Ethel took them and read them, and as she did so her rage and scorn changed first into bewilderment and then into a sickening fright She felt all at once so off her ground. She had always heard of detectives and their reports of shadowed wives, but that sort of thing had just been in the papers and had never seemed very real. "This is about me!" she thought. It told of every meeting she had had with Dwight, in his studio and in other places, once at the Ritz where they had dined and gone to the opera, twice in the Park where they had walked. Such clean times, all three of them, but how cheap and disgusting they now appeared! For here were bits about Dwight's past, his record with women--two were named. He had been a co-respondent once! And his studio was described in detail, with emphasis on a big lounge in one corner! . . . Suddenly it was laughable! And so she laughed at Fanny! And Fanny replied: "You mean he won't believe it!" Ethel went on laughing. Joe wouldn't believe it. She wished he would come and turn this woman out on the street. She felt relief unspeakable. "You've forgotten," Fanny added, "that you lied to him about your friend." "How dare you say that?" "Because I have the facts. On the second of December Joe brought Dwight to dine with you, and you acted as though you'd never met. I gathered that from Joe himself when I saw him the next day. While the truth of it was you'd been seeing Dwight ever since the first of October." "Yes? That will be easy enough to explain." But Ethel felt herself turning white. She sank down and thought, "Now you'll need all your nerve. Don't get faint, you've got to think clearly." But she was not given time. "And all that had been going on while you were supposed to be home with the baby." Mrs. Carr leaned forward briskly. "Now the thing for you to do is exactly what I tell you. But before I do that, there's just one thing I wish you to understand about me. If you want to keep Joe, keep him. I don't want him--I never did. I've laughed at you again and again for what you thought I was trying to do. All I want is to be let alone to go on with Joe as I always have. What I mean by that you won't understand, because you don't understand my life. A woman like me in this city needs one man who'll be her friend--the big brother idea--to help and advise her, carry her through when she's down a bit. And Joe has always been like that.