Now it was well along in June, time for the children to go to the seashore, so she began to hunt for a place. At the traveller's bureaus she visited she found the clerks more than ready to give advice by the hour to this gracious young creature so stylishly clad. And she had soon selected a quiet little resort in Rhode Island.
But what was Joe doing all this time? She did not mean to keep prying, but for the life of her she could not help throwing out casual inquiries. His reply was always, "Business"; and he would go on to give her details—all of which were tiresome. How much was he seeing of Fanny Carr and her detestable money affairs? His manner, engrossed as it had grown, and even irritable at times, made Ethel feel he was putting her further and further out of that part of his existence which now interested him most, the part that lay outside his home. Was it all business, all of it? "And when I go to the seashore, he'll be here five nights a week!" Sometimes he came in so late at night! Business? At such an hour? "Now carefully, carefully, Ethel Lanier." But in spite of herself the smiling words of young Mrs. Grewe recurred to her mind: "Most of them are married men."
Ethel's doubts, however, were all ended late one night, when at the sound of his key in the door she got out of bed and came into the doorway of her room. Joe was standing in the hall. He did not see her. In fact, his eyes, when he switched on the light, seemed to see nothing in the world but the package of business papers he took from his overcoat. His face was haggard but intent. He turned and went into his study to work. And any suspicion of Fanny Carr, or of any other friend of Joe's, was swept at once from Ethel's mind. Her rival was his business.
And later at the seashore, where she had so many hours alone, she thought about this work of his with deepening hostility. Her mind went back into the past. How his office had always absorbed him. What a refuge it had been in the months that followed Amy's death. "I wasn't the one who first made him forget. Oh, no, it was his business!" And now, as it had weaned him once from his grief for the woman who had died, it was at him again to draw him away from the woman who was living.
There had been a time when it was not so, when she could keep him late at breakfast and make him come home early at night, still fresh enough to read and talk, discuss things, go to the opera, take up his music, plan a trip to Paris. "Oh, yes! Then we were making a start!" But now this wretched work of his had got him worse than ever before—and she blamed his partner for that. She recalled how Nourse had disliked her, she remembered what Amy used to say about the man's worship of business. Yes, with his detestable greed for money, only money, Nourse was doubtless driving Joe. "You're making him just a business man, without a thought or a wish in his head for anything beautiful, really fine, ambition, things he dreamed of and told me about when he was mine—things that would have led us both to everything I wanted—"
She set her lips and whispered:
"All right, friend Bill, then it's you or it's me!" And all the rest of the summer she set herself determinedly to breaking up the partnership.
"Joe, dear," she said pleasantly, when he had come out for the week end, "why don't you ever bring your partner with you over Sunday?" And at his quick look of surprise, "It seems too bad, I think," she added, "never to have him with us."
"I thought you didn't like him," he said. Ethel gave a frank little smile.
"I didn't—but that was a year ago. And besides, he didn't like me, you see. But people do change, I suppose—and as long as he means so much to you, I should so like to be friendly."