"Oh, if he'll only let himself go! I don't want him just nice and tame and refined! I don't want only friends like that! I want—I want—"
What she wanted was still exceedingly vague, and Ethel could not put it in words. It had something to do with the teachings of the little history "prof" at home. She wanted the artist in him to rise, the creative soul of him! Cautiously she probed his thoughts—now tender and maternal toward him in his tired moods, now alive and interested as she got him talking. Bits came out. Joe was so plainly tortured by the struggle going on inside. She felt at once pity and admiration, and was deeper in love with him than she had ever been before. She felt the excitement of a fight with hope of victory close ahead. She took care in her dress and manner to give him little surprises at night, and by her cheery comradeship and her warm beauty of body and soul, Ethel drew him on and on. At such times she would often lose all memory of her scheming and would give up to her love, which had become a passion now.
But always she came back to her plan. Not openly, for she had to be careful; she worked at him in little ways. She stirred his youth and his cast-off dreams by her own youth and zest for it all. She got him to tell her of Nourse and Dwight, the old friends she herself had put on his trail, and of new friends he had met in his club—"the club I elected you to," she exulted. But the next instant she would add, "Oh, Ethel, you're so ignorant! If you only knew about his work!" And knitting her brows she would listen hard while he talked of steel construction. As with her encouragement he talked on rapidly, absorbed, Ethel would clutch at this and that. She learned of books and magazines on architecture here and abroad. Stealthily she noted them down, and those she could not purchase she hunted up in libraries. Nourse was a great help to her here. He came to see her now and then; and though he still had his discouraging moods, at other times he was friendly and kind. Enjoying this conspiracy with the charming young Mrs. Lanier, he expressed his gallantry by bringing her books of appalling size. But some had beautiful illustrations that set her to imagining. Eagerly she groped her way deep into the history of the building of cathedrals and palaces in times gone by. And the long majestic story of man's building on the earth thrilled her to the very soul. Joe must make his place in it all!
When on coming home at night he dumped a pile of work on the table, she would unobtrusively slip some book beside it. She grew to know which ones tempted him most. He had been surprised and amused at first at her interest in architecture—and secretly a little disturbed, suspecting what lay behind it. But as autumn drew on he read more and more of the books she kept putting in his way. While he read she would sit with a novel or sew. She would glance up with some remark, and they would talk and then read on. Subtly she made the atmosphere. She often brought Paris into their talks. She spoke longingly of the shops and plays, and all she wanted to see over there. And she almost succeeded in making him promise to take her over the following spring.
Joe was happy at such times, when she could make him leave business alone. And although he had many relapses, when night after night he would sit by the table planning more horrible "junk for the Bronx," with an inner smile she saw how often her husband scowled at such labour now. She heard of changes in the office.
"We 're still building junk," Nourse confided one day, "but it isn't quite as bad as before. Joe wants the money just as hard, but he's plainly jarred by some of the jobs. He even fought his press agent last week!"
One night Joe suggested awkwardly:
"Suppose we try Bill Nourse again. Let me bring him home to dinner, I mean. He isn't especially cheery, God knows—but he seems so damnably lonely this fall."
"Very well, dear—if you want to," she sighed. She had told Nourse to hint he was lonely.
When Nourse came to dinner that Saturday night, Joe was surprised and delighted at the way his partner seemed to get on now with his wife. The visit indeed was such a success that it was not long before Joe proposed bringing home "an old pal of mine—fellow named Dwight." To this, too, Ethel assented, and when Dwight arrived one night she greeted him very graciously.