ready cash.  How would you like me to put up his name?”

“For club membership?”

“Precisely.”

“I’d like it, sir.

“And I obey.”

“This is getting rather intimate,” Ethel told herself that night.  “Never mind, my love, you’ve been perfectly honest.  He knows very well what you’re after.  And if he likes you and wants to help, so much the better.”