be glad to step into his shoes. But you give them only just enough to
keep your husband from feeling too safe. You hold them off, you make
him feel that he's everything to you if he'll work and give you what you
ought to have! And unless you're a fool you don't listen to this talk
of women's rights and women doing the work of men. You keep on your own
ground and play the game. And you keep making him get what you
need--before it's too late!" All at once she gave a sharp little laugh.
"It's a kind of a race, you see," she said.

The night after this talk, Ethel lay in her bed, and tried to remember
and think it out. How new and queer and puzzling. So many vistas she
had dreamed of had been closed on every hand.

"What's the matter with me?"

The matter was that her old ideals and standards were being torn up by
the roots, roots that went deep down into the soil of life in the town
in Ohio. But Ethel did not think of that. She scowled and sighed.

"Well, this is real! I was dreaming! And after all, this is much the
same, but different in the way you get it. This is New York. One thing
is sure," she added. "Amy needs every dollar Joe can make--and she must
not have me on her hands. I've got to find what I really want--a job or
a man--and be quick about it!"

It threw a tinge of uneasiness into those breathless shopping tours.
And it changed her attitude toward Joe. He had not counted for much at
first; he had been a mere man of business; and business men had had
little place in her dreams of friends in the city. But watching him now
she changed her mind.