with its small events were becoming parts of her life. Her own room was
familiar now, for by many touches she'd made it her own. And the
dining-room and the living room, where she grew acquainted with Joe,
these too assumed an intimate air. Most of all, her sister's room grew
more and more vivid in her thoughts, though this was still far from
familiar, It held too much, it meant too much.

"Shall I ever live with a man like that?"

The way they looked at each other at times! The way they seemed keeping
watch on each other. If Joe were out very late at night, Amy would
almost invariably grow uneasy and absentminded, and there would be a
challenging note in the way she greeted him on his return. On one such
occasion Ethel was in Amy's room. She went out when Joe came in; but a
queer little gasping sigh behind gave her a start and a swift thrill,
for although she did not turn around she knew they were in each other's
arms. And again, late one afternoon when the sisters came home and
found Joe at work with a tired anxious look on his face, his wife came
up behind him. And the picture of her small gloved hand upon Joe's
heavy shoulder remained in Ethel's memory. It seemed so soft and yet so
strong.

"She can do anything with him she likes. When I marry somebody how will
it be?"

Upon the living-room mantel was a photograph of Amy. And on the smooth
and pretty face with the lips slightly parting, and in the smiling
violet eyes, there was the expression of something which Ethel did not
quite name to herself--for she had forgotten the night long ago in her
high-school club when they had sturdily tackled the word "sensual" and