Again and again she had been on the point of bursting out, for the sheer brutality of so much he had told her had made it very hard to sit still.

But then as he had spoken of Amy, Ethel had kept silent, watching his face intensely.

How much Amy must have done to have aroused such bitterness! A sense of reality in his talk, a clear and sudden consciousness of having the real Amy held up here before her eyes, had gripped Ethel like a vise.

Till now she had no clear idea of how much Joe had sacrificed.

But all that finer side of him, that early life, those dreams, those friends, had all been known to Amy.