Left alone, she smiled again into the glass. It was hard to believe--too wonderful--this amazingly intimate feeling, this living with somebody, body and soul. And what a child she had been before, a child in that solemn young resolve to marry Joe, this good, safe man, and raise a large family carefully. It had been like a small girl thinking of dolls. And like a small girl she had been in her panic on the night of her wedding, she thought. How silly, ignorant, funny! No--she frowned--it had been real, pretty ugly while it lasted. But like a bug-a-boo it had gone. And this good, safe man had become transformed in this amazing intimacy and had become a wild delight: a man to laugh at, tease, provoke, and cling to, silent, in a flame; a man to mother, study out, probe into deep with questions; a man to plan and plan with. "This love is to be the love of his life! It's to make us work and grow, make us fine and awake and alive to everything worth living for! No laziness for you, my dear, no soft, cosy kitten life! You're to be a woman, a real one! Don't let there be any mistake about that!" In the other room Joe was at his piano, and the music he was playing had nothing to do with--any one else. She did not say, "with Amy." She frowned a little and cut herself short, as she so often did in her thinking, these days, when it touched upon her sister. She could feel Amy here at so many points, and she did not want to be jealous. "I wonder where we're going tonight." What was it Joe was playing? Music she had heard before. She did not like to ask him and so betray her ignorance. "I ought to know this! What is it?" she asked herself impatiently. "Why, of course! It's from 'Bohême'!" She smiled as she felt he was playing to her. With the thrill now so familiar, she felt her power over him. She remembered little tussles in which she had been victorious. They had all been over his business. Joe, the poor darling, had formed the idea (she did not say from his first wife) that if a man is in love with a woman he must express it by loading her down with things which cost a lot of money, that he must work for her, slave for her! But Ethel was putting an end to that. They had taken back Susette's old nurse, for it was unfair to one's husband to be a child's slave if there was no need. But she had refused to get other servants. Emily Giles was still in charge, and though Emily of her own accord had gone to a shop on Fifth Avenue and purchased caps and aprons, "the nattiest things this side of France," she wore them with a genial air and spoke of them as "my uniform." Ethel took care of her own room and helped Emily with the cleaning. She had kept expenses firmly down, and she had refused to be loaded with gifts. When Joe had urged that his affairs were going so much better now, she had said in her new decisive voice: