He had made money! What was the matter?
She heard it all in fragments, topsy turvy.

What was wrong?
"Here is a Joe I've never known!" Still staring up into his eyes, she saw their strange exultant light; the excitement in his husky voice struck into her sensitive ear and jarred; and she nearly shrank from the clutch of his hand.

She lay wondering why she was not glad, till suddenly she saw in his face his sharp disappointment at the way she was taking his news.

With a pang of alarm she roused herself and said: "Oh, Joe, it's too wonderful! It's so sudden it strikes me all of a heap!" And she laughed unsteadily, seized his hand and kissed it, talking rapidly, her eyes glistening all the while with foolish tears.
Fiercely then she asked herself, "Why can't you enter in and be gay ?" But though she was doing better now and had him talking as before, again and again she felt he was thinking how different Amy would have been--how in an instant, laughing and crying, she would have thrown herself into his arms! Yes, indeed, a Joe she had never known, shaped and moulded by the wife who had had him in those early years when a woman can do so much with a man, can do what sets him in a groove in work and living, tastes, ideals.

"And I thought I had done so much!" But Amy's hand had still been there; he had been her husband, all the time! It was a relief to have him gone.