make?"

But it did make a difference. The presence of Fanny got on her nerves; and when a little later two of the dinner guests arrived, to exclaim and pity and offer their help, she faced them and thought:

"You're all alike! You're all just hard and over-dressed! You're cheap! Oh, please—please go away!"

The two visitors seemed glad enough to find she did not want them here, that she was not going to cling to them and make this abyss she was facing a region they must face by her side. In their eyes again she caught the look she had seen on the face of the doctor. "After all, this is not my affair."

The two women left her. Fanny, too, soon went out on an errand. And no other woman came to her that day. How different from the Ohio town. Only once a girl came from the dressmaker's.

But just after Fanny had gone out, Joe's partner came into the living-room. In the last few hours several times she had heard his voice as he talked with Joe. Deep, heavy and gruff, it had yet revealed a tenderness that had given to Ethel a sudden thrill—which she had forgotten the next moment, for her thoughts kept spinning so. But now as he looked down at her she saw in his gaunt lean face a reflection of that tenderness; and there was a pity in his voice which set her lip to quivering.

"The sooner we have this over," he said, "the better it will be for
Joe."

"Yes."

"Tomorrow!"

"Yes."

"At four!"

"All right."

"I'll see to it."

"Thank you." There was a pause.

"Is there any special cemetery? You have any preference?" he asked.

"I don't know any in New York." And again there was a silence.

"You haven't been here long," he said.

"You'll be going back now to your home, I suppose."

"I haven't any."

"Oh," he said. She glanced up and saw a gleam of uneasiness in his steady tired eyes. She shrank a little.

"You have no relatives living?" he asked.

"None that I care about," she replied. She swallowed sharply. "They're scattered—gone West. We lost track of them."

"Oh. . . . Then do you intend to stay here?"

"For awhile—if Joe wants me."

"I'll take care of Joe." Though the voice was low, it had an anxious jealous note which made her shiver slightly.

"There's the child," she reminded him sharply. "Why not take it away?" he asked. "Joe never cared for it, did he? Do you think it has been happy here?"

And at that she could have struck him. At her glare he turned away.

"Forgive me. Of course I—should not have said that." A pause. "Nor talked of your plans. I'm not myself. Sorry for Joe. Forgive me." He turned away from her, frowning. "I'll see to everything," he said, and she heard him leave the apartment.

And all the rest of the day and the night and through the morning which followed, no one else came but professional men, and Mrs. Carr. She came and went; and her voice grew familiar—hard, intrusive, naked. And the thought kept rising in Ethel's mind, like a flash of revelation in all the storm and blackness:

"This kind of a woman was Amy's best friend!"

The funeral was soon over, and of its ugly details only a few remained in her mind. She had a glimpse of Amy's face down in the handsome coffin, and at the sight she turned away with a swift pang of self-reproach. "I shouldn't have let Fanny do that!" Fanny had dressed her sister.

She remembered the low respectful voice of the building superintendent: "There's an afternoon tea on the floor below, so the casket and the funeral guests had better go down by the freight elevator."

She gave a strained little laugh at that and asked, "I wonder when I'll cry?"

The preacher, a tall kindly young man, came in and seemed about to speak; but after a look at her face he stopped. He had come from a church two blocks away. Joe and Amy had never been to his church, and it was Nourse who had brought him here. Nourse had learned of him from the undertaker.

Several boxes of flowers came.

Later from a milliner's shop two pretty autumn hats arrived.

The guests began arriving—silent, awkward strangers—ten or twelve.

She heard the nurse come in with Susette and take her back to the nursery.

There was no music. Not a sound.

At last the silence was broken by the minister's low voice. Thank heaven that was kindly. He was brief, and yet too long; for from the apartment one flight below, before he had finished, the festive throb of a little orchestra was heard.

He prayed just a minute or two.

Then they followed the coffin out into the hall and back and down by the freight elevator.

A motor hearse was waiting below.

When the burial was over, she came home alone with Joe. She sat in the living-room watching his face, while the dusk grew mercifully deep. Then she made him eat some supper and take something to make him sleep. And later in her own small room she lay on her bed, dishevelled, tearless, her mind stunned, her feelings queer and uneven, now surging up, now cold and still.

"Where has she gone? What do I know? . . . What do I believe?
Where is God? . . . What is life? What am I here for?"

With a pang she recalled the town in Ohio where she and Amy had been born, and her thoughts went drifting for awhile. Pictures floated in and out, pictures of her life at home. She was hungry for them now, the old stays and firm supports, the old frame house, her father and the God in the yellow church, the quiet river, the high school and that friendly group of eager girl companions, with work, discussions, young ideals, plans and dreams of life and love. . . . All up by the roots in a few swift weeks!

"Shall I go back?" she asked herself. "Do I want to go—now that Dad is dead, and most of the girls have gone away, scattered all over the country?" Again she lapsed. "I'm too dull to think." She let the pictures drift again. Church sociables, a Christmas tree, dances, suppers and buggy rides, picnics by the river. How small and very far-away and trivial they now appeared. All had pointed toward New York. "Go back and marry, settle down? Do I want to? No. And anyhow, there's Joe and Susette. My place is right here—and I'm going to stay. But what is it going to mean to me? What do I want in this city now?"

In the turmoil, startled, she looked about her for a purpose, some ideal. But the old beliefs seemed dim; the new ones, garish and confused. She recalled those faces of Amy's friends. "Yes, cheap and tough, for all their clothes!" Or was it just this ghastly time that had made them all appear so?

Again she thought of her sister dead. "Oh Amy—Amy! Where have you gone?" And at last, quite suddenly, the tears came, and she huddled and shook on her bed.

CHAPTER V

She slept that night exhausted, woke up early the next morning and lay motionless on her bed: at first staring bewildered about the room, and then, with a sharp contraction of her brows and a quick breath, looking intently up at the ceiling. A vigilant look crept into her eyes, for at once instinctively she was on guard against letting the feelings of yesterday rise.

"What a selfish little beast I've been. Did I help in the funeral? Not a