But all this was as nothing compared to the intensity, the ups and down, in her relations with Joe himself.  He often looked tired and harassed.  “What’s the matter with me?” he seemed to ask.  And she felt his two sides combatting each other.  On the one hand were the influences of Nourse and Dwight and the men at the club, to which he went nearly every day.  He took part in discussions there, long rambling talks and arguments.  And his old ideals were rising hungrily within him.  But meanwhile the business man in Joe kept savagely putting the dreamer down, and for days he would plunge into his work and the fever of the money game.  Joe had been so successful of late; and she knew that in his office that odious press agent was for ever at him.  From Nourse she learned that her husband was even still considering the scheme for a row of buildings named after the presidents.  And Ethel had a sinking of heart.

“If he does that, I’m lost,” she decided.  But she would shake off such fears, as she felt again the old Joe emerge, the Joe of dreams and startling plans.  And she grew excited as she thought: 

“Oh, if he’ll only let himself go!  I don’t want him just nice and tame and refined!  I don’t want only friends like that!  I want—­I want—­”

What she wanted was still exceedingly vague, and Ethel could not put it in words.  It had something to do with the teachings of the little history “prof” at home.  She wanted the artist in him to rise, the creative soul of him!  Cautiously she probed his thoughts—­now tender and maternal toward him in his tired moods, now alive and interested as she got him talking.  Bits came out.  Joe was so plainly tortured by the struggle going on inside.  She felt at once pity and admiration, and was deeper in love with him than she had ever been before.  She felt the excitement of a fight with hope of victory close ahead.  She took care in her dress and manner to give him little surprises at night, and by her cheery comradeship and her warm beauty of body and soul, Ethel drew him on and on.  At such times she would often lose all memory of her scheming and would give up to her love, which had become a passion now.

But always she came back to her plan.  Not openly, for she had to be careful; she worked at him in little ways.  She stirred his youth and his cast-off dreams by her own youth and zest for it all.  She got him to tell her of Nourse and Dwight, the old friends she herself had put on his trail, and of new friends he had met in his club—­“the club I elected you to,” she exulted.  But the next instant she would add, “Oh, Ethel, you’re so ignorant!  If you only knew about his work!” And knitting her brows she would listen hard while he talked of steel construction.  As with her encouragement he talked on rapidly, absorbed, Ethel would clutch at this and that.  She learned of books and magazines on architecture here and abroad.  Stealthily she noted them down, and those she could