rse had been dreading the time so fast approaching when she would
have to leave Susette, who was now nearly four years old. But all she
said to Ethel was this:

"I'm glad to hear it, Mrs. Lanier. I hope you'll be very careful now."
She shot a look as keen as a knife, which asked, "Do you really want a
child? Or are you like her? Was it a mistake?"

And Ethel went quickly out of the room. In the living-room her eye was
caught by Amy's photograph on the table. She had always kept it there.
In her cleaning she had put it back. Emily, too, had put it back. They
had never spoken Amy's name. But Ethel faced the picture now for some
moments steadily. Somehow it had lost its beauty, it looked weak and
soul-less, without power any longer over Ethel's future. "Poor Amy.
Oh, how much you missed." And she added, "I'll never be like that." For
an instant she let her mind dwell on the past, on how Susette's coming
must have been--unwelcomed by her mother.

"But this one will be welcomed! Our love is so--so different! This
will bind us, oh, so close! It's done now, you're tied for life!" She
had never felt it so before. The months of her marriage had been so
exciting, and even in the long summer's thinking her love had seemed
always a little unreal. "But this is real--inside of me!" Her fancy
went careering ahead, with joy and wonder, a thrill of dismay. "I was
so free, with my life to choose! I could have been almost anything!
But now it is settled. This is my life. We talk and we talk about
being free--and then all at once--a baby."

In the days which followed and grew into weeks and months, the feeling
of quiet remained with her. The pang of uneasiness as to how she was to
find friends for Joe and herself, was allayed and put off to the future.
He would not expect anything of her just now. And because it was
pressing upon her no longer, it became a pleasure to dream and plan for
herself and Joe and the children.

She was only twenty-four, and although Joe was thirty-six he looked
years younger. They could grow. Now she began asking him to read aloud
in the evenings, nor was the reading all "mere fluff." Though she picked
out amusing things to vary the monotony, she insisted on magazines and
books which had been recommended by the little history "prof" at home,
to whom Ethel wrote long letters. The books rather appalled her husband
at times; but using her new hold on him, she said:

"Go on, dear, now begin." And she picked u