"Tell him you don't want it, then!" She smiled at him.
"Too simple," she said. He looked at her.
"I thought it would be too simple for a woman," was his answer.
"It's worse than that," she replied. "It's blind. You've never been married—apparently—not even to one woman—while Joe, you see, has been married twice. To you a man's life is all in his office—but half of Joe's is in his home—and you'll have to change that half of him, too. I told you her friends are about—and they have her memory on their side—and so I can't get rid of them until I get some friends of my own."
"Then get them."
"How? Go out on any street and call up, 'Heigh there' at the windows?" She leaned forward quickly and sternly: "The friends I want are the people he knew—the ones you told me of. That's my plan. Put me in touch with some of them, and let me bring them in touch with Joe. And I'll show you a different partner." He looked at her.
"Well, that's too simple, too," he said.
"Why is it?" she demanded.
"Because in those first years of his marriage I went to them so often, in just the way you're thinking of. I got some of the men he used to know to come to his office and take him to lunch. And it did so little good they quit. They all got sick of it—and they're through."
Ethel leaned forward intensely: