"Well!" "Some of it goes so very far back." She leaned forward with a queer little smile: "Amy was good to me when I came--and I had always worshipped her--I thought she was nearly everything. She made me feel how she--loved you, Joe--she had ambition, urged you on. But--oh, I've got to try to be clear. What kind of ambition was it, Joe! What did you have before you met her? How did you used to look at your work! You were coming up to do big things--but you married her and your work all changed. You threw over ideals to make money for her. And when your partner tried to hold you, Amy tried to break up the firm. Didn't she? Don't you remember?" She waited, but he did not speak. "How hard it is for him," she thought, "to admit a thing against her. This won't be easy." But she felt a little thrill of pride in him. "So Bill has been talking, has he," he said. "Yes, I made him." She went on. "Amy set herself against him--and against all your other old friends. Not at first--I want to be fair to her, Joe--don't think I'm blaming just her for all this. I'm sure that at first she was different--she wanted your friends to take her in. Remember those dinners you took her to, and that week-end party up in Vermont!" Joe looked at her sharply: "Who told you that?" "Sally Crothers," said Ethel. "She was there." "Sally Crothers? You know her!" he demanded. She smiled at the startled look on his face. "Why, yes," she replied "You see I've been hunting so hard for you, Joe, among those friends you used to have. And I did it without ever letting you know. Dwight, too--he was only one of them." She frowned, and added briskly, "Just incidental, so to speak. But I don't care to talk of him now--I'm speaking only of Amy. And from what Sally Crothers has told me, poor Amy must have had some hard times. They weren't fair to her. If they'd given her time and a real chance, everything might have been different. But they didn't, they turned her down. And feeling hurt and angry--and feeling besides how she'd have to grow--in her mind, I mean, and her interests, to take any place among people like that--I think she hesitated. You might have helped her then, perhaps--but you didn't--and Amy was lazy, Joe--that had always been a part of her. So she wouldn't make the effort. Instead of coming up to you, she made up her mind to pull you down!" "That isn't true!" he said harshly. "And if you've been taking for God's own truth what Sally Crothers told you--"