p
into which she had fallen.

"The minute I even propose a play, I show him I'm well enough to go out.
And then he asks, 'Why not Amy's friends?' And he remembers the mean
little things that Fanny Carr must have told him--the beast!--and so he
says, 'I see it all. Ethel is only bluffing. Now that I'm rich she's
trying to make me drop the friends and the memory of the wife who stood
by me when I was poor.'"

Ethel even went out twice to their detestable parties, in the faint hope
of finding one woman at least she would care to know. But if there had
been any such, Fanny was careful to leave them out.

Friends, friends, friends of her own! Where to find them? On the
streets, as she went about at her shopping, she saw so many attractive
people, and she drew their glances, too. She had developed since her
marriage; she had a distinctive beauty, and she had learned how to
foster that. Almost always she felt the hungry eyes of men, good, bad
and indifferent, rich men, beggars, Christians, Jews. But that of
course was only annoying. Ethel wanted women friends. On the street,
from her elegant little car, she could see women who were walking glance
at her with envy, just as she herself had done in her first year in the
city. The thought brought a humorous smile to her lips. And looking at
the constant stream of motors passing, she inquired, "How many of us are
there, in this imposing procession, who haven't a single friend in
town?" How they all passed on. How coolly indifferent, self-absorbed!
Was there no entering wedge to their lives?

But her youth would rise with a sudden rush in her warm body, so smartly
dressed, so tingling with ardent health, and glancing into the glass in
her car and making a little face at herself, she would exclaim:

"Oh, fiddlesticks! All this is going to have a nice fine happy ending!
Nothing awful is to happen to me!"

At one such time, as though interrupted, she leaned quickly and
graciously forward, as she had seen women do in the Park, and bowed with
a cordial little smile--to a vacant lot--and then turning back to the
imagined friend at her side, she said sweetly, "Excuse me, dear. What
were you saying? Why yes, we'd love to. Thursday night? What time do
you dine?" A lump rose in her throat. "Now, Ethel, Ethel, you soft
little fool--you're only twenty-five, you know. And of all the adorable
babies waiting in a nursery--"

One day she found Fifth Avenue crammed and jammed with a huge par