noticed it
and shot a little look at her.

"You poor girl. I can't tell you how sorry I feel," she was saying.
"It's horrible. Tell me about it."

And Ethel in a lifeless voice recounted the tragedy of the night.

"Where's Joe?"

"In there, with his partner."

"Oh, Mr. Nourse. He would be." Mrs. Carr threw a glance of dislike at
the door. "And you, my dear--I won't ask you now what are your plans.
Just let me help you. What can I do? There's that dinner tonight, to
begin with. Have you let the people know?"

"Not yet--"

"Have you a list of the ones who were asked?"

"I think there's one on Amy's desk."

"Then I'll attend to it."

Soon Fanny was at the telephone. Her voice, hard and incisive, kept
talking, stopping, talking again, repeating it to friend after friend,
and making it hard, abrupt and real, stripping it of its mystery, making
it naked and commonplace, like a newspaper item--Amy's death. And Ethel
sat rigid, listening.

"Amy's best friend! Oh, how strange!"

Suddenly she remembered things Amy had said about this friend--admiring
things. She bit her lips.

"What a queer time for hating a person. But I hate you--oh, I hate
you!" She went to the window and frowned at the street and slowly again
got control of herself. "What's wrong with me? Why am I so dull I
ought to be doing something. But what?" Again came the voice from the
telephone, and again she clenched her hands. "How did you make Amy take
you for a friend? Oh, what difference does it make?"

But it did make a difference. The presence of Fanny got on her nerves;
and when a little later two of the dinner guests arrived, to exclaim and
pity and offer their help, she faced them and thought:

"You're all alike! You're all just hard and over-dressed! You're
cheap! Oh, please--please go away!"

The two visitors seemed glad enough to find she did not want them here,
that she was not going to cling to them and make this abyss she was
facing a region they must face by her side. In their eyes again she
caught the look she had seen on the face of the doctor. "After all,
this is not my affair."

The two women left her. Fanny, too, soon went out on an errand. And no
other woman came to her that day. How different from the Ohio town.
Only once a girl came from the dressmaker's.

But just after Fanny had gone out, Joe's partner came into the
living-room. In the last few hours several times she had heard his
voice as he talked with Joe. Deep,