His Second Wife | Page 4

a strip of blue sky, and to right and to left went stretching away
with rows and rows of windows. And now as the murmurs and quick
low cries, piano music, a baritone voice and a sudden burst of laughter,
came to her ears, she gravely named her neighbours:
"Wives and husbands, divorcees, secret lovers, grafters, burglars,
suffragettes, actresses and anarchists and millionaires and poor young
things--all spending a quiet evening at home. And that's so sensible in
you all. You'll need your strength for tomorrow."
From the city far and near came numberless other voices. From street
cars, motors and the L, from boats far off on the river this calm and still
October night, from Broadway and from Harlem and the many teeming
slums, came the vast murmuring voice of the town. And she thought:
"I'm becoming a part of all this!" She listened a little and added, "It
breathes, like something quite alive." She smiled and added
approvingly, "Quite right, my dear, just breathe right on. But don't go
and breathe as though you were sleeping. Keep me company tonight."
Suddenly she remembered how in their taxi from the train, as they had
sped up Park Avenue all agleam with its cold blue lights and she had
chattered gaily of anything that came into her head, twice she had
caught in her sister's eyes that glimmer of expectancy. "Amy feels sure
I will be a success!" Ethel thrilled at the recollection, and thought, "Oh,
yes, you're quite a wag, my love; and as soon as you get over being so
young you'll probably make a name for yourself. No dinner or suffrage
party will ever again be quite complete without your droll dry
humour. . . . I suppose I ought to be going to sleep!"
And she yawned excitedly. From somewhere far in the distance there
came to her ears the dull bellowing roar of an ocean liner leaving dock
at one o'clock to start the long journey over the sea.
"I'm going to Paris, too!" she resolved. Her fancy travelled over the

ocean and roamed madly for awhile, with the help of many
photographs which she had seen in magazines. But she wearied of that
and soon returned.
"Well, what do I think of Amy's home?"
She went over in her memory her eager inspection of the apartment.
The rooms had been dark when they arrived; for they had not been
expected so soon, and a somewhat dishevelled Irish maid had opened
the door and let them in. With a quick annoyed exclamation, Amy had
switched on the lights; and room after room as it leaped into view had
appeared to Ethel's eyes like parts of a suite in some rich hotel. And
although as her sister went about moving chairs a bit this way and that
and putting things on the table to rights, it took on a little more the
semblance of somebody's home, still that first impression had remained
in Ethel's mind.
"People have sat in this room," she had thought, "but they haven't lived
here. They haven't sewed or read aloud or talked things out and out and
out."
To her sister she had been loud in her praise. What a perfectly lovely
room it was, what a wonderful lounge with the table behind it, and
what lamps, what a heavenly rug and how well it went with the curtains!
When Amy lighted the gas logs, Ethel had drawn a quick breath of
dismay. But then she had sharply told herself:
"This isn't an old frame house in Ohio, this is a gay little place in New
York! You're going to love it, living here! And you're pretty much of a
kid, my dear, to be criticizing like an old maid!" She had gone into
Amy's room, and there her mood had quickly changed. For the curtains
and the deep soft rug, the broad low dressing table with its drop-light
shaded in chintz, the curious gold lacquered chair, the powder boxes,
brushes, trays, the faint delicious perfume of the place; and back in the
shadow, softly curtained, the low wide luxurious bed--had given to her
the feeling that this room at least was personal. Here two people had
really lived--a man and a woman. There had come into Ethel's brown
eyes a mingling of confused delight and awkward admiration. And her

sister, with a quick look and a smile, had lost the slightly ruffled
expression her face had worn in the other rooms. She had regained her
ascendancy.
It had not been until Ethel was left in her own small room adjoining,
that with an exclamation of remembrance and surprise she had stopped
undressing, opened her door and listened in the silence. "How perfectly
uncanny!" Frowning a moment, puzzled, her eye had gone