Her curiosity deepened toward this city love affair, this husband and wife who apparently had left so many things out of their lives, things vital in the Ohio town. The sober wee girl in the nursery kept just as quiet as before. Often Ethel opened that door and went in and tried to make friends with its grave shy little inmate and the hostile nurse. And returning to her room she would frown and wonder for a time. But the pretty things piling in from the shops, and the gay anticipations, soon crowded such questioning out of her mind. Swiftly this household was growing more real, the rooms familiar, intimate; the day's routine with its small events were becoming parts of her life. Her own room was familiar now, for by many touches she'd made it her own. And the dining-room and the living room, where she grew acquainted with Joe, these too assumed an intimate air. Most of all, her sister's room grew more and more vivid in her thoughts, though this was still far from familiar, It held too much, it meant too much. "Shall I ever live with a man like that?" The way they looked at each other at times! The way they seemed keeping watch on each other. If Joe were out very late at night, Amy would almost invariably grow uneasy and absentminded, and there would be a challenging note in the way she greeted him on his return. On one such occasion Ethel was in Amy's room. She went out when Joe came in; but a queer little gasping sigh behind gave her a start and a swift thrill, for although she did not turn around she knew they were in each other's arms. And again, late one afternoon when the sisters came home and found Joe at work with a tired anxious look on his face, his wife came up behind him. And the picture of her small gloved hand upon Joe's heavy shoulder remained in Ethel's memory. It seemed so soft and yet so strong. "She can do anything with him she likes. When I marry somebody how will it be?" Upon the living-room mantel was a photograph of Amy. And on the smooth and pretty face with the lips slightly parting, and in the smiling violet eyes, there was the expression of something which Ethel did not quite name to herself--for she had forgotten the night long ago in her high-school club when they had sturdily tackled the word "sensual" and what it meant. But the picture grew familiar and real, filled in by the living presence here of this woman who so carefully tended her beautiful body, her glossy hair, her cheeks and lips; this sister with so many moods, now intent and watchful, now good-humoured, indolent, now expectant, hungry, now smilingly content and gay.