Often he talked of the early group of students over in Paris, of their ideas, ambitions, and their youthful views of life, which for all their gaiety had been so fervid and intense. But to Ethel, because she herself was still young, their dreams seemed very wonderful. Some she had hungrily read about long ago with the history "prof" at home. But the world which the little suffragist had revealed to her pupils had been more heroic and severe. This was warmer, dazzling, this had beauty, this was art! And yet not weak nor tame nor old--this was gloriously new in the way it jabbed deep into life and talked of really changing it all. This was youth! And her own youth responded and she made it all her own. She was reading now voraciously, with a sparkle and gleam of hope in her eyes. She was coming so very close to her goal, or rather the gate of her promised land. At times she grew impatient at her teacher's calm, and the good-natured easy smile with which he looked upon all this. "Oh, why not get excited!" she thought. She felt the old dreams a bit cold in him, as they had been in her husband. And in dismay she would ask herself: "Are they all too old? Is just the fact that I'm ten years younger than Joe and his friends going to mean that I'm too late--to bring back what was in him!" CHAPTER XIX But all this was as nothing compared to the intensity, the ups and down, in her relations with Joe himself. He often looked tired and harassed. "What's the matter with me?" he seemed to ask. And she felt his two sides combatting each other. On the one hand were the influences of Nourse and Dwight and the men at the club, to which he went nearly every day. He took part in discussions there, long rambling talks and arguments. And his old ideals were rising hungrily within him. But meanwhile the business man in Joe kept savagely putting the dreamer down, and for days he would plunge into his work and the fever of the money game. Joe had been so successful of late; and she knew that in his office that odious press agent was for ever at him. From Nourse she learned that her husband was even still considering the scheme for a row of buildings named after the presidents. And Ethel had a sinking of heart. "If he does that, I'm lost," she decided. But she would shake off such fears, as she felt again the old Joe emerge, the Joe of dreams and startling plans. And she grew excited as she thought: "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--"