noticed and spoke fast.

"Well, then, it's just this," she said. "You've made up your mind to
cut Joe off from all his old friends, including me. And I might have
stood for that--"

"How kind!"

"If I hadn't learned of the raw deal you're giving him. Strip him of
friends and then treat him like this? Oh, no, not if I can help it!"
Plainly Fanny was working herself into a rage to match that of her
hostess.

"You'd better be very clear, Mrs. Carr," Ethel exclaimed, leaning
forward. Her visitor looked straight back at her, and answered:

"Very. I mean Dwight."

Ethel rose abruptly.

"That will be enough, I think."

"Oh, will it?"

Ethel wheeled upon her:

"What a--loathsome mind you have! Will you leave me, please!"

"No, I'll show you this. And then we'll get to business." And Fanny
produced a large envelope, from which she took out a few typewritten
pages. "Just look these over," she advised, "and then tell me whether I
shall go." And as Ethel hesitated, "You'd better. They're very
important."

Ethel took them and read them, and as she did so her rage and scorn
changed first into bewilderment and then into a sickening fright She
felt all at once so off her ground. She had always heard of detectives
and their reports of shadowed wives, but that sort of thing had just
been in the papers and had never seemed very real. "This is about me!"
she thought. It told of every meeting she had had with Dwight, in his
studio and in other places, once at the Ritz where they had dined and
gone to the opera, twice in the Park where they had walked. Such clean
times, all three of them, but how cheap and disgusting they now
appeared! For here were bits about Dwight's past, his record with
women--two were named. He had been a co-respondent once! And his
studio was described in detail, with emphasis on a big lounge in one
corner! . . . Suddenly it was laughable! And so she laughed at
Fanny! And Fanny replied:

"You mean he won't believe it!"

Ethel went on laughing. Joe wouldn't believe it. She wished he would
come and turn this woman out on the street. She felt relief
unspeakable.

"You've forgotten," Fanny added, "that you lied to him about your
friend."

"How dare you say that?"

"Because I have the facts. On the second of December Joe brought Dwight
to dine with you, and you acted as though you'd never met. I gathered
that from Joe himself when I saw him the next day. While the truth of
it was you'd been seein