and narrowing,
to gain a foothold in the town; then through rebuffs from the clever
friends of Joe Lanier when she married him; and later through a feeling
of lazy acceptance of her lot. But Ethel's talk and Ethel's eyes
recalled what had been left behind. And Amy thought of her present
friends, and again with a little uneasy pang she put off their meeting
with Ethel. For they did not seem good to her then, and the picture she
found herself painting of their lives and her own appeared a bit flat
and trivial in the light of Ethel's eagerness. They dressed and went
shopping, they went to tea dances, they dined in cafes or in their
homes, rushed off in taxis to musical plays, and had supper and danced.
They loved and were loved, they "played the game."

"My dear," she said decisively, "it's not what you say that interests
men; it's how you look and what you have on."

But despite her air of assurance and her own liking of her life, she
felt the picture growing flat, and so she added quietly:

"Oh, my friends aren't all I'd like. They never are, if you've anything
in you. If you really want to be somebody--" and here her whole
expression changed to one of resolute faith in herself--"you need just
one thing, money. And you can't do anything about that, you have to
wait for your husband. Joe's a dear, of course, and he's working hard.
And he's getting it, too, he's getting it!" A gleam of hunger almost
fierce came into her clear violet eyes. "I want a larger
apartment--I've picked out the very one. And I want a car, a limousine.
I know just how I'll paint it a mauve body with white wheels. And I
want a house on Long Island. I've picked out the very spot--just next
to Fanny Carr's new place."

As her sister spoke of these ideals, again Ethel had that feeling of
church, but only for a moment.

"Who's Fanny Carr?" she asked alertly.

Amy was slowly combing her hair, and she smiled with kindly tolerance,
for her little confession had brought back her faith in herself and her
future.

"Fanny was a writer once--"

"Oh, really!"

"Yes. She ran a department on one of the papers." It had been the dress
pattern page, but Amy did not mention that. Instead she yawned
complacently. "Oh, she dropped it quick enough--she thought it rather
tiresome. She's one of the cleverest women I know. She'd have got a
long way up in the world, if it weren't for her second husband--"

"Her second?"

"Yes. The first one didn't do very well