CHAPTER II

"Well, Ethel my love, we're here at last! . . . It must be after
midnight. I wonder when I'll get to sleep? . . . Not that I care
especially. What a quaint habit sleeping is."

She had formed the habit long ago of holding these inner conversations.
Her father had been a silent man, and often as she faced him at meals
Ethel had talked and talked to herself in quite as animated a way as
though she were saying it all aloud. Now she sat up suddenly in bed and
turned on the light just over her head, and amiably she surveyed her
room. It was a pretty, fresh, little room with flowered curtains, a
blue rug, a luxurious chaise longue and a small French dressing table.
Very cheerful, very empty. "It looks," she decided, "just like the bed
feels. I'm the first fellow who has been here.

"No," she corrected herself in a moment, "that's very ignorant of you,
my dear. This is a New York apartment, you know. All kinds of other
fellows have been in this room ahead of me; and they've lain awake by
the hour here, planning how to get married or divorced, or getting ready
to write a great book or make a million dollars, or sing in grand opera
or murder their child. All the things in the newspapers have been
arranged in this spot where I lie! Now I'll turn out the light," she
added, "and sink quietly to rest!"

But in the dark she lay listening to the strange low hub-hub from
outside. And it made her think of what she had seen an hour before,
when at the open window, resting her elbows on the sill, she had begun
to make her acquaintance with her backyard--a yawning abyss of brick and