She was right, she angrily told herself, in wanting to go slowly until she could discover real friends; but on the other hand she admitted that Joe had reason for being impatient.

At thirty-seven it is hard for a man to change his habits, and Amy had accustomed Joe to crave excitement every night.
Even Ethel herself, in some of her moods, felt restless to go about and be gay.

And again and again the youth in her rebelled against the trap into which she had fallen.
"The minute I even propose a play, I show him I'm well enough to go out.
And then he asks, 'Why not Amy's friends ?' And he remembers the mean little things that Fanny Carr must have told him--the beast!--and so he says, 'I see it all.

Ethel is only bluffing.

Now that I'm rich she's trying to make me drop the friends and the memory of the wife who stood by me when I was poor.'" Ethel even went out twice to their detestable parties, in the faint hope of finding one woman at least she would care to know.