"How long have you been married!" her visitor was asking.
"Let me see. Four years? No, two," she replied, with a quick smile.
"Time does so fly along in this town!"
"It does indeed. It seems hardly any time at all since the days when your husband and I were friends."
"Oh, yes, he has often told me about you!" And Ethel shot a swift anxious look. "I know you don't like him," she wanted to add. "But if you'll only give me a chance I'll show you what I have made of this man—or was making, at least, till all of a sudden right out of the clouds there dropped a fat detective!" She laughed at the thought and then grew rigid. How silly and pointless to laugh like that! Mrs. Crothers was telling now of the old group down about Washington Square, and Ethel was listening hungrily.
"What gorgeous times you must have had," she exclaimed, "in those old days!" The next moment she turned crimson. "I've said it now. 'Old'! I knew I should!" She caught Sally's good-natured smile and felt again like a mere child.
From this moment on she would take care! She avoided personal topics, and growing grave and dignified she turned the conversation from Joe to music, concerts, the opera, "Salome," "Louise." She carefully showed she was up to date, not only in music but in other things, books she had discussed years ago in the club of the little history "prof," and others she had been reading since—Montessori, "Jean Christophe." Hiding her tense anxiety under a manner smooth as oil, she talked politely on and on, and she felt she was doing better now. So much better! No more stupid breaks or girlish gush, but a modern intelligent woman of parts. And a glow of hope rose in her breast. A little more of this, she thought, and she would be ready to break off, and with a sudden appealing smile take her new friend into her confidence, tell of her trouble and ask for advice.
But the smile came from her visitor. Mrs. Crothers had risen and was holding out her hand. And as Ethel stared in dismay at that smile, which displayed such an easy indifference to her and all her view of life, her only woman friend in New York said:
"I'm so sorry I've got to run. I hope you'll come and see me."
From the door in the hallway Ethel came back in a sort of a daze—till her eye lit on the blue china clock on the mantel.
"Seventeen minutes!" she exclaimed. And then after one quick look around, she flung herself on the sofa in tears. "I bored her! How I bored her! How stupid I was, and comic—a child! And then solemn—too solemn—all music and art—and education and—how in the world do I know what I said? Or care! I hate the woman! I hate them all! Seventeen minutes! Isn't that just like New York?"