dy worked a change. No more hasty
breakfasts to let him be off by eight o'clock. They had breakfasted
later and later each day; she had made an affair of breakfast. And as
at last he kissed her and tore himself away from his home, she had
smiled to herself delightedly at the guilty look in his eyes. This kind
of thing would cause a decided coolness, no doubt, between Joe and his
partner. So much the better, she had thought, for she detested that man
Nourse, and in his case she could quite openly admit, "I'm jealous of
you and your business devotion! Your time is coming soon, friend Bill!"
The office was half way uptown, and several times in the last few weeks
she had gone there for Joe at five o'clock, and once at four-thirty, as
though by appointment. She chuckled now as she recalled the black look
of his partner that day. Yes, four-thirty had been a blow!

"Where are we going this evening?"

It was delightful to be so free, she told herself repeatedly. Friends?
They didn't need any friends. For the present they had each
other--enough! "Yes, and for some time to come!" But there always came
to her a little qualm of uneasiness when her thinking reached this
point. How were friends to be found in this city?

"Oh, later--later--later!"

And rising impatiently with a shrug, she went into the nursery. The
nurse had been so glad to get back that most of her old hostility toward
Ethel had vanished. Still there were signs now and then of a sneer
which said, "You'll soon be paying no more attention to this poor bairn
than her mother did before you." And it was as well to show the woman
how blind and ignorant she was--to make her see the difference.

"Boheme" was the surprise that night. It was Ethel's first night at the
opera. And looking up at the boxes, at the women she had read about,
the gorgeous gowns and the jewels they wore, and watching them laugh and
chatter; or looking far above them to the dim tiers of galleries
reaching up into the dark; or again with eyes glued on the stage
feasting upon Paris, art, "Bohemia," youth and romance; squeezing her
companion's hand and in flashes recollecting dazzling little incidents
of the fortnight just gone by--her mind went roving into the future,
finding friends and wide rich lives shimmering and sparkling like the
sunlight on the sea. As that Italian music rose, all at once she wanted
to give herself, "To give and give and give him all!" The tears welled
up in her happy eye