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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of K, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: K
+
+Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9931]
+Posting Date: June 16, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK K ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Brannan
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+K
+
+By Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The Street stretched away north and south in two lines of ancient
+houses that seemed to meet in the distance. The man found it infinitely
+inviting. It had the well-worn look of an old coat, shabby but
+comfortable. The thought of coming there to live pleased him. Surely
+here would be peace--long evenings in which to read, quiet nights in
+which to sleep and forget. It was an impression of home, really, that
+it gave. The man did not know that, or care particularly. He had been
+wandering about a long time--not in years, for he was less than thirty.
+But it seemed a very long time.
+
+At the little house no one had seemed to think about references. He
+could have given one or two, of a sort. He had gone to considerable
+trouble to get them; and now, not to have them asked for--
+
+There was a house across and a little way down the Street, with a card
+in the window that said: "Meals, twenty-five cents." Evidently the
+midday meal was over; men who looked like clerks and small shopkeepers
+were hurrying away. The Nottingham curtains were pinned back, and just
+inside the window a throaty barytone was singing:
+
+     "Home is the hunter, home from the hill:
+      And the sailor, home from sea."
+
+Across the Street, the man smiled grimly--Home!
+
+For perhaps an hour Joe Drummond had been wandering up and down the
+Street. His straw hat was set on the back of his head, for the evening
+was warm; his slender shoulders, squared and resolute at eight, by nine
+had taken on a disconsolate droop. Under a street lamp he consulted his
+watch, but even without that he knew what the hour was. Prayer meeting
+at the corner church was over; boys of his own age were ranging
+themselves along the curb, waiting for the girl of the moment. When she
+came, a youth would appear miraculously beside her, and the world-old
+pairing off would have taken place.
+
+The Street emptied. The boy wiped the warm band of his hat and slapped
+it on his head again. She was always treating him like this--keeping him
+hanging about, and then coming out, perfectly calm and certain that
+he would still be waiting. By George, he'd fool her, for once: he'd go
+away, and let her worry. She WOULD worry. She hated to hurt anyone. Ah!
+
+Across the Street, under an old ailanthus tree, was the house he
+watched, a small brick, with shallow wooden steps and--curious
+architecture of Middle West sixties--a wooden cellar door beside the
+steps.
+
+In some curious way it preserved an air of distinction among its more
+pretentious neighbors, much as a very old lady may now and then lend
+tone to a smart gathering. On either side of it, the taller houses had
+an appearance of protection rather than of patronage. It was a matter
+of self-respect, perhaps. No windows on the Street were so spotlessly
+curtained, no doormat so accurately placed, no "yard" in the rear so
+tidy with morning-glory vines over the whitewashed fence.
+
+The June moon had risen, sending broken shafts of white light through
+the ailanthus to the house door. When the girl came at last, she stepped
+out into a world of soft lights and wavering shadows, fragrant with tree
+blossoms not yet overpowering, hushed of its daylight sounds of playing
+children and moving traffic.
+
+The house had been warm. Her brown hair lay moist on her forehead, her
+thin white dress was turned in at the throat. She stood on the steps,
+the door closed behind her, and threw out her arms in a swift gesture to
+the cool air. The moonlight clothed her as with a garment. From across
+the Street the boy watched her with adoring, humble eyes. All his
+courage was for those hours when he was not with her.
+
+"Hello, Joe."
+
+"Hello, Sidney."
+
+He crossed over, emerging out of the shadows into her enveloping
+radiance. His ardent young eyes worshiped her as he stood on the
+pavement.
+
+"I'm late. I was taking out bastings for mother."
+
+"Oh, that's all right."
+
+Sidney sat down on the doorstep, and the boy dropped at her feet.
+
+"I thought of going to prayer meeting, but mother was tired. Was
+Christine there?"
+
+"Yes; Palmer Howe took her home."
+
+He was at his ease now. He had discarded his hat, and lay back on his
+elbows, ostensibly to look at the moon. Actually his brown eyes rested
+on the face of the girl above him. He was very happy. "He's crazy about
+Chris. She's good-looking, but she's not my sort."
+
+"Pray, what IS your sort?"
+
+"You."
+
+She laughed softly. "You're a goose, Joe!"
+
+She settled herself more comfortably on the doorstep and drew along
+breath.
+
+"How tired I am! Oh--I haven't told you. We've taken a roomer!"
+
+"A what?"
+
+"A roomer." She was half apologetic. The Street did not approve of
+roomers. "It will help with the rent. It's my doing, really. Mother is
+scandalized."
+
+"A woman?"
+
+"A man."
+
+"What sort of man?"
+
+"How do I know? He is coming tonight. I'll tell you in a week."
+
+Joe was sitting bolt upright now, a little white.
+
+"Is he young?"
+
+"He's a good bit older than you, but that's not saying he's old."
+
+Joe was twenty-one, and sensitive of his youth.
+
+"He'll be crazy about you in two days."
+
+She broke into delighted laughter.
+
+"I'll not fall in love with him--you can be certain of that. He is tall
+and very solemn. His hair is quite gray over his ears."
+
+Joe cheered.
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"K. Le Moyne."
+
+"K.?"
+
+"That's what he said."
+
+Interest in the roomer died away. The boy fell into the ecstasy of
+content that always came with Sidney's presence. His inarticulate young
+soul was swelling with thoughts that he did not know how to put into
+words. It was easy enough to plan conversations with Sidney when he was
+away from her. But, at her feet, with her soft skirts touching him as
+she moved, her eager face turned to him, he was miserably speechless.
+
+Unexpectedly, Sidney yawned. He was outraged.
+
+"If you're sleepy--"
+
+"Don't be silly. I love having you. I sat up late last night, reading.
+I wonder what you think of this: one of the characters in the book I was
+reading says that every man who--who cares for a woman leaves his mark
+on her! I suppose she tries to become what he thinks she is, for the
+time anyhow, and is never just her old self again."
+
+She said "cares for" instead of "loves." It is one of the traditions of
+youth to avoid the direct issue in life's greatest game. Perhaps
+"love" is left to the fervent vocabulary of the lover. Certainly, as if
+treading on dangerous ground, Sidney avoided it.
+
+"Every man! How many men are supposed to care for a woman, anyhow?"
+
+"Well, there's the boy who--likes her when they're both young."
+
+A bit of innocent mischief this, but Joe straightened.
+
+"Then they both outgrow that foolishness. After that there are usually
+two rivals, and she marries one of them--that's three. And--"
+
+"Why do they always outgrow that foolishness?" His voice was unsteady.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. One's ideas change. Anyhow, I'm only telling you what
+the book said."
+
+"It's a silly book."
+
+"I don't believe it's true," she confessed. "When I got started I just
+read on. I was curious."
+
+More eager than curious, had she only known. She was fairly vibrant with
+the zest of living. Sitting on the steps of the little brick house,
+her busy mind was carrying her on to where, beyond the Street, with its
+dingy lamps and blossoming ailanthus, lay the world that was some day to
+lie to her hand. Not ambition called her, but life.
+
+The boy was different. Where her future lay visualized before her,
+heroic deeds, great ambitions, wide charity, he planned years with her,
+selfish, contented years. As different as smug, satisfied summer from
+visionary, palpitating spring, he was for her--but she was for all the
+world.
+
+By shifting his position his lips came close to her bare young arm. It
+tempted him.
+
+"Don't read that nonsense," he said, his eyes on the arm. "And--I'll
+never outgrow my foolishness about you, Sidney."
+
+Then, because he could not help it, he bent over and kissed her arm.
+
+She was just eighteen, and Joe's devotion was very pleasant. She
+thrilled to the touch of his lips on her flesh; but she drew her arm
+away.
+
+"Please--I don't like that sort of thing."
+
+"Why not?" His voice was husky.
+
+"It isn't right. Besides, the neighbors are always looking out the
+windows."
+
+The drop from her high standard of right and wrong to the neighbors'
+curiosity appealed suddenly to her sense of humor. She threw back her
+head and laughed. He joined her, after an uncomfortable moment. But he
+was very much in earnest. He sat, bent forward, turning his new straw
+hat in his hands.
+
+"I guess you know how I feel. Some of the fellows have crushes on girls
+and get over them. I'm not like that. Since the first day I saw you I've
+never looked at another girl. Books can say what they like: there are
+people like that, and I'm one of them."
+
+There was a touch of dogged pathos in his voice. He was that sort, and
+Sidney knew it. Fidelity and tenderness--those would be hers if she
+married him. He would always be there when she wanted him, looking at
+her with loving eyes, a trifle wistful sometimes because of his lack of
+those very qualities he so admired in her--her wit, her resourcefulness,
+her humor. But he would be there, not strong, perhaps, but always loyal.
+
+"I thought, perhaps," said Joe, growing red and white, and talking to
+the hat, "that some day, when we're older, you--you might be willing to
+marry me, Sid. I'd be awfully good to you."
+
+It hurt her to say no. Indeed, she could not bring herself to say it.
+In all her short life she had never willfully inflicted a wound.
+And because she was young, and did not realize that there is a short
+cruelty, like the surgeon's, that is mercy in the end, she temporized.
+
+"There is such a lot of time before we need think of such things! Can't
+we just go on the way we are?"
+
+"I'm not very happy the way we are."
+
+"Why, Joe!"
+
+"Well, I'm not"--doggedly. "You're pretty and attractive. When I see a
+fellow staring at you, and I'd like to smash his face for him, I haven't
+the right."
+
+"And a precious good thing for you that you haven't!" cried Sidney,
+rather shocked.
+
+There was silence for a moment between them. Sidney, to tell the truth,
+was obsessed by a vision of Joe, young and hot-eyed, being haled to the
+police station by virtue of his betrothal responsibilities. The boy was
+vacillating between relief at having spoken and a heaviness of spirit
+that came from Sidney's lack of enthusiastic response.
+
+"Well, what do you think about it?"
+
+"If you are asking me to give you permission to waylay and assault every
+man who dares to look at me--"
+
+"I guess this is all a joke to you."
+
+She leaned over and put a tender hand on his arm.
+
+"I don't want to hurt you; but, Joe, I don't want to be engaged yet.
+I don't want to think about marrying. There's such a lot to do in the
+world first. There's such a lot to see and be."
+
+"Where?" he demanded bitterly. "Here on this Street? Do you want
+more time to pull bastings for your mother? Or to slave for your Aunt
+Harriet? Or to run up and down stairs, carrying towels to roomers? Marry
+me and let me take care of you."
+
+Once again her dangerous sense of humor threatened her. He looked
+so boyish, sitting there with the moonlight on his bright hair, so
+inadequate to carry out his magnificent offer. Two or three of the
+star blossoms from the tree had fallen all his head. She lifted them
+carefully away.
+
+"Let me take care of myself for a while. I've never lived my own life.
+You know what I mean. I'm not unhappy; but I want to do something.
+And some day I shall,--not anything big; I know. I can't do that,--but
+something useful. Then, after years and years, if you still want me,
+I'll come back to you."
+
+"How soon?"
+
+"How can I know that now? But it will be a long time."
+
+He drew a long breath and got up. All the joy had gone out of the summer
+night for him, poor lad. He glanced down the Street, where Palmer Howe
+had gone home happily with Sidney's friend Christine. Palmer would
+always know how he stood with Christine. She would never talk about
+doing things, or being things. Either she would marry Palmer or she
+would not. But Sidney was not like that. A fellow did not even caress
+her easily. When he had only kissed her arm--He trembled a little at the
+memory.
+
+"I shall always want you," he said. "Only--you will never come back."
+
+It had not occurred to either of them that this coming back, so
+tragically considered, was dependent on an entirely problematical going
+away. Nothing, that early summer night, seemed more unlikely than that
+Sidney would ever be free to live her own life. The Street, stretching
+away to the north and to the south in two lines of houses that seemed
+to meet in the distance, hemmed her in. She had been born in the little
+brick house, and, as she was of it, so it was of her. Her hands had
+smoothed and painted the pine floors; her hands had put up the twine on
+which the morning-glories in the yard covered the fences; had, indeed,
+with what agonies of slacking lime and adding blueing, whitewashed the
+fence itself!
+
+"She's capable," Aunt Harriet had grumblingly admitted, watching from
+her sewing-machine Sidney's strong young arms at this humble spring
+task.
+
+"She's wonderful!" her mother had said, as she bent over her hand work.
+She was not strong enough to run the sewing-machine.
+
+So Joe Drummond stood on the pavement and saw his dream of taking Sidney
+in his arms fade into an indefinite futurity.
+
+"I'm not going to give you up," he said doggedly. "When you come back,
+I'll be waiting."
+
+The shock being over, and things only postponed, he dramatized his grief
+a trifle, thrust his hands savagely into his pockets, and scowled down
+the Street. In the line of his vision, his quick eye caught a tiny
+moving shadow, lost it, found it again.
+
+"Great Scott! There goes Reginald!" he cried, and ran after the shadow.
+"Watch for the McKees' cat!"
+
+Sidney was running by that time; they were gaining. Their quarry, a
+four-inch chipmunk, hesitated, gave a protesting squeak, and was caught
+in Sidney's hand.
+
+"You wretch!" she cried. "You miserable little beast--with cats
+everywhere, and not a nut for miles!"
+
+"That reminds me,"--Joe put a hand into his pocket,--"I brought some
+chestnuts for him, and forgot them. Here."
+
+Reginald's escape had rather knocked the tragedy out of the evening.
+True, Sidney would not marry him for years, but she had practically
+promised to sometime. And when one is twenty-one, and it is a summer
+night, and life stretches eternities ahead, what are a few years more or
+less?
+
+Sidney was holding the tiny squirrel in warm, protecting hands. She
+smiled up at the boy.
+
+"Good-night, Joe."
+
+"Good-night. I say, Sidney, it's more than half an engagement. Won't you
+kiss me good-night?"
+
+She hesitated, flushed and palpitating. Kisses were rare in the staid
+little household to which she belonged.
+
+"I--I think not."
+
+"Please! I'm not very happy, and it will be something to remember."
+
+Perhaps, after all, Sidney's first kiss would have gone without her
+heart,--which was a thing she had determined would never happen,--gone
+out of sheer pity. But a tall figure loomed out of the shadows and
+approached with quick strides.
+
+"The roomer!" cried Sidney, and backed away.
+
+"Damn the roomer!"
+
+Poor Joe, with the summer evening quite spoiled, with no caress to
+remember, and with a potential rival who possessed both the years and
+the inches he lacked, coming up the Street!
+
+The roomer advanced steadily. When he reached the doorstep, Sidney
+was demurely seated and quite alone. The roomer, who had walked
+fast, stopped and took off his hat. He looked very warm. He carried
+a suitcase, which was as it should be. The men of the Street always
+carried their own luggage, except the younger Wilson across the way. His
+tastes were known to be luxurious.
+
+"Hot, isn't it?" Sidney inquired, after a formal greeting. She indicated
+the place on the step just vacated by Joe. "You'd better cool off out
+here. The house is like an oven. I think I should have warned you of
+that before you took the room. These little houses with low roofs are
+fearfully hot."
+
+The new roomer hesitated. The steps were very low, and he was tall.
+Besides, he did not care to establish any relations with the people
+in the house. Long evenings in which to read, quiet nights in which to
+sleep and forget--these were the things he had come for.
+
+But Sidney had moved over and was smiling up at him. He folded up
+awkwardly on the low step. He seemed much too big for the house. Sidney
+had a panicky thought of the little room upstairs.
+
+"I don't mind heat. I--I suppose I don't think about it," said the
+roomer, rather surprised at himself.
+
+Reginald, having finished his chestnut, squeaked for another. The roomer
+started.
+
+"Just Reginald--my ground-squirrel." Sidney was skinning a nut with her
+strong white teeth. "That's another thing I should have told you. I'm
+afraid you'll be sorry you took the room."
+
+The roomer smiled in the shadow.
+
+"I'm beginning to think that YOU are sorry."
+
+She was all anxiety to reassure him:--
+
+"It's because of Reginald. He lives under my--under your bureau. He's
+really not troublesome; but he's building a nest under the bureau,
+and if you don't know about him, it's rather unsettling to see a paper
+pattern from the sewing-room, or a piece of cloth, moving across the
+floor."
+
+Mr. Le Moyne thought it might be very interesting. "Although, if there's
+nest-building going on, isn't it--er--possible that Reginald is a lady
+ground-squirrel?"
+
+Sidney was rather distressed, and, seeing this, he hastened to add that,
+for all he knew, all ground-squirrels built nests, regardless of sex.
+As a matter of fact, it developed that he knew nothing whatever of
+ground-squirrels. Sidney was relieved. She chatted gayly of the tiny
+creature--of his rescue in the woods from a crowd of little boys, of his
+restoration to health and spirits, and of her expectation, when he was
+quite strong, of taking him to the woods and freeing him.
+
+Le Moyne, listening attentively, began to be interested. His quick mind
+had grasped the fact that it was the girl's bedroom he had taken. Other
+things he had gathered that afternoon from the humming sewing-machine,
+from Sidney's businesslike way of renting the little room, from the
+glimpse of a woman in a sunny window, bent over a needle. Genteel
+poverty was what it meant, and more--the constant drain of disheartened,
+middle-aged women on the youth and courage of the girl beside him.
+
+K. Le Moyne, who was living his own tragedy those days, what with
+poverty and other things, sat on the doorstep while Sidney talked, and
+swore a quiet oath to be no further weight on the girl's buoyant spirit.
+And, since determining on a virtue is halfway to gaining it, his voice
+lost its perfunctory note. He had no intention of letting the Street
+encroach on him. He had built up a wall between himself and the rest of
+the world, and he would not scale it. But he held no grudge against it.
+Let others get what they could out of living.
+
+Sidney, suddenly practical, broke in on his thoughts:--
+
+"Where are you going to get your meals?"
+
+"I hadn't thought about it. I can stop in somewhere on my way downtown.
+I work in the gas office--I don't believe I told you. It's rather
+haphazard--not the gas office, but the eating. However, it's
+convenient."
+
+"It's very bad for you," said Sidney, with decision. "It leads to
+slovenly habits, such as going without when you're in a hurry, and that
+sort of thing. The only thing is to have some one expecting you at a
+certain time."
+
+"It sounds like marriage." He was lazily amused.
+
+"It sounds like Mrs. McKee's boarding-house at the corner. Twenty-one
+meals for five dollars, and a ticket to punch. Tillie, the dining-room
+girl, punches for every meal you get. If you miss any meals, your ticket
+is good until it is punched. But Mrs. McKee doesn't like it if you
+miss."
+
+"Mrs. McKee for me," said Le Moyne. "I daresay, if I know
+that--er--Tillie is waiting with the punch, I'll be fairly regular to my
+meals."
+
+It was growing late. The Street, which mistrusted night air, even on a
+hot summer evening, was closing its windows. Reginald, having eaten
+his fill, had cuddled in the warm hollow of Sidney's lap, and slept.
+By shifting his position, the man was able to see the girl's face. Very
+lovely it was, he thought. Very pure, almost radiant--and young. From
+the middle age of his almost thirty years, she was a child. There had
+been a boy in the shadows when he came up the Street. Of course there
+would be a boy--a nice, clear-eyed chap--
+
+Sidney was looking at the moon. With that dreamer's part of her that she
+had inherited from her dead and gone father, she was quietly worshiping
+the night. But her busy brain was working, too,--the practical brain
+that she had got from her mother's side.
+
+"What about your washing?" she inquired unexpectedly.
+
+K. Le Moyne, who had built a wall between himself and the world, had
+already married her to the youth of the shadows, and was feeling an odd
+sense of loss.
+
+"Washing?"
+
+"I suppose you've been sending things to the laundry, and--what do you
+do about your stockings?"
+
+"Buy cheap ones and throw 'em away when they're worn out." There seemed
+to be no reserve with this surprising young person.
+
+"And buttons?"
+
+"Use safety-pins. When they're closed one can button over them as well
+as--"
+
+"I think," said Sidney, "that it is quite time some one took a little
+care of you. If you will give Katie, our maid, twenty-five cents a week,
+she'll do your washing and not tear your things to ribbons. And I'll
+mend them."
+
+Sheer stupefaction was K. Le Moyne's. After a moment:--
+
+"You're really rather wonderful, Miss Page. Here am I, lodged, fed,
+washed, ironed, and mended for seven dollars and seventy-five cents a
+week!"
+
+"I hope," said Sidney severely, "that you'll put what you save in the
+bank."
+
+He was still somewhat dazed when he went up the narrow staircase to
+his swept and garnished room. Never, in all of a life that had been
+active,--until recently,--had he been so conscious of friendliness and
+kindly interest. He expanded under it. Some of the tired lines left his
+face. Under the gas chandelier, he straightened and threw out his arms.
+Then he reached down into his coat pocket and drew out a wide-awake and
+suspicious Reginald.
+
+"Good-night, Reggie!" he said. "Good-night, old top!" He hardly
+recognized his own voice. It was quite cheerful, although the little
+room was hot, and although, when he stood, he had a perilous feeling
+that the ceiling was close above. He deposited Reginald carefully on
+the floor in front of the bureau, and the squirrel, after eyeing him,
+retreated to its nest.
+
+It was late when K. Le Moyne retired to bed. Wrapped in a paper and
+securely tied for the morning's disposal, was considerable masculine
+underclothing, ragged and buttonless. Not for worlds would he have had
+Sidney discover his threadbare inner condition. "New underwear for yours
+tomorrow, K. Le Moyne," he said to himself, as he unknotted his cravat.
+"New underwear, and something besides K. for a first name."
+
+He pondered over that for a time, taking off his shoes slowly and
+thinking hard. "Kenneth, King, Kerr--" None of them appealed to him.
+And, after all, what did it matter? The old heaviness came over him.
+
+He dropped a shoe, and Reginald, who had gained enough courage to emerge
+and sit upright on the fender, fell over backward.
+
+Sidney did not sleep much that night. She lay awake, gazing into the
+scented darkness, her arms under her head. Love had come into her life
+at last. A man--only Joe, of course, but it was not the boy himself, but
+what he stood for, that thrilled her had asked her to be his wife.
+
+In her little back room, with the sweetness of the tree blossoms
+stealing through the open window, Sidney faced the great mystery of life
+and love, and flung out warm young arms. Joe would be thinking of her
+now, as she thought of him. Or would he have gone to sleep, secure in
+her half promise? Did he really love her?
+
+The desire to be loved! There was coming to Sidney a time when love
+would mean, not receiving, but giving--the divine fire instead of the
+pale flame of youth. At last she slept.
+
+A night breeze came through the windows and spread coolness through
+the little house. The ailanthus tree waved in the moonlight and sent
+sprawling shadows over the wall of K. Le Moyne's bedroom. In the yard
+the leaves of the morning-glory vines quivered as if under the touch of
+a friendly hand.
+
+K. Le Moyne slept diagonally in his bed, being very long. In sleep the
+lines were smoothed out of his face. He looked like a tired, overgrown
+boy. And while he slept the ground-squirrel ravaged the pockets of his
+shabby coat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Sidney could not remember when her Aunt Harriet had not sat at the
+table. It was one of her earliest disillusionments to learn that Aunt
+Harriet lived with them, not because she wished to, but because Sidney's
+father had borrowed her small patrimony and she was "boarding it out."
+Eighteen years she had "boarded it out." Sidney had been born and grown
+to girlhood; the dreamer father had gone to his grave, with valuable
+patents lost for lack of money to renew them--gone with his faith in
+himself destroyed, but with his faith in the world undiminished: for he
+left his wife and daughter without a dollar of life insurance.
+
+Harriet Kennedy had voiced her own view of the matter, the after the
+funeral, to one of the neighbors:--
+
+"He left no insurance. Why should he bother? He left me."
+
+To the little widow, her sister, she had been no less bitter, and more
+explicit.
+
+"It looks to me, Anna," she said, "as if by borrowing everything I had
+George had bought me, body and soul, for the rest of my natural life.
+I'll stay now until Sidney is able to take hold. Then I'm going to live
+my own life. It will be a little late, but the Kennedys live a long
+time."
+
+The day of Harriet's leaving had seemed far away to Anna Page. Sidney
+was still her baby, a pretty, rather leggy girl, in her first year
+at the High School, prone to saunter home with three or four
+knickerbockered boys in her train, reading "The Duchess" stealthily, and
+begging for longer dresses. She had given up her dolls, but she still
+made clothes for them out of scraps from Harriet's sewing-room. In the
+parlance of the Street, Harriet "sewed"--and sewed well.
+
+She had taken Anna into business with her, but the burden of the
+partnership had always been on Harriet. To give her credit, she had not
+complained. She was past forty by that time, and her youth had slipped
+by in that back room with its dingy wallpaper covered with paper
+patterns.
+
+On the day after the arrival of the roomer, Harriet Kennedy came down to
+breakfast a little late. Katie, the general housework girl, had tied
+a small white apron over her generous gingham one, and was serving
+breakfast. From the kitchen came the dump of an iron, and cheerful
+singing. Sidney was ironing napkins. Mrs. Page, who had taken advantage
+of Harriet's tardiness to read the obituary column in the morning paper,
+dropped it.
+
+But Harriet did not sit down. It was her custom to jerk her chair out
+and drop into it, as if she grudged every hour spent on food. Sidney,
+not hearing the jerk, paused with her iron in air.
+
+"Sidney."
+
+"Yes, Aunt Harriet."
+
+"Will you come in, please?"
+
+Katie took the iron from her.
+
+"You go. She's all dressed up, and she doesn't want any coffee."
+
+So Sidney went in. It was to her that Harriet made her speech:--
+
+"Sidney, when your father died, I promised to look after both you and
+your mother until you were able to take care of yourself. That was five
+years ago. Of course, even before that I had helped to support you."
+
+"If you would only have your coffee, Harriet!"
+
+Mrs. Page sat with her hand on the handle of the old silver-plated
+coffee-pot. Harriet ignored her.
+
+"You are a young woman now. You have health and energy, and you have
+youth, which I haven't. I'm past forty. In the next twenty years, at the
+outside, I've got not only to support myself, but to save something to
+keep me after that, if I live. I'll probably live to be ninety. I don't
+want to live forever, but I've always played in hard luck."
+
+Sidney returned her gaze steadily.
+
+"I see. Well, Aunt Harriet, you're quite right. You've been a saint to
+us, but if you want to go away--"
+
+"Harriet!" wailed Mrs. Page, "you're not thinking--"
+
+"Please, mother."
+
+Harriet's eyes softened as she looked at the girl
+
+"We can manage," said Sidney quietly. "We'll miss you, but it's time we
+learned to depend on ourselves."
+
+After that, in a torrent, came Harriet's declaration of independence.
+And, mixed in with its pathetic jumble of recriminations, hostility to
+her sister's dead husband, and resentment for her lost years, came
+poor Harriet's hopes and ambitions, the tragic plea of a woman who must
+substitute for the optimism and energy of youth the grim determination
+of middle age.
+
+"I can do good work," she finished. "I'm full of ideas, if I could get a
+chance to work them out. But there's no chance here. There isn't a woman
+on the Street who knows real clothes when she sees them. They don't even
+know how to wear their corsets. They send me bundles of hideous stuff,
+with needles and shields and imitation silk for lining, and when I
+turn out something worth while out of the mess they think the dress is
+queer!"
+
+Mrs. Page could not get back of Harriet's revolt to its cause. To her,
+Harriet was not an artist pleading for her art; she was a sister and a
+bread-winner deserting her trust.
+
+"I'm sure," she said stiffly, "we paid you back every cent we borrowed.
+If you stayed here after George died, it was because you offered to."
+
+Her chin worked. She fumbled for the handkerchief at her belt. But
+Sidney went around the table and flung a young arm over her aunt's
+shoulders.
+
+"Why didn't you say all that a year ago? We've been selfish, but we're
+not as bad as you think. And if any one in this world is entitled to
+success you are. Of course we'll manage."
+
+Harriet's iron repression almost gave way. She covered her emotion with
+details:--
+
+"Mrs. Lorenz is going to let me make Christine some things, and if
+they're all right I may make her trousseau."
+
+"Trousseau--for Christine!"
+
+"She's not engaged, but her mother says it's only a matter of a short
+time. I'm going to take two rooms in the business part of town, and put
+a couch in the backroom to sleep on."
+
+Sidney's mind flew to Christine and her bright future, to a trousseau
+bought with the Lorenz money, to Christine settled down, a married
+woman, with Palmer Howe. She came back with an effort. Harriet had two
+triangular red spots in her sallow cheeks.
+
+"I can get a few good models--that's the only way to start. And if you
+care to do hand work for me, Anna, I'll send it to you, and pay you the
+regular rates. There isn't the call for it there used to be, but just a
+touch gives dash."
+
+ All of Mrs. Page's grievances had worked their way to the surface.  Sidney
+and Harriet had made her world, such as it was, and her world was in
+revolt. She flung out her hands.
+
+"I suppose I must do something. With you leaving, and Sidney renting her
+room and sleeping on a folding-bed in the sewing-room, everything seems
+upside down. I never thought I should live to see strange men running in
+and out of this house and carrying latch-keys."
+
+This in reference to Le Moyne, whose tall figure had made a hurried exit
+some time before.
+
+Nothing could have symbolized Harriet's revolt more thoroughly than her
+going upstairs after a hurried breakfast, and putting on her hat and
+coat. She had heard of rooms, she said, and there was nothing urgent in
+the work-room. Her eyes were brighter already as she went out. Sidney,
+kissing her in the hall and wishing her luck, realized suddenly what
+a burden she and her mother must have been for the last few years. She
+threw her head up proudly. They would never be a burden again--never, as
+long as she had strength and health!
+
+By evening Mrs. Page had worked herself into a state bordering on
+hysteria. Harriet was out most of the day. She came in at three o'clock,
+and Katie gave her a cup of tea. At the news of her sister's condition,
+she merely shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"She'll not die, Katie," she said calmly. "But see that Miss Sidney eats
+something, and if she is worried tell her I said to get Dr. Ed."
+
+Very significant of Harriet's altered outlook was this casual summoning
+of the Street's family doctor. She was already dealing in larger
+figures. A sort of recklessness had come over her since the morning.
+Already she was learning that peace of mind is essential to successful
+endeavor. Somewhere Harriet had read a quotation from a Persian poet;
+she could not remember it, but its sense had stayed with her: "What
+though we spill a few grains of corn, or drops of oil from the cruse?
+These be the price of peace."
+
+So Harriet, having spilled oil from her cruse in the shape of Dr. Ed,
+departed blithely. The recklessness of pure adventure was in her blood.
+She had taken rooms at a rental that she determinedly put out of her
+mind, and she was on her way to buy furniture. No pirate, fitting out
+a ship for the highways of the sea, ever experienced more guilty and
+delightful excitement.
+
+The afternoon dragged away. Dr. Ed was out "on a case" and might not be
+in until evening. Sidney sat in the darkened room and waved a fan over
+her mother's rigid form.
+
+At half after five, Johnny Rosenfeld from the alley, who worked for a
+florist after school, brought a box of roses to Sidney, and departed
+grinning impishly. He knew Joe, had seen him in the store. Soon the
+alley knew that Sidney had received a dozen Killarney roses at three
+dollars and a half, and was probably engaged to Joe Drummond.
+
+"Dr. Ed," said Sidney, as he followed her down the stairs, "can you
+spare the time to talk to me a little while?"
+
+Perhaps the elder Wilson had a quick vision of the crowded office
+waiting across the Street; but his reply was prompt:
+
+"Any amount of time."
+
+Sidney led the way into the small parlor, where Joe's roses, refused by
+the petulant invalid upstairs, bloomed alone.
+
+"First of all," said Sidney, "did you mean what you said upstairs?"
+
+Dr. Ed thought quickly.
+
+"Of course; but what?"
+
+"You said I was a born nurse."
+
+The Street was very fond of Dr. Ed. It did not always approve of him.
+It said--which was perfectly true--that he had sacrificed himself to his
+brother's career: that, for the sake of that brilliant young surgeon,
+Dr. Ed had done without wife and children; that to send him abroad
+he had saved and skimped; that he still went shabby and drove the old
+buggy, while Max drove about in an automobile coupe. Sidney, not at
+all of the stuff martyrs are made of, sat in the scented parlor and,
+remembering all this, was ashamed of her rebellion.
+
+"I'm going into a hospital," said Sidney.
+
+Dr. Ed waited. He liked to have all the symptoms before he made a
+diagnosis or ventured an opinion. So Sidney, trying to be cheerful, and
+quite unconscious of the anxiety in her voice, told her story.
+
+"It's fearfully hard work, of course," he commented, when she had
+finished.
+
+"So is anything worth while. Look at the way you work!"
+
+Dr. Ed rose and wandered around the room.
+
+"You're too young."
+
+"I'll get older."
+
+"I don't think I like the idea," he said at last. "It's splendid work
+for an older woman. But it's life, child--life in the raw. As we get
+along in years we lose our illusions--some of them, not all, thank God.
+But for you, at your age, to be brought face to face with things as
+they are, and not as we want them to be--it seems such an unnecessary
+sacrifice."
+
+"Don't you think," said Sidney bravely, "that you are a poor person to
+talk of sacrifice? Haven't you always, all your life--"
+
+Dr. Ed colored to the roots of his straw-colored hair.
+
+"Certainly not," he said almost irritably. "Max had genius; I
+had--ability. That's different. One real success is better than two
+halves. Not"--he smiled down at her--"not that I minimize my usefulness.
+Somebody has to do the hack-work, and, if I do say it myself, I'm a
+pretty good hack."
+
+"Very well," said Sidney. "Then I shall be a hack, too. Of course, I had
+thought of other things,--my father wanted me to go to college,--but I'm
+strong and willing. And one thing I must make up my mind to, Dr. Ed; I
+shall have to support my mother."
+
+Harriet passed the door on her way in to a belated supper. The man in
+the parlor had a momentary glimpse of her slender, sagging shoulders,
+her thin face, her undisguised middle age.
+
+"Yes," he said, when she was out of hearing. "It's hard, but I dare say
+it's right enough, too. Your aunt ought to have her chance. Only--I wish
+it didn't have to be."
+
+Sidney, left alone, stood in the little parlor beside the roses. She
+touched them tenderly, absently. Life, which the day before had called
+her with the beckoning finger of dreams, now reached out grim insistent
+hands. Life--in the raw.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+K. Le Moyne had wakened early that first morning in his new quarters.
+When he sat up and yawned, it was to see his worn cravat disappearing
+with vigorous tugs under the bureau. He rescued it, gently but firmly.
+
+"You and I, Reginald," he apostrophized the bureau, "will have to come
+to an understanding. What I leave on the floor you may have, but what
+blows down is not to be touched."
+
+Because he was young and very strong, he wakened to a certain lightness
+of spirit. The morning sun had always called him to a new day, and the
+sun was shining. But he grew depressed as he prepared for the office.
+He told himself savagely, as he put on his shabby clothing, that, having
+sought for peace and now found it, he was an ass for resenting it. The
+trouble was, of course, that he came of fighting stock: soldiers and
+explorers, even a gentleman adventurer or two, had been his forefather.
+He loathed peace with a deadly loathing.
+
+Having given up everything else, K. Le Moyne had also given up the
+love of woman. That, of course, is figurative. He had been too busy for
+women; and now he was too idle. A small part of his brain added figures
+in the office of a gas company daily, for the sum of two dollars and
+fifty cents per eight-hour working day. But the real K. Le Moyne
+that had dreamed dreams, had nothing to do with the figures, but sat
+somewhere in his head and mocked him as he worked at his task.
+
+"Time's going by, and here you are!" mocked the real person--who was, of
+course, not K. Le Moyne at all. "You're the hell of a lot of use, aren't
+you? Two and two are four and three are seven--take off the discount.
+That's right. It's a man's work, isn't it?"
+
+"Somebody's got to do this sort of thing," protested the small part of
+his brain that earned the two-fifty per working day. "And it's a great
+anaesthetic. He can't think when he's doing it. There's something
+practical about figures, and--rational."
+
+He dressed quickly, ascertaining that he had enough money to buy a
+five-dollar ticket at Mrs. McKee's; and, having given up the love of
+woman with other things, he was careful not to look about for Sidney on
+his way.
+
+He breakfasted at Mrs. McKee's, and was initiated into the mystery of
+the ticket punch. The food was rather good, certainly plentiful;
+and even his squeamish morning appetite could find no fault with the
+self-respecting tidiness of the place. Tillie proved to be neat and
+austere. He fancied it would not be pleasant to be very late for one's
+meals--in fact, Sidney had hinted as much. Some of the "mealers"--the
+Street's name for them--ventured on various small familiarities of
+speech with Tillie. K. Le Moyne himself was scrupulously polite, but
+reserved. He was determined not to let the Street encroach on his
+wretchedness. Because he had come to live there was no reason why it
+should adopt him. But he was very polite. When the deaf-and-dumb book
+agent wrote something on a pencil pad and pushed it toward him, he
+replied in kind.
+
+"We are very glad to welcome you to the McKee family," was what was
+written on the pad.
+
+"Very happy, indeed, to be with you," wrote back Le Moyne--and realized
+with a sort of shock that he meant it.
+
+The kindly greeting had touched him. The greeting and the breakfast
+cheered him; also, he had evidently made some headway with Tillie.
+
+"Don't you want a toothpick?" she asked, as he went out.
+
+In K.'s previous walk of life there had been no toothpicks; or, if there
+were any, they were kept, along with the family scandals, in a closet.
+But nearly a year of buffeting about had taught him many things. He took
+one, and placed it nonchalantly in his waistcoat pocket, as he had seen
+the others do.
+
+Tillie, her rush hour over, wandered back into the kitchen and poured
+herself a cup of coffee. Mrs. McKee was reweighing the meat order.
+
+"Kind of a nice fellow," Tillie said, cup to lips--"the new man."
+
+"Week or meal?"
+
+"Week. He'd be handsome if he wasn't so grouchy-looking. Lit up some
+when Mr. Wagner sent him one of his love letters. Rooms over at the
+Pages'."
+
+Mrs. McKee drew a long breath and entered the lam stew in a book.
+
+"When I think of Anna Page taking a roomer, it just about knocks me
+over, Tillie. And where they'll put him, in that little house--he
+looked thin, what I saw of him. Seven pounds and a quarter." This last
+referred, not to K. Le Moyne, of course, but to the lamb stew.
+
+"Thin as a fiddle-string."
+
+"Just keep an eye on him, that he gets enough." Then, rather ashamed of
+her unbusinesslike methods: "A thin mealer's a poor advertisement. Do
+you suppose this is the dog meat or the soup scraps?"
+
+Tillie was a niece of Mrs. Rosenfeld. In such manner was most of the
+Street and its environs connected; in such wise did its small gossip
+start at one end and pursue its course down one side and up the other.
+
+"Sidney Page is engaged to Joe Drummond," announced Tillie. "He sent her
+a lot of pink roses yesterday."
+
+There was no malice in her flat statement, no envy. Sidney and she,
+living in the world of the Street, occupied different spheres. But the
+very lifelessness in her voice told how remotely such things touched
+her, and thus was tragic. "Mealers" came and went--small clerks, petty
+tradesmen, husbands living alone in darkened houses during the summer
+hegira of wives. Various and catholic was Tillie's male acquaintance,
+but compounded of good fellowship only. Once, years before, romance had
+paraded itself before her in the garb of a traveling nurseryman--had
+walked by and not come back.
+
+"And Miss Harriet's going into business for herself. She's taken rooms
+downtown; she's going to be Madame Something or other."
+
+Now, at last, was Mrs. McKee's attention caught riveted.
+
+"For the love of mercy! At her age! It's downright selfish. If she
+raises her prices she can't make my new foulard."
+
+Tillie sat at the table, her faded blue eyes fixed on the back yard,
+where her aunt, Mrs. Rosenfeld, was hanging out the week's wash of table
+linen.
+
+"I don't know as it's so selfish," she reflected. "We've only got one
+life. I guess a body's got the right to live it."
+
+Mrs. McKee eyed her suspiciously, but Tillie's face showed no emotion.
+
+"You don't ever hear of Schwitter, do you?"
+
+"No; I guess she's still living."
+
+Schwitter, the nurseryman, had proved to have a wife in an insane
+asylum. That was why Tillie's romance had only paraded itself before her
+and had gone by.
+
+"You got out of that lucky."
+
+Tillie rose and tied a gingham apron over her white one.
+
+"I guess so. Only sometimes--"
+
+"I don't know as it would have been so wrong. He ain't young, and I
+ain't. And we're not getting any younger. He had nice manners; he'd have
+been good to me."
+
+Mrs. McKee's voice failed her. For a moment she gasped like a fish.
+Then:
+
+"And him a married man!"
+
+"Well, I'm not going to do it," Tillie soothed her. "I get to thinking
+about it sometimes; that's all. This new fellow made me think of him.
+He's got the same nice way about him."
+
+Aye, the new man had made her think of him, and June, and the lovers
+who lounged along the Street in the moonlit avenues toward the park and
+love; even Sidney's pink roses. Change was in the very air of the Street
+that June morning. It was in Tillie, making a last clutch at youth, and
+finding, in this pale flare of dying passion, courage to remember what
+she had schooled herself to forget; in Harriet asserting her right to
+live her life; in Sidney, planning with eager eyes a life of service
+which did not include Joe; in K. Le Moyne, who had built up a wall
+between himself and the world, and was seeing it demolished by a
+deaf-and-dumb book agent whose weapon was a pencil pad!
+
+And yet, for a week nothing happened: Joe came in the evenings and sat
+on the steps with Sidney, his honest heart, in his eyes. She could not
+bring herself at first to tell him about the hospital. She put it off
+from day to day. Anna, no longer sulky, accepted wit the childlike faith
+Sidney's statement that "they'd get along; she had a splendid scheme,"
+and took to helping Harriet in her preparations for leaving. Tillie,
+afraid of her rebellious spirit, went to prayer meeting. And K. Le
+Moyne, finding his little room hot in the evenings and not wishing to
+intrude on the two on the doorstep, took to reading his paper in the
+park, and after twilight to long, rapid walks out into the country. The
+walks satisfied the craving of his active body for exercise, and tired
+him so he could sleep. On one such occasion he met Mr. Wagner, and they
+carried on an animated conversation until it was too dark to see the
+pad. Even then, it developed that Wagner could write in the dark; and
+he secured the last word in a long argument by doing this and striking a
+match for K. to read by.
+
+When K. was sure that the boy had gone, he would turn back toward the
+Street. Some of the heaviness of his spirit always left him at sight of
+the little house. Its kindly atmosphere seemed to reach out and envelop
+him. Within was order and quiet, the fresh-down bed, the tidiness of
+his ordered garments. There was even affection--Reginald, waiting on
+the fender for his supper, and regarding him with wary and bright-eyed
+friendliness.
+
+Life, that had seemed so simple, had grown very complicated for Sidney.
+There was her mother to break the news to, and Joe. Harriet would
+approve, she felt; but these others! To assure Anna that she must
+manage alone for three years, in order to be happy and comfortable
+afterward--that was hard enough to tell Joe she was planning a future
+without him, to destroy the light in his blue eyes--that hurt.
+
+After all, Sidney told K. first. One Friday evening, coming home late,
+as usual, he found her on the doorstep, and Joe gone. She moved over
+hospitably. The moon had waxed and waned, and the Street was dark. Even
+the ailanthus blossoms had ceased their snow-like dropping. The colored
+man who drove Dr. Ed in the old buggy on his daily rounds had brought
+out the hose and sprinkled the street. Within this zone of freshness, of
+wet asphalt and dripping gutters, Sidney sat, cool and silent.
+
+"Please sit down. It is cool now. My idea of luxury is to have the
+Street sprinkled on a hot night."
+
+K. disposed of his long legs on the steps. He was trying to fit his own
+ideas of luxury to a garden hose and a city street.
+
+"I'm afraid you're working too hard."
+
+"I? I do a minimum of labor for a minimum of wage.
+
+"But you work at night, don't you?"
+
+K. was natively honest. He hesitated. Then:
+
+"No, Miss Page."
+
+"But You go out every evening!" Suddenly the truth burst on her.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she said. "I do believe--why, how silly of you!"
+
+K. was most uncomfortable.
+
+"Really, I like it," he protested. "I hang over a desk all day, and in
+the evening I want to walk. I ramble around the park and see lovers on
+benches--it's rather thrilling. They sit on the same benches evening
+after evening. I know a lot of them by sight, and if they're not there
+I wonder if they have quarreled, or if they have finally got married and
+ended the romance. You can see how exciting it is."
+
+Quite suddenly Sidney laughed.
+
+"How very nice you are!" she said--"and how absurd! Why should their
+getting married end the romance? And don't you know that, if you insist
+on walking the streets and parks at night because Joe Drummond is here,
+I shall have to tell him not to come?"
+
+This did not follow, to K.'s mind. They had rather a heated argument
+over it, and became much better acquainted.
+
+"If I were engaged to him," Sidney ended, her cheeks very pink, "I--I
+might understand. But, as I am not--"
+
+"Ah!" said K., a trifle unsteadily. "So you are not?"
+
+Only a week--and love was one of the things she had had to give up, with
+others. Not, of course, that he was in love with Sidney then. But he had
+been desperately lonely, and, for all her practical clearheadedness,
+she was softly and appealingly feminine. By way of keeping his head, he
+talked suddenly and earnestly of Mrs. McKee, and food, and Tillie, and
+of Mr. Wagner and the pencil pad.
+
+"It's like a game," he said. "We disagree on everything, especially
+Mexico. If you ever tried to spell those Mexican names--"
+
+"Why did you think I was engaged?" she insisted.
+
+Now, in K.'s walk of life--that walk of life where there are no
+toothpicks, and no one would have believed that twenty-one meals could
+have been secured for five dollars with a ticket punch thrown in--young
+girls did not receive the attention of one young man to the exclusion of
+others unless they were engaged. But he could hardly say that.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Those things get in the air. I am quite certain, for
+instance, that Reginald suspects it."
+
+"It's Johnny Rosenfeld," said Sidney, with decision. "It's horrible, the
+way things get about. Because Joe sent me a box of roses--As a matter
+of fact, I'm not engaged, or going to be, Mr. Le Moyne. I'm going into a
+hospital to be a nurse."
+
+Le Moyne said nothing. For just a moment he closed his eyes. A man is in
+a rather a bad way when, every time he closes his eyes, he sees the
+same thing, especially if it is rather terrible. When it gets to a point
+where he lies awake at night and reads, for fear of closing them--
+
+"You're too young, aren't you?"
+
+"Dr. Ed--one of the Wilsons across the Street--is going to help me about
+that. His brother Max is a big surgeon there. I expect you've heard of
+him. We're very proud of him in the Street."
+
+Lucky for K. Le Moyne that the moon no longer shone on the low gray
+doorstep, that Sidney's mind had traveled far away to shining floors
+and rows of white beds. "Life--in the raw," Dr. Ed had said that other
+afternoon. Closer to her than the hospital was life in the raw that
+night.
+
+So, even here, on this quiet street in this distant city, there was
+to be no peace. Max Wilson just across the way! It--it was ironic. Was
+there no place where a man could lose himself? He would have to move on
+again, of course.
+
+But that, it seemed, was just what he could not do. For:
+
+"I want to ask you to do something, and I hope you'll be quite frank,"
+said Sidney.
+
+"Anything that I can do--"
+
+"It's this. If you are comfortable, and--and like the room and all that,
+I wish you'd stay." She hurried on: "If I could feel that mother had a
+dependable person like you in the house, it would all be easier."
+
+Dependable! That stung.
+
+"But--forgive my asking; I'm really interested--can your mother manage?
+You'll get practically no money during your training."
+
+"I've thought of that. A friend of mine, Christine Lorenz, is going to
+be married. Her people are wealthy, but she'll have nothing but what
+Palmer makes. She'd like to have the parlor and the sitting room
+behind. They wouldn't interfere with you at all," she added hastily.
+"Christine's father would build a little balcony at the side for them, a
+sort of porch, and they'd sit there in the evenings."
+
+Behind Sidney's carefully practical tone the man read appeal. Never
+before had he realized how narrow the girl's world had been. The Street,
+with but one dimension, bounded it! In her perplexity, she was appealing
+to him who was practically a stranger.
+
+And he knew then that he must do the thing she asked. He, who had fled
+so long, could roam no more. Here on the Street, with its menace just
+across, he must live, that she might work. In his world, men had worked
+that women might live in certain places, certain ways. This girl was
+going out to earn her living, and he would stay to make it possible. But
+no hint of all this was in his voice.
+
+"I shall stay, of course," he said gravely. "I--this is the nearest
+thing to home that I've known for a long time. I want you to know that."
+
+So they moved their puppets about, Anna and Harriet, Christine and
+her husband-to-be, Dr. Ed, even Tillie and the Rosenfelds; shifted and
+placed them, and, planning, obeyed inevitable law.
+
+"Christine shall come, then," said Sidney forsooth, "and we will throw
+out a balcony."
+
+So they planned, calmly ignorant that poor Christine's story and
+Tillie's and Johnny Rosenfeld's and all the others' were already written
+among the things that are, and the things that shall be hereafter.
+
+"You are very good to me," said Sidney.
+
+When she rose, K. Le Moyne sprang to his feet.
+
+Anna had noticed that he always rose when she entered his room,--with
+fresh towels on Katie's day out, for instance,--and she liked him for
+it. Years ago, the men she had known had shown this courtesy to their
+women; but the Street regarded such things as affectation.
+
+"I wonder if you would do me another favor? I'm afraid you'll take to
+avoiding me, if I keep on."
+
+"I don't think you need fear that."
+
+"This stupid story about Joe Drummond--I'm not saying I'll never marry
+him, but I'm certainly not engaged. Now and then, when you are taking
+your evening walks, if you would ask me to walk with you--"
+
+K. looked rather dazed.
+
+"I can't imagine anything pleasanter; but I wish you'd explain just
+how--"
+
+Sidney smiled at him. As he stood on the lowest step, their eyes were
+almost level.
+
+"If I walk with you, they'll know I'm not engaged to Joe," she said,
+with engaging directness.
+
+The house was quiet. He waited in the lower hall until she had reached
+the top of the staircase. For some curious reason, in the time to come,
+that was the way Sidney always remembered K. Le Moyne--standing in the
+little hall, one hand upstretched to shut off the gas overhead, and his
+eyes on hers above.
+
+"Good-night," said K. Le Moyne. And all the things he had put out of his
+life were in his voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+On the morning after Sidney had invited K. Le Moyne to take her to walk,
+Max Wilson came down to breakfast rather late. Dr. Ed had breakfasted an
+hour before, and had already attended, with much profanity on the part
+of the patient, to a boil on the back of Mr. Rosenfeld's neck.
+
+"Better change your laundry," cheerfully advised Dr. Ed, cutting a strip
+of adhesive plaster. "Your neck's irritated from your white collars."
+
+Rosenfeld eyed him suspiciously, but, possessing a sense of humor also,
+he grinned.
+
+"It ain't my everyday things that bother me," he replied. "It's my
+blankety-blank dress suit. But if a man wants to be tony--"
+
+"Tony" was not of the Street, but of its environs. Harriet was "tony"
+because she walked with her elbows in and her head up. Dr. Max was
+"tony" because he breakfasted late, and had a man come once a week and
+take away his clothes to be pressed. He was "tony," too, because he had
+brought back from Europe narrow-shouldered English-cut clothes, when the
+Street was still padding its shoulders. Even K. would have been classed
+with these others, for the stick that he carried on his walks, for the
+fact that his shabby gray coat was as unmistakably foreign in cut as Dr.
+Max's, had the neighborhood so much as known him by sight. But K., so
+far, had remained in humble obscurity, and, outside of Mrs. McKee's, was
+known only as the Pages' roomer.
+
+Mr. Rosenfeld buttoned up the blue flannel shirt which, with a pair of
+Dr. Ed's cast-off trousers, was his only wear; and fished in his pocket.
+
+"How much, Doc?"
+
+"Two dollars," said Dr. Ed briskly.
+
+"Holy cats! For one jab of a knife! My old woman works a day and a half
+for two dollars."
+
+"I guess it's worth two dollars to you to be able to sleep on your
+back." He was imperturbably straightening his small glass table. He knew
+Rosenfeld. "If you don't like my price, I'll lend you the knife the next
+time, and you can let your wife attend to you."
+
+Rosenfeld drew out a silver dollar, and followed it reluctantly with a
+limp and dejected dollar bill.
+
+"There are times," he said, "when, if you'd put me and the missus and a
+knife in the same room, you wouldn't have much left but the knife."
+
+Dr. Ed waited until he had made his stiff-necked exit. Then he took the
+two dollars, and, putting the money into an envelope, indorsed it in his
+illegible hand. He heard his brother's step on the stairs, and Dr. Ed
+made haste to put away the last vestiges of his little operation.
+
+Ed's lapses from surgical cleanliness were a sore trial to the younger
+man, fresh from the clinics of Europe. In his downtown office, to which
+he would presently make his leisurely progress, he wore a white coat,
+and sterilized things of which Dr. Ed did not even know the names.
+
+So, as he came down the stairs, Dr. Ed, who had wiped his tiny
+knife with a bit of cotton,--he hated sterilizing it; it spoiled the
+edge,--thrust it hastily into his pocket. He had cut boils without
+boiling anything for a good many years, and no trouble. But he was wise
+with the wisdom of the serpent and the general practitioner, and there
+was no use raising a discussion.
+
+Max's morning mood was always a cheerful one. Now and then the way of
+the transgressor is disgustingly pleasant. Max, who sat up until all
+hours of the night, drinking beer or whiskey-and-soda, and playing
+bridge, wakened to a clean tongue and a tendency to have a cigarette
+between shoes, so to speak. Ed, whose wildest dissipation had perhaps
+been to bring into the world one of the neighborhood's babies, wakened
+customarily to the dark hour of his day, when he dubbed himself failure
+and loathed the Street with a deadly loathing.
+
+So now Max brought his handsome self down the staircase and paused at
+the office door.
+
+"At it, already," he said. "Or have you been to bed?"
+
+"It's after nine," protested Ed mildly. "If I don't start early, I never
+get through."
+
+Max yawned.
+
+"Better come with me," he said. "If things go on as they've been doing,
+I'll have to have an assistant. I'd rather have you than anybody, of
+course." He put his lithe surgeon's hand on his brother's shoulder.
+"Where would I be if it hadn't been for you? All the fellows know what
+you've done."
+
+In spite of himself, Ed winced. It was one thing to work hard that there
+might be one success instead of two half successes. It was a different
+thing to advertise one's mediocrity to the world. His sphere of the
+Street and the neighborhood was his own. To give it all up and become
+his younger brother's assistant--even if it meant, as it would, better
+hours and more money--would be to submerge his identity. He could not
+bring himself to it.
+
+"I guess I'll stay where I am," he said. "They know me around here, and
+I know them. By the way, will you leave this envelope at Mrs. McKee's?
+Maggie Rosenfeld is ironing there to-day. It's for her."
+
+Max took the envelope absently.
+
+"You'll go on here to the end of your days, working for a pittance,"
+he objected. "Inside of ten years there'll be no general practitioners;
+then where will you be?"
+
+"I'll manage somehow," said his brother placidly. "I guess there will
+always be a few that can pay my prices better than what you specialists
+ask."
+
+Max laughed with genuine amusement.
+
+"I dare say, if this is the way you let them pay your prices."
+
+He held out the envelope, and the older man colored.
+
+Very proud of Dr. Max was his brother, unselfishly proud, of his skill,
+of his handsome person, of his easy good manners; very humble, too, of
+his own knowledge and experience. If he ever suspected any lack of
+finer fiber in Max, he put the thought away. Probably he was too rigid
+himself. Max was young, a hard worker. He had a right to play hard.
+
+He prepared his black bag for the day's calls--stethoscope, thermometer,
+eye-cup, bandages, case of small vials, a lump of absorbent cotton in
+a not over-fresh towel; in the bottom, a heterogeneous collection of
+instruments, a roll of adhesive plaster, a bottle or two of sugar-milk
+tablets for the children, a dog collar that had belonged to a dead
+collie, and had put in the bag in some curious fashion and there
+remained.
+
+He prepared the bag a little nervously, while Max ate. He felt that
+modern methods and the best usage might not have approved of the bag. On
+his way out he paused at the dining-room door.
+
+"Are you going to the hospital?"
+
+"Operating at four--wish you could come in."
+
+"I'm afraid not, Max. I've promised Sidney Page to speak about her to
+you. She wants to enter the training-school."
+
+"Too young," said Max briefly. "Why, she can't be over sixteen."
+
+"She's eighteen."
+
+"Well, even eighteen. Do you think any girl of that age is responsible
+enough to have life and death put in her hands? Besides, although I
+haven't noticed her lately, she used to be a pretty little thing. There
+is no use filling up the wards with a lot of ornaments; it keeps the
+internes all stewed up."
+
+"Since when," asked Dr. Ed mildly, "have you found good looks in a girl
+a handicap?"
+
+In the end they compromised. Max would see Sidney at his office. It
+would be better than having her run across the Street--would put things
+on the right footing. For, if he did have her admitted, she would have
+to learn at once that he was no longer "Dr. Max"; that, as a matter of
+fact, he was now staff, and entitled to much dignity, to speech without
+contradiction or argument, to clean towels, and a deferential interne at
+his elbow.
+
+Having given his promise, Max promptly forgot about it. The Street did
+not interest him. Christine and Sidney had been children when he went to
+Vienna, and since his return he had hardly noticed them. Society, always
+kind to single men of good appearance and easy good manners, had taken
+him up. He wore dinner or evening clothes five nights out of seven, and
+was supposed by his conservative old neighbors to be going the pace. The
+rumor had been fed by Mrs. Rosenfeld, who, starting out for her day's
+washing at six o'clock one morning, had found Dr. Max's car, lamps
+lighted, and engine going, drawn up before the house door, with its
+owner asleep at the wheel. The story traveled the length of the Street
+that day.
+
+"Him," said Mrs. Rosenfeld, who was occasionally flowery, "sittin' up
+as straight as this washboard, and his silk hat shinin' in the sun; but
+exceptin' the car, which was workin' hard and gettin' nowhere, the whole
+outfit in the arms of Morpheus."
+
+Mrs. Lorenz, whose day it was to have Mrs. Rosenfeld, and who was
+unfamiliar with mythology, gasped at the last word.
+
+"Mercy!" she said. "Do you mean to say he's got that awful drug habit!"
+
+Down the clean steps went Dr. Max that morning, a big man, almost as
+tall as K. Le Moyne, eager of life, strong and a bit reckless, not fine,
+perhaps, but not evil. He had the same zest of living as Sidney, but
+with this difference--the girl stood ready to give herself to life: he
+knew that life would come to him. All-dominating male was Dr. Max, that
+morning, as he drew on his gloves before stepping into his car. It was
+after nine o'clock. K. Le Moyne had been an hour at his desk. The McKee
+napkins lay ironed in orderly piles.
+
+Nevertheless, Dr. Max was suffering under a sense of defeat as he rode
+downtown. The night before, he had proposed to a girl and had been
+rejected. He was not in love with the girl,--she would have been a
+suitable wife, and a surgeon ought to be married; it gives people
+confidence,--but his pride was hurt. He recalled the exact words of the
+rejection.
+
+"You're too good-looking, Max," she had said, "and that's the truth. Now
+that operations are as popular as fancy dancing, and much less bother,
+half the women I know are crazy about their surgeons. I'm too fond of my
+peace of mind."
+
+"But, good Heavens! haven't you any confidence in me?" he had demanded.
+
+"None whatever, Max dear." She had looked at him with level,
+understanding eyes.
+
+He put the disagreeable recollection out of his mind as he parked his
+car and made his way to his office. Here would be people who believed
+in him, from the middle-aged nurse in her prim uniform to the row of
+patients sitting stiffly around the walls of the waiting-room. Dr. Max,
+pausing in the hall outside the door of his private office, drew a long
+breath. This was the real thing--work and plenty of it, a chance to show
+the other men what he could do, a battle to win! No humanitarian was he,
+but a fighter: each day he came to his office with the same battle lust.
+
+The office nurse had her back to him. When she turned, he faced an
+agreeable surprise. Instead of Miss Simpson, he faced a young and
+attractive girl, faintly familiar.
+
+"We tried to get you by telephone," she explained. "I am from the
+hospital. Miss Simpson's father died this morning, and she knew you
+would have to have some one. I was just starting for my vacation, so
+they sent me."
+
+"Rather a poor substitute for a vacation," he commented.
+
+She was a very pretty girl. He had seen her before in the hospital, but
+he had never really noticed how attractive she was. Rather stunning
+she was, he thought. The combination of yellow hair and dark eyes
+was unusual. He remembered, just in time, to express regret at Miss
+Simpson's bereavement.
+
+"I am Miss Harrison," explained the substitute, and held out his long
+white coat. The ceremony, purely perfunctory with Miss Simpson on duty,
+proved interesting, Miss Harrison, in spite of her high heels, being
+small and the young surgeon tall. When he was finally in the coat, she
+was rather flushed and palpitating.
+
+"But I KNEW your name, of course," lied Dr. Max. "And--I'm sorry about
+the vacation."
+
+After that came work. Miss Harrison was nimble and alert, but the
+surgeon worked quickly and with few words, was impatient when she could
+not find the things he called for, even broke into restrained profanity
+now and then. She went a little pale over her mistakes, but preserved
+her dignity and her wits. Now and then he found her dark eyes fixed
+on him, with something inscrutable but pleasing in their depths. The
+situation was: rather piquant. Consciously he was thinking only of what
+he was doing. Subconsciously his busy ego was finding solace after last
+night's rebuff.
+
+Once, during the cleaning up between cases, he dropped to a personality.
+He was drying his hands, while she placed freshly sterilized instruments
+on a glass table.
+
+"You are almost a foreign type, Miss Harrison. Last year, in a London
+ballet, I saw a blonde Spanish girl who looked like you."
+
+"My mother was a Spaniard." She did not look up.
+
+Where Miss Simpson was in the habit of clumping through the morning in
+flat, heavy shoes, Miss Harrison's small heels beat a busy tattoo on
+the tiled floor. With the rustling of her starched dress, the sound was
+essentially feminine, almost insistent. When he had time to notice it,
+it amused him that he did not find it annoying.
+
+Once, as she passed him a bistoury, he deliberately placed his fine
+hand over her fingers and smiled into her eyes. It was play for him; it
+lightened the day's work.
+
+Sidney was in the waiting-room. There had been no tedium in the
+morning's waiting. Like all imaginative people, she had the gift of
+dramatizing herself. She was seeing herself in white from head to
+foot, like this efficient young woman who came now and then to the
+waiting-room door; she was healing the sick and closing tired eyes; she
+was even imagining herself proposed to by an aged widower with grown
+children and quantities of money, one of her patients.
+
+She sat very demurely in the waiting-room with a magazine in her lap,
+and told her aged patient that she admired and respected him, but that
+she had given herself to the suffering poor.
+
+"Everything in the world that you want," begged the elderly gentleman.
+"You should see the world, child, and I will see it again through your
+eyes. To Paris first for clothes and the opera, and then--"
+
+"But I do not love you," Sidney replied, mentally but steadily. "In all
+the world I love only one man. He is--"
+
+She hesitated here. It certainly was not Joe, or K. Le Moyne of the
+gas office. It seem to her suddenly very sad that there was no one
+she loved. So many people went into hospitals because they had been
+disappointed in love.
+
+"Dr. Wilson will see you now."
+
+She followed Miss Harrison into the consulting room. Dr. Max--not the
+gloved and hatted Dr. Max of the Street, but a new person, one she had
+never known--stood in his white office, tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired,
+competent, holding out his long, immaculate surgeon's hand, and smiling
+down at her.
+
+Men, like jewels, require a setting. A clerk on a high stool, poring
+over a ledger, is not unimpressive, or a cook over her stove. But place
+the cook on the stool, poring over the ledger! Dr. Max, who had lived
+all his life on the edge of Sidney's horizon, now, by the simple
+changing of her point of view, loomed large and magnificent. Perhaps
+he knew it. Certainly he stood very erect. Certainly, too, there was
+considerable manner in the way in which he asked Miss Harrison to go out
+and close the door behind her.
+
+Sidney's heart, considering what was happening to it, behaved very well.
+
+"For goodness' sake, Sidney," said Dr. Max, "here you are a young lady
+and I've never noticed it!"
+
+This, of course, was not what he had intended to say, being staff and
+all that. But Sidney, visibly palpitant, was very pretty, much prettier
+than the Harrison girl, beating a tattoo with her heels in the next
+room.
+
+Dr. Max, belonging to the class of man who settles his tie every time he
+sees an attractive woman, thrust his hands into the pockets of his long
+white coat and surveyed her quizzically.
+
+"Did Dr. Ed tell you?"
+
+"Sit down. He said something about the hospital. How's your mother and
+Aunt Harriet?"
+
+"Very well--that is, mother's never quite well." She was sitting forward
+on her chair, her wide young eyes on him. "Is that--is your nurse from
+the hospital here?"
+
+"Yes. But she's not my nurse. She's a substitute."
+
+"The uniform is so pretty." Poor Sidney! with all the things she had
+meant to say about a life of service, and that, although she was young,
+she was terribly in earnest.
+
+"It takes a lot of plugging before one gets the uniform. Look here,
+Sidney; if you are going to the hospital because of the uniform, and
+with any idea of soothing fevered brows and all that nonsense--"
+
+She interrupted him, deeply flushed. Indeed, no. She wanted to work.
+She was young and strong, and surely a pair of willing hands--that was
+absurd about the uniform. She had no silly ideas. There was so much to
+do in the world, and she wanted to help. Some people could give money,
+but she couldn't. She could only offer service. And, partly through
+earnestness and partly through excitement, she ended in a sort of
+nervous sob, and, going to the window, stood with her back to him.
+
+He followed her, and, because they were old neighbors, she did not
+resent it when he put his hand on her shoulder.
+
+"I don't know--of course, if you feel like that about it," he said,
+"we'll see what can be done. It's hard work, and a good many times it
+seems futile. They die, you know, in spite of all we can do. And there
+are many things that are worse than death--"
+
+His voice trailed off. When he had started out in his profession, he
+had had some such ideal of service as this girl beside him. For just
+a moment, as he stood there close to her, he saw things again with the
+eyes of his young faith: to relieve pain, to straighten the crooked,
+to hurt that he might heal,--not to show the other men what he could
+do,--that had been his early creed. He sighed a little as he turned
+away.
+
+"I'll speak to the superintendent about you," he said. "Perhaps you'd
+like me to show you around a little."
+
+"When? To-day?"
+
+He had meant in a month, or a year. It was quite a minute before he
+replied:--
+
+"Yes, to-day, if you say. I'm operating at four. How about three
+o'clock?"
+
+She held out both hands, and he took them, smiling.
+
+"You are the kindest person I ever met."
+
+"And--perhaps you'd better not say you are applying until we find out if
+there is a vacancy."
+
+"May I tell one person?"
+
+"Mother?"
+
+"No. We--we have a roomer now. He is very much interested. I should like
+to tell him."
+
+He dropped her hands and looked at her in mock severity.
+
+"Much interested! Is he in love with you?"
+
+"Mercy, no!"
+
+"I don't believe it. I'm jealous. You know, I've always been more than
+half in love with you myself!"
+
+Play for him--the same victorious instinct that had made him touch Miss
+Harrison's fingers as she gave him the instrument. And Sidney knew how
+it was meant; she smiled into his eyes and drew down her veil briskly.
+
+"Then we'll say at three," she said calmly, and took an orderly and
+unflurried departure.
+
+But the little seed of tenderness had taken root. Sidney, passing in the
+last week or two from girlhood to womanhood,--outgrowing Joe, had she
+only known it, as she had outgrown the Street,--had come that day into
+her first contact with a man of the world. True, there was K. Le Moyne.
+But K. was now of the Street, of that small world of one dimension that
+she was leaving behind her.
+
+She sent him a note at noon, with word to Tillie at Mrs. McKee's to put
+it under his plate:--
+
+DEAR MR. LE MOYNE,--I am so excited I can hardly write. Dr. Wilson, the
+surgeon, is going to take me through the hospital this afternoon. Wish
+me luck. SIDNEY PAGE.
+
+K. read it, and, perhaps because the day was hot and his butter soft
+and the other "mealers" irritable with the heat, he ate little or no
+luncheon. Before he went out into the sun, he read the note again.
+To his jealous eyes came a vision of that excursion to the hospital.
+Sidney, all vibrant eagerness, luminous of eye, quick of bosom; and
+Wilson, sardonically smiling, amused and interested in spite of himself.
+He drew a long breath, and thrust the note in his pocket.
+
+The little house across the way sat square in the sun. The shades of his
+windows had been lowered against the heat. K. Le Moyne made an impulsive
+movement toward it and checked himself.
+
+As he went down the Street, Wilson's car came around the corner. Le
+Moyne moved quietly into the shadow of the church and watched the car go
+by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Sidney and K. Le Moyne sat under a tree and talked. In Sidney's lap
+lay a small pasteboard box, punched with many holes. It was the day of
+releasing Reginald, but she had not yet been able to bring herself to
+the point of separation. Now and then a furry nose protruded from one of
+the apertures and sniffed the welcome scent of pine and buttonball, red
+and white clover, the thousand spicy odors of field and woodland.
+
+"And so," said K. Le Moyne, "you liked it all? It didn't startle you?"
+
+"Well, in one way, of course--you see, I didn't know it was quite like
+that: all order and peace and quiet, and white beds and whispers, on
+top,--you know what I mean,--and the misery there just the same. Have
+you ever gone through a hospital?"
+
+K. Le Moyne was stretched out on the grass, his arms under his head. For
+this excursion to the end of the street-car line he had donned a pair
+of white flannel trousers and a belted Norfolk coat. Sidney had been
+divided between pride in his appearance and fear that the Street would
+deem him overdressed.
+
+At her question he closed his eyes, shutting out the peaceful arch and
+the bit of blue heaven overhead. He did not reply at once.
+
+"Good gracious, I believe he's asleep!" said Sidney to the pasteboard
+box.
+
+But he opened his eyes and smiled at her.
+
+"I've been around hospitals a little. I suppose now there is no question
+about your going?"
+
+"The superintendent said I was young, but that any protegee of Dr.
+Wilson's would certainly be given a chance."
+
+"It is hard work, night and day."
+
+"Do you think I am afraid of work?"
+
+"And--Joe?"
+
+Sidney colored vigorously and sat erect.
+
+"He is very silly. He's taken all sorts of idiotic notions in his head."
+
+"Such as--"
+
+"Well, he HATES the hospital, of course. As if, even if I meant to marry
+him, it wouldn't be years before he can be ready."
+
+"Do you think you are quite fair to Joe?"
+
+"I haven't promised to marry him."
+
+"But he thinks you mean to. If you have quite made up your mind not to,
+better tell him, don't you think? What--what are these idiotic notions?"
+
+Sidney considered, poking a slim finger into the little holes in the
+box.
+
+"You can see how stupid he is, and--and young. For one thing, he's
+jealous of you!"
+
+"I see. Of course that is silly, although your attitude toward his
+suspicion is hardly flattering to me."
+
+He smiled up at her.
+
+"I told him that I had asked you to bring me here to-day. He was
+furious. And that wasn't all."
+
+"No?"
+
+"He said I was flirting desperately with Dr. Wilson. You see, the day
+we went through the hospital, it was hot, and we went to Henderson's for
+soda-water. And, of course, Joe was there. It was really dramatic."
+
+K. Le Moyne was daily gaining the ability to see things from the angle
+of the Street. A month ago he could have seen no situation in two
+people, a man and a girl, drinking soda-water together, even with a boy
+lover on the next stool. Now he could view things through Joe's tragic
+eyes. And there as more than that. All day he had noticed how inevitably
+the conversation turned to the young surgeon. Did they start with
+Reginald, with the condition of the morning-glory vines, with the
+proposition of taking up the quaint paving-stones and macadamizing the
+Street, they ended with the younger Wilson.
+
+Sidney's active young brain, turned inward for the first time in her
+life, was still on herself.
+
+"Mother is plaintively resigned--and Aunt Harriet has been a trump.
+She's going to keep her room. It's really up to you."
+
+"To me?"
+
+"To your staying on. Mother trusts you absolutely. I hope you noticed
+that you got one of the apostle spoons with the custard she sent up
+to you the other night. And she didn't object to this trip to-day. Of
+course, as she said herself, it isn't as if you were young, or at all
+wild."
+
+In spite of himself, K. was rather startled. He felt old enough, God
+knew, but he had always thought of it as an age of the spirit. How old
+did this child think he was?
+
+"I have promised to stay on, in the capacity of watch-dog,
+burglar-alarm, and occasional recipient of an apostle spoon in a dish of
+custard. Lightning-conductor, too--your mother says she isn't afraid of
+storms if there is a man in the house. I'll stay, of course."
+
+The thought of his age weighed on him. He rose to his feet and threw
+back his fine shoulders.
+
+"Aunt Harriet and your mother and Christine and her husband-to-be,
+whatever his name is--we'll be a happy family. But, I warn you, if I
+ever hear of Christine's husband getting an apostle spoon--"
+
+She smiled up at him. "You are looking very grand to-day. But you have
+grass stains on your white trousers. Perhaps Katie can take them out."
+
+Quite suddenly K. felt that she thought him too old for such frivolity
+of dress. It put him on his mettle.
+
+"How old do you think I am, Miss Sidney?"
+
+She considered, giving him, after her kindly way, the benefit of the
+doubt.
+
+"Not over forty, I'm sure."
+
+"I'm almost thirty. It is middle age, of course, but it is not
+senility."
+
+She was genuinely surprised, almost disturbed.
+
+"Perhaps we'd better not tell mother," she said. "You don't mind being
+thought older?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+Clearly the subject of his years did not interest her vitally, for she
+harked back to the grass stains.
+
+"I'm afraid you're not saving, as you promised. Those are new clothes,
+aren't they?"
+
+"No, indeed. Bought years ago in England--the coat in London, the
+trousers in Bath, on a motor tour. Cost something like twelve shillings.
+Awfully cheap. They wear them for cricket."
+
+That was a wrong move, of course. Sidney must hear about England; and
+she marveled politely, in view of his poverty, about his being there.
+Poor Le Moyne floundered in a sea of mendacity, rose to a truth here and
+there, clutched at luncheon, and achieved safety at last.
+
+"To think," said Sidney, "that you have really been across the ocean! I
+never knew but one person who had been abroad. It is Dr. Max Wilson."
+
+Back again to Dr. Max! Le Moyne, unpacking sandwiches from a basket, was
+aroused by a sheer resentment to an indiscretion.
+
+"You like this Wilson chap pretty well, don't you?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You talk about him rather a lot."
+
+This was sheer recklessness, of course. He expected fury, annihilation.
+He did not look up, but busied himself with the luncheon. When the
+silence grew oppressive, he ventured to glance toward her. She was
+leaning forward, her chin cupped in her palms, staring out over the
+valley that stretched at their feet.
+
+"Don't speak to me for a minute or two," she said. "I'm thinking over
+what you have just said."
+
+Manlike, having raised the issue, K. would have given much to evade it.
+Not that he had owned himself in love with Sidney. Love was not for
+him. But into his loneliness and despair the girl had came like a ray of
+light. She typified that youth and hope that he had felt slipping away
+from him. Through her clear eyes he was beginning to see a new world.
+Lose her he must, and that he knew; but not this way.
+
+Down through the valley ran a shallow river, making noisy pretensions to
+both depth and fury. He remembered just such a river in the Tyrol, with
+this same Wilson on a rock, holding the hand of a pretty Austrian girl,
+while he snapped the shutter of a camera. He had that picture somewhere
+now; but the girl was dead, and, of the three, Wilson was the only one
+who had met life and vanquished it.
+
+"I've known him all my life," Sidney said at last. "You're perfectly
+right about one thing: I talk about him and I think about him. I'm being
+candid, because what's the use of being friends if we're not frank?
+I admire him--you'd have to see him in the hospital, with every one
+deferring to him and all that, to understand. And when you think of
+a manlike that, who holds life and death in his hands, of course you
+rather thrill. I--I honestly believe that's all there is to it."
+
+"If that's the whole thing, that's hardly a mad passion." He tried to
+smile; succeeded faintly.
+
+"Well, of course, there's this, too. I know he'll never look at me.
+I'll be one of forty nurses; indeed, for three months I'll be only a
+probationer. He'll probably never even remember I'm in the hospital at
+all."
+
+"I see. Then, if you thought he was in love with you, things would be
+different?"
+
+"If I thought Dr. Max Wilson was in love with me," said Sidney solemnly,
+"I'd go out of my head with joy."
+
+One of the new qualities that K. Le Moyne was cultivating was of living
+each day for itself. Having no past and no future, each day was worth
+exactly what it brought. He was to look back to this day with mingled
+feelings: sheer gladness at being out in the open with Sidney; the
+memory of the shock with which he realized that she was, unknown to
+herself, already in the throes of a romantic attachment for Wilson; and,
+long, long after, when he had gone down to the depths with her and
+saved her by his steady hand, with something of mirth for the untoward
+happening that closed the day.
+
+Sidney fell into the river.
+
+They had released Reginald, released him with the tribute of a
+shamefaced tear on Sidney's part, and a handful of chestnuts from K. The
+little squirrel had squeaked his gladness, and, tail erect, had darted
+into the grass.
+
+"Ungrateful little beast!" said Sidney, and dried her eyes. "Do you
+suppose he'll ever think of the nuts again, or find them?"
+
+"He'll be all right," K. replied. "The little beggar can take care of
+himself, if only--"
+
+"If only what?"
+
+"If only he isn't too friendly. He's apt to crawl into the pockets of
+any one who happens around."
+
+She was alarmed at that. To make up for his indiscretion, K. suggested a
+descent to the river. She accepted eagerly, and he helped her down. That
+was another memory that outlasted the day--her small warm hand in his;
+the time she slipped and he caught her; the pain in her eyes at one of
+his thoughtless remarks.
+
+"I'm going to be pretty lonely," he said, when she had paused in the
+descent and was taking a stone out of her low shoe. "Reginald gone, and
+you going! I shall hate to come home at night." And then, seeing her
+wince: "I've been whining all day. For Heaven's sake, don't look like
+that. If there's one sort of man I detest more than another, it's a man
+who is sorry for himself. Do you suppose your mother would object if
+we stayed, out here at the hotel for supper? I've ordered a moon,
+orange-yellow and extra size."
+
+"I should hate to have anything ordered and wasted."
+
+"Then we'll stay."
+
+"It's fearfully extravagant."
+
+"I'll be thrifty as to moons while you are in the hospital."
+
+So it was settled. And, as it happened, Sidney had to stay, anyhow. For,
+having perched herself out in the river on a sugar-loaf rock, she slid,
+slowly but with a dreadful inevitability, into the water. K. happened
+to be looking in another direction. So it occurred that at one moment,
+Sidney sat on a rock, fluffy white from head to feet, entrancingly
+pretty, and knowing it, and the next she was standing neck deep in
+water, much too startled to scream, and trying to be dignified under the
+rather trying circumstances. K. had not looked around. The splash had
+been a gentle one.
+
+"If you will be good enough," said Sidney, with her chin well up, "to
+give me your hand or a pole or something--because if the river rises an
+inch I shall drown."
+
+To his undying credit, K. Le Moyne did not laugh when he turned and saw
+her. He went out on the sugar-loaf rock, and lifted her bodily up its
+slippery sides. He had prodigious strength, in spite of his leanness.
+
+"Well!" said Sidney, when they were both on the rock, carefully
+balanced.
+
+"Are you cold?"
+
+"Not a bit. But horribly unhappy. I must look a sight." Then,
+remembering her manners, as the Street had it, she said primly:--
+
+"Thank you for saving me."
+
+"There wasn't any danger, really, unless--unless the river had risen."
+
+And then, suddenly, he burst into delighted laughter, the first,
+perhaps, for months. He shook with it, struggled at the sight of her
+injured face to restrain it, achieved finally a degree of sobriety by
+fixing his eyes on the river-bank.
+
+"When you have quite finished," said Sidney severely, "perhaps you will
+take me to the hotel. I dare say I shall have to be washed and ironed."
+
+He drew her cautiously to her feet. Her wet skirts clung to her; her
+shoes were sodden and heavy. She clung to him frantically, her eyes on
+the river below. With the touch of her hands the man's mirth died.
+He held her very carefully, very tenderly, as one holds something
+infinitely precious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The same day Dr. Max operated at the hospital. It was a Wilson day, the
+young surgeon having six cases. One of the innovations Dr. Max had
+made was to change the hour for major operations from early morning to
+mid-afternoon. He could do as well later in the day,--his nerves were
+steady, and uncounted numbers of cigarettes did not make his hand
+shake,--and he hated to get up early.
+
+The staff had fallen into the way of attending Wilson's operations. His
+technique was good; but technique alone never gets a surgeon anywhere.
+Wilson was getting results. Even the most jealous of that most jealous
+of professions, surgery, had to admit that he got results.
+
+Operations were over for the afternoon. The last case had been
+wheeled out of the elevator. The pit of the operating-room was
+in disorder--towels everywhere, tables of instruments, steaming
+sterilizers. Orderlies were going about, carrying out linens, emptying
+pans. At a table two nurses were cleaning instruments and putting
+them away in their glass cases. Irrigators were being emptied, sponges
+recounted and checked off on written lists.
+
+In the midst of the confusion, Wilson stood giving last orders to the
+interne at his elbow. As he talked he scoured his hands and arms with a
+small brush; bits of lather flew off on to the tiled floor. His speech
+was incisive, vigorous. At the hospital they said his nerves were iron;
+there was no let-down after the day's work. The internes worshiped and
+feared him. He was just, but without mercy. To be able to work like
+that, so certainly, with so sure a touch, and to look like a Greek god!
+Wilson's only rival, a gynecologist named O'Hara, got results, too; but
+he sweated and swore through his operations, was not too careful as to
+asepsis, and looked like a gorilla.
+
+The day had been a hard one. The operating room nurses were fagged. Two
+or three probationers had been sent to help cleanup, and a senior nurse.
+Wilson's eyes caught the nurse's eyes as she passed him.
+
+"Here, too, Miss Harrison!" he said gayly. "Have they set you on my
+trail?"
+
+With the eyes of the room on her, the girl answered primly:--
+
+"I'm to be in your office in the mornings, Dr. Wilson, and anywhere I am
+needed in the afternoons."
+
+"And your vacation?"
+
+"I shall take it when Miss Simpson comes back."
+
+Although he went on at once with his conversation with the interne, he
+still heard the click of her heels about the room. He had not lost the
+fact that she had flushed when he spoke to her. The mischief that was
+latent in him came to the surface. When he had rinsed his hands, he
+followed her, carrying the towel to where she stood talking to the
+superintendent of the training school.
+
+"Thanks very much, Miss Gregg," he said. "Everything went off nicely."
+
+"I was sorry about that catgut. We have no trouble with what we prepare
+ourselves. But with so many operations--"
+
+He was in a magnanimous mood. He smiled' at Miss Gregg, who was elderly
+and gray, but visibly his creature.
+
+"That's all right. It's the first time, and of course it will be the
+last."
+
+"The sponge list, doctor."
+
+He glanced over it, noting accurately sponges prepared, used, turned in.
+But he missed no gesture of the girl who stood beside Miss Gregg.
+
+"All right." He returned the list. "That was a mighty pretty probationer
+I brought you yesterday."
+
+Two small frowning lines appeared between Miss Harrison's dark brows.
+He caught them, caught her somber eyes too, and was amused and rather
+stimulated.
+
+"She is very young."
+
+"Prefer 'em young," said Dr. Max. "Willing to learn at that age. You'll
+have to watch her, though. You'll have all the internes buzzing around,
+neglecting business."
+
+Miss Gregg rather fluttered. She was divided between her disapproval
+of internes at all times and of young probationers generally, and her
+allegiance to the brilliant surgeon whose word was rapidly becoming law
+in the hospital. When an emergency of the cleaning up called her away,
+doubt still in her eyes, Wilson was left alone with Miss Harrison.
+
+"Tired?" He adopted the gentle, almost tender tone that made most women
+his slaves.
+
+"A little. It is warm."
+
+"What are you going to do this evening? Any lectures?"
+
+"Lectures are over for the summer. I shall go to prayers, and after that
+to the roof for air."
+
+There was a note of bitterness in her voice. Under the eyes of the other
+nurses, she was carefully contained. They might have been outlining the
+morning's work at his office.
+
+"The hand lotion, please."
+
+She brought it obediently and poured it into his cupped hands. The
+solutions of the operating-room played havoc with the skin: the
+surgeons, and especially Wilson, soaked their hands plentifully with a
+healing lotion.
+
+Over the bottle their eyes met again, and this time the girl smiled
+faintly.
+
+"Can't you take a little ride to-night and cool off? I'll have the car
+wherever you say. A ride and some supper--how does it sound? You could
+get away at seven--"
+
+"Miss Gregg is coming!"
+
+With an impassive face, the girl took the bottle away. The workers
+of the operating-room surged between them. An interne presented an
+order-book; moppers had come in and waited to clean the tiled floor.
+There seemed no chance for Wilson to speak to Miss Harrison again.
+
+But he was clever with the guile of the pursuing male. Eyes of all on
+him, he turned at the door of the wardrobe-room, where he would exchange
+his white garments for street clothing, and spoke to her over the heads
+of a dozen nurses.
+
+"That patient's address that I had forgotten, Miss Harrison, is the
+corner of the Park and Ellington Avenue."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+She played the game well, was quite calm. He admired her coolness.
+Certainly she was pretty, and certainly, too, she was interested in
+him. The hurt to his pride of a few nights before was healed. He went
+whistling into the wardrobe-room. As he turned he caught the interne's
+eye, and there passed between them a glance of complete comprehension.
+The interne grinned.
+
+The room was not empty. His brother was there, listening to the comments
+of O'Hara, his friendly rival.
+
+"Good work, boy!" said O'Hara, and clapped a hairy hand on his shoulder.
+"That last case was a wonder. I'm proud of you, and your brother here is
+indecently exalted. It was the Edwardes method, wasn't it? I saw it done
+at his clinic in New York."
+
+"Glad you liked it. Yes. Edwardes was a pal at mine in Berlin. A great
+surgeon, too, poor old chap!"
+
+"There aren't three men in the country with the nerve and the hand for
+it."
+
+O'Hara went out, glowing with his own magnanimity. Deep in his heart
+was a gnawing of envy--not for himself, but for his work. These young
+fellows with no family ties, who could run over to Europe and bring back
+anything new that was worth while, they had it all over the older men.
+Not that he would have changed things. God forbid!
+
+Dr. Ed stood by and waited while his brother got into his street
+clothes. He was rather silent. There were many times when he wished that
+their mother could have lived to see how he had carried out his promise
+to "make a man of Max." This was one of them. Not that he took any
+credit for Max's brilliant career--but he would have liked her to know
+that things were going well. He had a picture of her over his office
+desk. Sometimes he wondered what she would think of his own untidy
+methods compared with Max's extravagant order--of the bag, for instance,
+with the dog's collar in it, and other things. On these occasions he
+always determined to clear out the bag.
+
+"I guess I'll be getting along," he said. "Will you be home to dinner?"
+
+"I think not. I'll--I'm going to run out of town, and eat where it's
+cool."
+
+The Street was notoriously hot in summer. When Dr. Max was newly home
+from Europe, and Dr. Ed was selling a painfully acquired bond or two
+to furnish the new offices downtown, the brothers had occasionally gone
+together, by way of the trolley, to the White Springs Hotel for supper.
+Those had been gala days for the older man. To hear names that he had
+read with awe, and mispronounced, most of his life, roll off Max's
+tongue--"Old Steinmetz" and "that ass of a Heydenreich"; to hear the
+medical and surgical gossip of the Continent, new drugs, new technique,
+the small heart-burnings of the clinics, student scandal--had brought
+into his drab days a touch of color. But that was over now. Max had new
+friends, new social obligations; his time was taken up. And pride would
+not allow the older brother to show how he missed the early days.
+
+Forty-two he was, and; what with sleepless nights and twenty years of
+hurried food, he looked fifty. Fifty, then, to Max's thirty.
+
+"There's a roast of beef. It's a pity to cook a roast for one."
+
+Wasteful, too, this cooking of food for two and only one to eat it. A
+roast of beef meant a visit, in Dr. Ed's modest-paying clientele. He
+still paid the expenses of the house on the Street.
+
+"Sorry, old man; I've made another arrangement."
+
+They left the hospital together. Everywhere the younger man received the
+homage of success. The elevator-man bowed and flung the doors open,
+with a smile; the pharmacy clerk, the doorkeeper, even the convalescent
+patient who was polishing the great brass doorplate, tendered their
+tribute. Dr. Ed looked neither to right nor left.
+
+At the machine they separated. But Dr. Ed stood for a moment with his
+hand on the car.
+
+"I was thinking, up there this afternoon," he said slowly, "that I'm not
+sure I want Sidney Page to become a nurse."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"There's a good deal in life that a girl need not know--not, at least,
+until her husband tells her. Sidney's been guarded, and it's bound to be
+a shock."
+
+"It's her own choice."
+
+"Exactly. A child reaches out for the fire."
+
+The motor had started. For the moment, at least, the younger Wilson had
+no interest in Sidney Page.
+
+"She'll manage all right. Plenty of other girls have taken the training
+and come through without spoiling their zest for life."
+
+Already, as the car moved off, his mind was on his appointment for the
+evening.
+
+Sidney, after her involuntary bath in the river, had gone into temporary
+eclipse at the White Springs Hotel. In the oven of the kitchen stove sat
+her two small white shoes, stuffed with paper so that they might dry
+in shape. Back in a detached laundry, a sympathetic maid was ironing
+various soft white garments, and singing as she worked.
+
+Sidney sat in a rocking-chair in a hot bedroom. She was carefully
+swathed in a sheet from neck to toes, except for her arms, and she was
+being as philosophic as possible. After all, it was a good chance to
+think things over. She had very little time to think, generally.
+
+She meant to give up Joe Drummond. She didn't want to hurt him. Well,
+there was that to think over and a matter of probation dresses to be
+talked over later with her Aunt Harriet. Also, there was a great deal of
+advice to K. Le Moyne, who was ridiculously extravagant, before trusting
+the house to him. She folded her white arms and prepared to think over
+all these things. As a matter of fact, she went mentally, like an arrow
+to its mark, to the younger Wilson--to his straight figure in its white
+coat, to his dark eyes and heavy hair, to the cleft in his chin when he
+smiled.
+
+"You know, I have always been more than half in love with you myself..."
+
+Some one tapped lightly at the door. She was back again in the stuffy
+hotel room, clutching the sheet about her.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"It's Le Moyne. Are you all right?"
+
+"Perfectly. How stupid it must be for you!"
+
+"I'm doing very well. The maid will soon be ready. What shall I order
+for supper?"
+
+"Anything. I'm starving."
+
+Whatever visions K. Le Moyne may have had of a chill or of a feverish
+cold were dispelled by that.
+
+"The moon has arrived, as per specifications. Shall we eat on the
+terrace?"
+
+"I have never eaten on a terrace in my life. I'd love it."
+
+"I think your shoes have shrunk."
+
+"Flatterer!" She laughed. "Go away and order supper. And I can see fresh
+lettuce. Shall we have a salad?"
+
+K. Le Moyne assured her through the door that he would order a salad,
+and prepared to descend.
+
+But he stood for a moment in front of the closed door, for the mere
+sound of her moving, beyond it. Things had gone very far with the Pages'
+roomer that day in the country; not so far as they were to go, but far
+enough to let him see on the brink of what misery he stood.
+
+He could not go away. He had promised her to stay: he was needed. He
+thought he could have endured seeing her marry Joe, had she cared for
+the boy. That way, at least, lay safety for her. The boy had fidelity
+and devotion written large over him. But this new complication--her
+romantic interest in Wilson, the surgeon's reciprocal interest in her,
+with what he knew of the man--made him quail.
+
+From the top of the narrow staircase to the foot, and he had lived
+a year's torment! At the foot, however, he was startled out of his
+reverie. Joe Drummond stood there waiting for him, his blue eyes
+recklessly alight.
+
+"You--you dog!" said Joe.
+
+There were people in the hotel parlor. Le Moyne took the frenzied boy by
+the elbow and led him past the door to the empty porch.
+
+"Now," he said, "if you will keep your voice down, I'll listen to what
+you have to say."
+
+"You know what I've got to say."
+
+This failing to draw from K. Le Moyne anything but his steady glance,
+Joe jerked his arm free, and clenched his fist.
+
+"What did you bring her out here for?"
+
+"I do not know that I owe you any explanation, but I am willing to
+give you one. I brought her out here for a trolley ride and a picnic
+luncheon. Incidentally we brought the ground squirrel out and set him
+free."
+
+He was sorry for the boy. Life not having been all beer and skittles to
+him, he knew that Joe was suffering, and was marvelously patient with
+him.
+
+"Where is she now?"
+
+"She had the misfortune to fall in the river. She is upstairs." And,
+seeing the light of unbelief in Joe's eyes: "If you care to make a tour
+of investigation, you will find that I am entirely truthful. In the
+laundry a maid--"
+
+"She is engaged to me"--doggedly. "Everybody in the neighborhood knows
+it; and yet you bring her out here for a picnic! It's--it's damned
+rotten treatment."
+
+His fist had unclenched. Before K. Le Moyne's eyes his own fell. He felt
+suddenly young and futile; his just rage turned to blustering in his
+ears.
+
+"Now, be honest with yourself. Is there really an engagement?"
+
+"Yes," doggedly.
+
+"Even in that case, isn't it rather arrogant to say that--that the young
+lady in question can accept no ordinary friendly attentions from another
+man?"
+
+Utter astonishment left Joe almost speechless. The Street, of course,
+regarded an engagement as a setting aside of the affianced couple, an
+isolation of two, than which marriage itself was not more a solitude a
+deux. After a moment:--
+
+"I don't know where you came from," he said, "but around here decent men
+cut out when a girl's engaged."
+
+"I see!"
+
+"What's more, what do we know about you? Who are you, anyhow? I've
+looked you up. Even at your office they don't know anything. You may be
+all right, but how do I know it? And, even if you are, renting a room in
+the Page house doesn't entitle you to interfere with the family. You get
+her into trouble and I'll kill you!"
+
+It took courage, that speech, with K. Le Moyne towering five inches
+above him and growing a little white about the lips.
+
+"Are you going to say all these things to Sidney?"
+
+"Does she allow you to call her Sidney?"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"I am. And I am going to find out why you were upstairs just now."
+
+Perhaps never in his twenty-two years had young Drummond been so near a
+thrashing. Fury that he was ashamed of shook Le Moyne. For very fear of
+himself, he thrust his hands in the pockets of his Norfolk coat.
+
+"Very well," he said. "You go to her with just one of these ugly
+insinuations, and I'll take mighty good care that you are sorry for it.
+I don't care to threaten. You're younger than I am, and lighter. But
+if you are going to behave like a bad child, you deserve a licking, and
+I'll give it to you."
+
+An overflow from the parlor poured out on the porch. Le Moyne had got
+himself in hand somewhat. He was still angry, but the look in Joe's eyes
+startled him. He put a hand on the boy's shoulder.
+
+"You're wrong, old man," he said. "You're insulting the girl you care
+for by the things you are thinking. And, if it's any comfort to you, I
+have no intention of interfering in any way. You can count me out. It's
+between you and her." Joe picked his straw hat from a chair and stood
+turning it in his hands.
+
+"Even if you don't care for her, how do I know she isn't crazy about
+you?"
+
+"My word of honor, she isn't."
+
+"She sends you notes to McKees'."
+
+"Just to clear the air, I'll show it to you. It's no breach of
+confidence. It's about the hospital."
+
+Into the breast pocket of his coat he dived and brought up a wallet.
+The wallet had had a name on it in gilt letters that had been carefully
+scraped off. But Joe did not wait to see the note.
+
+"Oh, damn the hospital!" he said--and went swiftly down the steps and
+into the gathering twilight of the June night.
+
+It was only when he reached the street-car, and sat huddled in a corner,
+that he remembered something.
+
+Only about the hospital--but Le Moyne had kept the note, treasured it!
+Joe was not subtle, not even clever; but he was a lover, and he knew the
+ways of love. The Pages' roomer was in love with Sidney whether he knew
+it or not.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Carlotta Harrison pleaded a headache, and was excused from the
+operating-room and from prayers.
+
+"I'm sorry about the vacation," Miss Gregg said kindly, "but in a day or
+two I can let you off. Go out now and get a little air."
+
+The girl managed to dissemble the triumph in her eyes.
+
+"Thank you," she said languidly, and turned away. Then: "About the
+vacation, I am not in a hurry. If Miss Simpson needs a few days to
+straighten things out, I can stay on with Dr. Wilson."
+
+Young women on the eve of a vacation were not usually so reasonable.
+Miss Gregg was grateful.
+
+"She will probably need a week. Thank you. I wish more of the girls
+were as thoughtful, with the house full and operations all day and every
+day."
+
+Outside the door of the anaesthetizing-room Miss Harrison's languor
+vanished. She sped along corridors and up the stairs, not waiting for
+the deliberate elevator. Inside of her room, she closed and bolted the
+door, and, standing before her mirror, gazed long at her dark eyes and
+bright hair. Then she proceeded briskly with her dressing.
+
+Carlotta Harrison was not a child. Though she was only three years older
+than Sidney, her experience of life was as of three to Sidney's one.
+The product of a curious marriage,--when Tommy Harrison of Harrison's
+Minstrels, touring Spain with his troupe, had met the pretty daughter of
+a Spanish shopkeeper and eloped with her,--she had certain qualities of
+both, a Yankee shrewdness and capacity that made her a capable nurse,
+complicated by occasional outcroppings of southern Europe, furious
+bursts of temper, slow and smouldering vindictiveness. A passionate
+creature, in reality, smothered under hereditary Massachusetts caution.
+
+She was well aware of the risks of the evening's adventure. The only
+dread she had was of the discovery of her escapade by the hospital
+authorities. Lines were sharply drawn. Nurses were forbidden more than
+the exchange of professional conversation with the staff. In that
+world of her choosing, of hard work and little play, of service and
+self-denial and vigorous rules of conduct, discovery meant dismissal.
+
+She put on a soft black dress, open at the throat, and with a wide white
+collar and cuffs of some sheer material. Her yellow hair was drawn high
+under her low black hat. From her Spanish mother she had learned to
+please the man, not herself. She guessed that Dr. Max would wish her to
+be inconspicuous, and she dressed accordingly. Then, being a cautious
+person, she disarranged her bed slightly and thumped a hollow into
+her pillow. The nurses' rooms were subject to inspection, and she had
+pleaded a headache.
+
+She was exactly on time. Dr. Max, driving up to the corner five minutes
+late, found her there, quite matter-of-fact but exceedingly handsome,
+and acknowledged the evening's adventure much to his taste.
+
+"A little air first, and then supper--how's that?"
+
+"Air first, please. I'm very tired."
+
+He turned the car toward the suburbs, and then, bending toward her,
+smiled into her eyes.
+
+"Well, this is life!"
+
+"I'm cool for the first time to-day."
+
+After that they spoke very little. Even Wilson's superb nerves had
+felt the strain of the afternoon, and under the girl's dark eyes were
+purplish shadows. She leaned back, weary but luxuriously content.
+
+"Not uneasy, are you?"
+
+"Not particularly. I'm too comfortable. But I hope we're not seen."
+
+"Even if we are, why not? You are going with me to a case. I've driven
+Miss Simpson about a lot."
+
+It was almost eight when he turned the car into the drive of the White
+Springs Hotel. The six-to-eight supper was almost over. One or two motor
+parties were preparing for the moonlight drive back to the city. All
+around was virgin country, sweet with early summer odors of new-cut
+grass, of blossoming trees and warm earth. On the grass terrace over the
+valley, where ran Sidney's unlucky river, was a magnolia full of creamy
+blossoms among waxed leaves. Its silhouette against the sky was quaintly
+heart-shaped.
+
+Under her mask of languor, Carlotta's heart was beating wildly. What an
+adventure! What a night! Let him lose his head a little; she could keep
+hers. If she were skillful and played things right, who could tell? To
+marry him, to leave behind the drudgery of the hospital, to feel safe as
+she had not felt for years, that was a stroke to play for!
+
+The magnolia was just beside her. She reached up and, breaking off one
+of the heavy-scented flowers, placed it in the bosom of her black dress.
+
+Sidney and K. Le Moyne were dining together. The novelty of the
+experience had made her eyes shine like stars. She saw only the magnolia
+tree shaped like a heart, the terrace edged with low shrubbery, and
+beyond the faint gleam that was the river. For her the dish-washing
+clatter of the kitchen was stilled, the noises from the bar were lost in
+the ripple of the river; the scent of the grass killed the odor of stale
+beer that wafted out through the open windows. The unshaded glare of the
+lights behind her in the house was eclipsed by the crescent edge of the
+rising moon. Dinner was over. Sidney was experiencing the rare treat of
+after-dinner coffee.
+
+Le Moyne, grave and contained, sat across from her. To give so much
+pleasure, and so easily! How young she was, and radiant! No wonder the
+boy was mad about her. She fairly held out her arms to life.
+
+Ah, that was too bad! Another table was being brought; they were not to
+be alone. But, what roused him in violent resentment only appealed to
+Sidney's curiosity. "Two places!" she commented. "Lovers, of course. Or
+perhaps honeymooners."
+
+K. tried to fall into her mood.
+
+"A box of candy against a good cigar, they are a stolid married couple."
+
+"How shall we know?"
+
+"That's easy. If they loll back and watch the kitchen door, I win. If
+they lean forward, elbows on the table, and talk, you get the candy."
+
+Sidney, who had been leaning forward, talking eagerly over the table,
+suddenly straightened and flushed.
+
+Carlotta Harrison came out alone. Although the tapping of her heels was
+dulled by the grass, although she had exchanged her cap for the black
+hat, Sidney knew her at once. A sort of thrill ran over her. It was the
+pretty nurse from Dr. Wilson's office. Was it possible--but of
+course not! The book of rules stated explicitly that such things were
+forbidden.
+
+"Don't turn around," she said swiftly. "It is the Miss Harrison I told
+you about. She is looking at us."
+
+Carlotta's eyes were blinded for a moment by the glare of the house
+lights. She dropped into her chair, with a flash of resentment at the
+proximity of the other table. She languidly surveyed its two occupants.
+Then she sat up, her eyes on Le Moyne's grave profile turned toward the
+valley.
+
+Lucky for her that Wilson had stopped in the bar, that Sidney's
+instinctive good manners forbade her staring, that only the edge of the
+summer moon shone through the trees. She went white and clutched the
+edge of the table, with her eyes closed. That gave her quick brain a
+chance. It was madness, June madness. She was always seeing him even in
+her dreams. This man was older, much older. She looked again.
+
+She had not been mistaken. Here, and after all these months! K. Le
+Moyne, quite unconscious of her presence, looked down into the valley.
+
+Wilson appeared on the wooden porch above the terrace, and stood, his
+eyes searching the half light for her. If he came down to her, the man
+at the next table might turn, would see her--
+
+She rose and went swiftly back toward the hotel. All the gayety was
+gone out of the evening for her, but she forced a lightness she did not
+feel:--
+
+"It is so dark and depressing out there--it makes me sad."
+
+"Surely you do not want to dine in the house?"
+
+"Do you mind?"
+
+"Just as you wish. This is your evening."
+
+But he was not pleased. The prospect of the glaring lights and soiled
+linen of the dining-room jarred on his aesthetic sense. He wanted a
+setting for himself, for the girl. Environment was vital to him. But
+when, in the full light of the moon, he saw the purplish shadows under
+her eyes, he forgot his resentment. She had had a hard day. She was
+tired. His easy sympathies were roused. He leaned over and ran his and
+caressingly along her bare forearm.
+
+"Your wish is my law--to-night," he said softly.
+
+After all, the evening was a disappointment to him. The spontaneity had
+gone out of it, for some reason. The girl who had thrilled to his glance
+those two mornings in his office, whose somber eyes had met his fire for
+fire, across the operating-room, was not playing up. She sat back in her
+chair, eating little, starting at every step. Her eyes, which by every
+rule of the game should have been gazing into his, were fixed on the
+oilcloth-covered passage outside the door.
+
+"I think, after all, you are frightened!"
+
+"Terribly."
+
+"A little danger adds to the zest of things. You know what Nietzsche
+says about that."
+
+"I am not fond of Nietzsche." Then, with an effort: "What does he say?"
+
+"Two things are wanted by the true man--danger and play. Therefore he
+seeketh woman as the most dangerous of toys."
+
+"Women are dangerous only when you think of them as toys. When a man
+finds that a woman can reason,--do anything but feel,--he regards her
+as a menace. But the reasoning woman is really less dangerous than the
+other sort."
+
+This was more like the real thing. To talk careful abstractions like
+this, with beneath each abstraction its concealed personal application,
+to talk of woman and look in her eyes, to discuss new philosophies with
+their freedoms, to discard old creeds and old moralities--that was
+his game. Wilson became content, interested again. The girl was
+nimble-minded. She challenged his philosophy and gave him a chance to
+defend it. With the conviction, as their meal went on, that Le Moyne and
+his companion must surely have gone, she gained ease.
+
+It was only by wild driving that she got back to the hospital by ten
+o'clock.
+
+Wilson left her at the corner, well content with himself. He had had the
+rest he needed in congenial company. The girl stimulated his interest.
+She was mental, but not too mental. And he approved of his own attitude.
+He had been discreet. Even if she talked, there was nothing to tell. But
+he felt confident that she would not talk.
+
+As he drove up the Street, he glanced across at the Page house. Sidney
+was there on the doorstep, talking to a tall man who stood below and
+looked up at her. Wilson settled his tie, in the darkness. Sidney was a
+mighty pretty girl. The June night was in his blood. He was sorry he had
+not kissed Carlotta good-night. He rather thought, now he looked back,
+she had expected it.
+
+As he got out of his car at the curb, a young man who had been standing
+in the shadow of the tree-box moved quickly away.
+
+Wilson smiled after him in the darkness.
+
+"That you, Joe?" he called.
+
+But the boy went on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Sidney entered the hospital as a probationer early in August. Christine
+was to be married in September to Palmer Howe, and, with Harriet and K.
+in the house, she felt that she could safely leave her mother.
+
+The balcony outside the parlor was already under way. On the night
+before she went away, Sidney took chairs out there and sat with her
+mother until the dew drove Anna to the lamp in the sewing-room and her
+"Daily Thoughts" reading.
+
+Sidney sat alone and viewed her world from this new and pleasant
+angle. She could see the garden and the whitewashed fence with its
+morning-glories, and at the same time, by turning her head, view the
+Wilson house across the Street. She looked mostly at the Wilson house.
+
+K. Le Moyne was upstairs in his room. She could hear him tramping up and
+down, and catch, occasionally, the bitter-sweet odor of his old brier
+pipe.
+
+All the small loose ends of her life were gathered up--except Joe. She
+would have liked to get that clear, too. She wanted him to know how she
+felt about it all: that she liked him as much as ever, that she did not
+want to hurt him. But she wanted to make it clear, too, that she knew
+now that she would never marry him. She thought she would never marry;
+but, if she did, it would be a man doing a man's work in the world. Her
+eyes turned wistfully to the house across the Street.
+
+K.'s lamp still burned overhead, but his restless tramping about had
+ceased. He must be reading--he read a great deal. She really ought to go
+to bed. A neighborhood cat came stealthily across the Street, and stared
+up at the little balcony with green-glowing eyes.
+
+"Come on, Bill Taft," she said. "Reginald is gone, so you are welcome.
+Come on."
+
+Joe Drummond, passing the house for the fourth time that evening, heard
+her voice, and hesitated uncertainly on the pavement.
+
+"That you, Sid?" he called softly.
+
+"Joe! Come in."
+
+"It's late; I'd better get home."
+
+The misery in his voice hurt her.
+
+"I'll not keep you long. I want to talk to you."
+
+He came slowly toward her.
+
+"Well?" he said hoarsely.
+
+"You're not very kind to me, Joe."
+
+"My God!" said poor Joe. "Kind to you! Isn't the kindest thing I can do
+to keep out of your way?"
+
+"Not if you are hating me all the time."
+
+"I don't hate you."
+
+"Then why haven't you been to see me? If I have done anything--" Her
+voice was a-tingle with virtue and outraged friendship.
+
+"You haven't done anything but--show me where I get off."
+
+He sat down on the edge of the balcony and stared out blankly.
+
+"If that's the way you feel about it--"
+
+"I'm not blaming you. I was a fool to think you'd ever care about me. I
+don't know that I feel so bad--about the thing. I've been around seeing
+some other girls, and I notice they're glad to see me, and treat me
+right, too." There was boyish bravado in his voice. "But what makes me
+sick is to have everyone saying you've jilted me."
+
+"Good gracious! Why, Joe, I never promised."
+
+"Well, we look at it in different ways; that's all. I took it for a
+promise."
+
+Then suddenly all his carefully conserved indifference fled. He bent
+forward quickly and, catching her hand, held it against his lips.
+
+"I'm crazy about you, Sidney. That's the truth. I wish I could die!"
+
+The cat, finding no active antagonism, sprang up on the balcony and
+rubbed against the boy's quivering shoulders; a breath of air stroked
+the morning-glory vine like the touch of a friendly hand. Sidney,
+facing for the first time the enigma of love and despair sat, rather
+frightened, in her chair.
+
+"You don't mean that!"
+
+"I mean it, all right. If it wasn't for the folks, I'd jump in the
+river. I lied when I said I'd been to see other girls. What do I want
+with other girls? I want you!"
+
+"I'm not worth all that."
+
+"No girl's worth what I've been going through," he retorted bitterly.
+"But that doesn't help any. I don't eat; I don't sleep--I'm afraid
+sometimes of the way I feel. When I saw you at the White Springs with
+that roomer chap--"
+
+"Ah! You were there!"
+
+"If I'd had a gun I'd have killed him. I thought--" So far, out of sheer
+pity, she had left her hand in his. Now she drew it away.
+
+"This is wild, silly talk. You'll be sorry to-morrow."
+
+"It's the truth," doggedly.
+
+But he made a clutch at his self-respect. He was acting like a crazy
+boy, and he was a man, all of twenty-two!
+
+"When are you going to the hospital?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"Is that Wilson's hospital?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Alas for his resolve! The red haze of jealousy came again. "You'll be
+seeing him every day, I suppose."
+
+"I dare say. I shall also be seeing twenty or thirty other doctors, and
+a hundred or so men patients, not to mention visitors. Joe, you're not
+rational."
+
+"No," he said heavily, "I'm not. If it's got to be someone, Sidney, I'd
+rather have it the roomer upstairs than Wilson. There's a lot of talk
+about Wilson."
+
+"It isn't necessary to malign my friends." He rose.
+
+"I thought perhaps, since you are going away, you would let me keep
+Reginald. He'd be something to remember you by."
+
+"One would think I was about to die! I set Reginald free that day in the
+country. I'm sorry, Joe. You'll come to see me now and then, won't you?"
+
+"If I do, do you think you may change your mind?"
+
+"I'm afraid not."
+
+"I've got to fight this out alone, and the less I see of you the
+better." But his next words belied his intention. "And Wilson had better
+lookout. I'll be watching. If I see him playing any of his tricks around
+you--well, he'd better look out!"
+
+That, as it turned out, was Joe's farewell. He had reached the
+breaking-point. He gave her a long look, blinked, and walked rapidly out
+to the Street. Some of the dignity of his retreat was lost by the fact
+that the cat followed him, close at his heels.
+
+Sidney was hurt, greatly troubled. If this was love, she did not want
+it--this strange compound of suspicion and despair, injured pride and
+threats. Lovers in fiction were of two classes--the accepted ones, who
+loved and trusted, and the rejected ones, who took themselves away in
+despair, but at least took themselves away. The thought of a future
+with Joe always around a corner, watching her, obsessed her. She felt
+aggrieved, insulted. She even shed a tear or two, very surreptitiously;
+and then, being human and much upset, and the cat startling her by its
+sudden return and selfish advances, she shooed it off the veranda and
+set an imaginary dog after it. Whereupon, feeling somewhat better, she
+went in and locked the balcony window and proceeded upstairs.
+
+Le Moyne's light was still going. The rest of the household slept. She
+paused outside the door.
+
+"Are you sleepy?"--very softly.
+
+There was a movement inside, the sound of a book put down. Then: "No,
+indeed."
+
+"I may not see you in the morning. I leave to-morrow."
+
+"Just a minute."
+
+From the sounds, she judged that he was putting on his shabby gray
+coat. The next moment he had opened the door and stepped out into the
+corridor.
+
+"I believe you had forgotten!"
+
+"I? Certainly not. I started downstairs a while ago, but you had a
+visitor."
+
+"Only Joe Drummond."
+
+He gazed down at her quizzically.
+
+"And--is Joe more reasonable?"
+
+"He will be. He knows now that I--that I shall not marry him."
+
+"Poor chap! He'll buck up, of course. But it's a little hard just now."
+
+"I believe you think I should have married him."
+
+"I am only putting myself in his place and realizing--When do you
+leave?"
+
+"Just after breakfast."
+
+"I am going very early. Perhaps--"
+
+He hesitated. Then, hurriedly:--
+
+"I got a little present for you--nothing much, but your mother was quite
+willing. In fact, we bought it together."
+
+He went back into his room, and returned with a small box.
+
+"With all sorts of good luck," he said, and placed it in her hands.
+
+"How dear of you! And may I look now?"
+
+"I wish you would. Because, if you would rather have something else--"
+
+She opened the box with excited fingers. Ticking away on its satin bed
+was a small gold watch.
+
+"You'll need it, you see," he explained nervously, "It wasn't
+extravagant under the circumstances. Your mother's watch, which you had
+intended to take, had no second-hand. You'll need a second-hand to take
+pulses, you know."
+
+"A watch," said Sidney, eyes on it. "A dear little watch, to pin on and
+not put in a pocket. Why, you're the best person!"
+
+"I was afraid you might think it presumptuous," he said. "I haven't any
+right, of course. I thought of flowers--but they fade and what have you?
+You said that, you know, about Joe's roses. And then, your mother said
+you wouldn't be offended--"
+
+"Don't apologize for making me so happy!" she cried. "It's wonderful,
+really. And the little hand is for pulses! How many queer things you
+know!"
+
+After that she must pin it on, and slip in to stand before his mirror
+and inspect the result. It gave Le Moyne a queer thrill to see her there
+in the room among his books and his pipes. It make him a little sick,
+too, in view of to-morrow and the thousand-odd to-morrows when she would
+not be there.
+
+"I've kept you up shamefully,'" she said at last, "and you get up so
+early. I shall write you a note from the hospital, delivering a little
+lecture on extravagance--because how can I now, with this joy shining on
+me? And about how to keep Katie in order about your socks, and all sorts
+of things. And--and now, good-night."
+
+She had moved to the door, and he followed her, stooping a little to
+pass under the low chandelier.
+
+"Good-night," said Sidney.
+
+"Good-bye--and God bless you."
+
+She went out, and he closed the door softly behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Sidney never forgot her early impressions of the hospital, although they
+were chaotic enough at first. There were uniformed young women
+coming and going, efficient, cool-eyed, low of voice. There were
+medicine-closets with orderly rows of labeled bottles, linen-rooms with
+great stacks of sheets and towels, long vistas of shining floors and
+lines of beds. There were brisk internes with duck clothes and brass
+buttons, who eyed her with friendly, patronizing glances. There were
+bandages and dressings, and great white screens behind which were played
+little or big dramas, baths or deaths, as the case might be. And over
+all brooded the mysterious authority of the superintendent of the
+training-school, dubbed the Head, for short.
+
+Twelve hours a day, from seven to seven, with the off-duty intermission,
+Sidney labored at tasks which revolted her soul. She swept and
+dusted the wards, cleaned closets, folded sheets and towels, rolled
+bandages--did everything but nurse the sick, which was what she had come
+to do.
+
+At night she did not go home. She sat on the edge of her narrow white
+bed and soaked her aching feet in hot water and witch hazel, and
+practiced taking pulses on her own slender wrist, with K.'s little
+watch.
+
+Out of all the long, hot days, two periods stood out clearly, to be
+waited for and cherished. One was when, early in the afternoon, with
+the ward in spotless order, the shades drawn against the August sun, the
+tables covered with their red covers, and the only sound the drone of
+the bandage-machine as Sidney steadily turned it, Dr. Max passed the
+door on his way to the surgical ward beyond, and gave her a cheery
+greeting. At these times Sidney's heart beat almost in time with the
+ticking of the little watch.
+
+The other hour was at twilight, when, work over for the day, the night
+nurse, with her rubber-soled shoes and tired eyes and jangling keys,
+having reported and received the night orders, the nurses gathered in
+their small parlor for prayers. It was months before Sidney got over the
+exaltation of that twilight hour, and never did it cease to bring her
+healing and peace. In a way, it crystallized for her what the day's work
+meant: charity and its sister, service, the promise of rest and peace.
+Into the little parlor filed the nurses, and knelt, folding their tired
+hands.
+
+"The Lord is my shepherd," read the Head out of her worn Bible; "I shall
+not want."
+
+And the nurses: "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth
+me beside the still waters."
+
+And so on through the psalm to the assurance at the end, "And I will
+dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Now and then there was a death
+behind one of the white screens. It caused little change in the routine
+of the ward. A nurse stayed behind the screen, and her work was done by
+the others. When everything was over, the time was recorded exactly on
+the record, and the body was taken away.
+
+At first it seemed to Sidney that she could not stand this nearness to
+death. She thought the nurses hard because they took it quietly. Then
+she found that it was only stoicism, resignation, that they had learned.
+These things must be, and the work must go on. Their philosophy made
+them no less tender. Some such patient detachment must be that of the
+angels who keep the Great Record.
+
+On her first Sunday half-holiday she was free in the morning, and went
+to church with her mother, going back to the hospital after the service.
+So it was two weeks before she saw Le Moyne again. Even then, it was
+only for a short time. Christine and Palmer Howe came in to see her, and
+to inspect the balcony, now finished.
+
+But Sidney and Le Moyne had a few words together first.
+
+There was a change in Sidney. Le Moyne was quick to see it. She was
+a trifle subdued, with a puzzled look in her blue eyes. Her mouth was
+tender, as always, but he thought it drooped. There was a new atmosphere
+of wistfulness about the girl that made his heart ache.
+
+They were alone in the little parlor with its brown lamp and blue silk
+shade, and its small nude Eve--which Anna kept because it had been a
+gift from her husband, but retired behind a photograph of the minister,
+so that only the head and a bare arm holding the apple appeared above
+the reverend gentleman.
+
+K. never smoked in the parlor, but by sheer force of habit he held the
+pipe in his teeth.
+
+"And how have things been going?" asked Sidney practically.
+
+"Your steward has little to report. Aunt Harriet, who left you her love,
+has had the complete order for the Lorenz trousseau. She and I have
+picked out a stunning design for the wedding dress. I thought I'd ask
+you about the veil. We're rather in a quandary. Do you like this new
+fashion of draping the veil from behind the coiffure in the back--"
+
+Sidney had been sitting on the edge of her chair, staring.
+
+"There," she said--"I knew it! This house is fatal! They're making an
+old woman of you already." Her tone was tragic.
+
+"Miss Lorenz likes the new method, but my personal preference is for the
+old way, with the bride's face covered."
+
+He sucked calmly at his dead pipe.
+
+"Katie has a new prescription--recipe--for bread. It has more bread and
+fewer air-holes. One cake of yeast--"
+
+Sidney sprang to her feet.
+
+"It's perfectly terrible!" she cried. "Because you rent a room in
+this house is no reason why you should give up your personality and
+your--intelligence. Not but that it's good for you. But Katie has
+made bread without masculine assistance for a good many years, and if
+Christine can't decide about her own veil she'd better not get married.
+Mother says you water the flowers every evening, and lock up the house
+before you go to bed. I--I never meant you to adopt the family!"
+
+K. removed his pipe and gazed earnestly into the bowl.
+
+"Bill Taft has had kittens under the porch," he said. "And the
+groceryman has been sending short weight. We've bought scales now, and
+weigh everything."
+
+"You are evading the question."
+
+"Dear child, I am doing these things because I like to do them. For--for
+some time I've been floating, and now I've got a home. Every time I
+lock up the windows at night, or cut a picture out of a magazine as a
+suggestion to your Aunt Harriet, it's an anchor to windward."
+
+Sidney gazed helplessly at his imperturbable face. He seemed older than
+she had recalled him: the hair over his ears was almost white. And yet,
+he was just thirty. That was Palmer Howe's age, and Palmer seemed like a
+boy. But he held himself more erect than he had in the first days of his
+occupancy of the second-floor front.
+
+"And now," he said cheerfully, "what about yourself? You've lost a lot
+of illusions, of course, but perhaps you've gained ideals. That's a
+step."
+
+"Life," observed Sidney, with the wisdom of two weeks out in the world,
+"life is a terrible thing, K. We think we've got it, and--it's got us."
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+"When I think of how simple I used to think it all was! One grew up and
+got married, and--and perhaps had children. And when one got very
+old, one died. Lately, I've been seeing that life really consists of
+exceptions--children who don't grow up, and grown-ups who die before
+they are old. And"--this took an effort, but she looked at him
+squarely--"and people who have children, but are not married. It all
+rather hurts."
+
+"All knowledge that is worth while hurts in the getting."
+
+Sidney got up and wandered around the room, touching its little familiar
+objects with tender hands. K. watched her. There was this curious
+element in his love for her, that when he was with her it took on the
+guise of friendship and deceived even himself. It was only in the lonely
+hours that it took on truth, became a hopeless yearning for the touch of
+her hand or a glance from her clear eyes.
+
+Sidney, having picked up the minister's picture, replaced it absently,
+so that Eve stood revealed in all her pre-apple innocence.
+
+"There is something else," she said absently. "I cannot talk it over
+with mother. There is a girl in the ward--"
+
+"A patient?"
+
+"Yes. She is quite pretty. She has had typhoid, but she is a little
+better. She's--not a good person."
+
+"I see."
+
+"At first I couldn't bear to go near her. I shivered when I had to
+straighten her bed. I--I'm being very frank, but I've got to talk this
+out with someone. I worried a lot about it, because, although at first I
+hated her, now I don't. I rather like her."
+
+She looked at K. defiantly, but there was no disapproval in his eyes.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, this is the question. She's getting better. She'll be able to
+go out soon. Don't you think something ought to be done to keep her
+from--going back?"
+
+There was a shadow in K.'s eyes now. She was so young to face all this;
+and yet, since face it she must, how much better to have her do it
+squarely.
+
+"Does she want to change her mode of life?"
+
+"I don't know, of course. There are some things one doesn't discuss. She
+cares a great deal for some man. The other day I propped her up in bed
+and gave her a newspaper, and after a while I found the paper on the
+floor, and she was crying. The other patients avoid her, and it was
+some time before I noticed it. The next day she told me that the man
+was going to marry some one else. 'He wouldn't marry me, of course,' she
+said; 'but he might have told me.'"
+
+Le Moyne did his best, that afternoon in the little parlor, to provide
+Sidney with a philosophy to carry her through her training. He told her
+that certain responsibilities were hers, but that she could not reform
+the world. Broad charity, tenderness, and healing were her province.
+
+"Help them all you can," he finished, feeling inadequate and hopelessly
+didactic. "Cure them; send them out with a smile; and--leave the rest to
+the Almighty."
+
+Sidney was resigned, but not content. Newly facing the evil of the
+world, she was a rampant reformer at once. Only the arrival of Christine
+and her fiance saved his philosophy from complete rout. He had time for
+a question between the ring of the bell and Katie's deliberate progress
+from the kitchen to the front door.
+
+"How about the surgeon, young Wilson? Do you ever see him?" His tone was
+carefully casual.
+
+"Almost every day. He stops at the door of the ward and speaks to me. It
+makes me quite distinguished, for a probationer. Usually, you know, the
+staff never even see the probationers."
+
+"And--the glamour persists?" He smiled down at her.
+
+"I think he is very wonderful," said Sidney valiantly.
+
+Christine Lorenz, while not large, seemed to fill the little room. Her
+voice, which was frequent and penetrating, her smile, which was wide
+and showed very white teeth that were a trifle large for beauty, her
+all-embracing good nature, dominated the entire lower floor. K., who had
+met her before, retired into silence and a corner. Young Howe smoked a
+cigarette in the hall.
+
+"You poor thing!" said Christine, and put her cheek against Sidney's.
+"Why, you're positively thin! Palmer gives you a month to tire of it
+all; but I said--"
+
+"I take that back," Palmer spoke indolently from the corridor. "There
+is the look of willing martyrdom in her face. Where is Reginald? I've
+brought some nuts for him."
+
+"Reginald is back in the woods again."
+
+"Now, look here," he said solemnly. "When we arranged about these rooms,
+there were certain properties that went with them--the lady next door
+who plays Paderewski's 'Minuet' six hours a day, and K. here, and
+Reginald. If you must take something to the woods, why not the minuet
+person?"
+
+Howe was a good-looking man, thin, smooth-shaven, aggressively well
+dressed. This Sunday afternoon, in a cutaway coat and high hat, with
+an English malacca stick, he was just a little out of the picture. The
+Street said that he was "wild," and that to get into the Country Club
+set Christine was losing more than she was gaining.
+
+Christine had stepped out on the balcony, and was speaking to K. just
+inside.
+
+"It's rather a queer way to live, of course," she said. "But Palmer is a
+pauper, practically. We are going to take our meals at home for a while.
+You see, certain things that we want we can't have if we take a house--a
+car, for instance. We'll need one for running out to the Country Club to
+dinner. Of course, unless father gives me one for a wedding present, it
+will be a cheap one. And we're getting the Rosenfeld boy to drive it.
+He's crazy about machinery, and he'll come for practically nothing."
+
+K. had never known a married couple to take two rooms and go to the
+bride's mother's for meals in order to keep a car. He looked faintly
+dazed. Also, certain sophistries of his former world about a cheap
+chauffeur being costly in the end rose in his mind and were carefully
+suppressed.
+
+"You'll find a car a great comfort, I'm sure," he said politely.
+
+Christine considered K. rather distinguished. She liked his graying hair
+and steady eyes, and insisted on considering his shabbiness a pose. She
+was conscious that she made a pretty picture in the French window, and
+preened herself like a bright bird.
+
+"You'll come out with us now and then, I hope."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"Isn't it odd to think that we are going to be practically one family!"
+
+"Odd, but very pleasant."
+
+He caught the flash of Christine's smile, and smiled back. Christine was
+glad she had decided to take the rooms, glad that K. lived there. This
+thing of marriage being the end of all things was absurd. A married
+woman should have men friends; they kept her up. She would take him to
+the Country Club. The women would be mad to know him. How clean-cut his
+profile was!
+
+Across the Street, the Rosenfeld boy had stopped by Dr. Wilson's car,
+and was eyeing it with the cool, appraising glance of the street
+boy whose sole knowledge of machinery has been acquired from the
+clothes-washer at home. Joe Drummond, eyes carefully ahead, went up the
+Street. Tillie, at Mrs. McKee's, stood in the doorway and fanned herself
+with her apron. Max Wilson came out of the house and got into his car.
+For a minute, perhaps, all the actors, save Carlotta and Dr. Ed, were on
+the stage. It was that bete noir of the playwright, an ensemble; K. Le
+Moyne and Sidney, Palmer Howe, Christine, Tillie, the younger Wilson,
+Joe, even young Rosenfeld, all within speaking distance, almost touching
+distance, gathered within and about the little house on a side street
+which K. at first grimly and now tenderly called "home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+On Monday morning, shortly after the McKee prolonged breakfast was over,
+a small man of perhaps fifty, with iron-gray hair and a sparse goatee,
+made his way along the Street. He moved with the air of one having a
+definite destination but a by no means definite reception.
+
+As he walked along he eyed with a professional glance the ailanthus and
+maple trees which, with an occasional poplar, lined the Street. At the
+door of Mrs. McKee's boarding-house he stopped. Owing to a slight change
+in the grade of the street, the McKee house had no stoop, but one flat
+doorstep. Thus it was possible to ring the doorbell from the pavement,
+and this the stranger did. It gave him a curious appearance of being
+ready to cut and run if things were unfavorable.
+
+For a moment things were indeed unfavorable. Mrs. McKee herself opened
+the door. She recognized him at once, but no smile met the nervous one
+that formed itself on the stranger's face.
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it?"
+
+"It's me, Mrs. McKee."
+
+"Well?"
+
+He made a conciliatory effort.
+
+"I was thinking, as I came along," he said, "that you and the neighbors
+had better get after these here caterpillars. Look at them maples, now."
+
+"If you want to see Tillie, she's busy."
+
+"I only want to say how-d 'ye-do. I'm just on my way through town."
+
+"I'll say it for you."
+
+A certain doggedness took the place of his tentative smile.
+
+"I'll say it to myself, I guess. I don't want any unpleasantness, but
+I've come a good ways to see her and I'll hang around until I do."
+
+Mrs. McKee knew herself routed, and retreated to the kitchen.
+
+"You're wanted out front," she said.
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"Never mind. Only, my advice to you is, don't be a fool."
+
+Tillie went suddenly pale. The hands with which she tied a white apron
+over her gingham one were shaking.
+
+Her visitor had accepted the open door as permission to enter and was
+standing in the hall.
+
+He went rather white himself when he saw Tillie coming toward him down
+the hall. He knew that for Tillie this visit would mean that he was
+free--and he was not free. Sheer terror of his errand filled him.
+
+"Well, here I am, Tillie."
+
+"All dressed up and highly perfumed!" said poor Tillie, with the
+question in her eyes. "You're quite a stranger, Mr. Schwitter."
+
+"I was passing through, and I just thought I'd call around and tell
+you--My God, Tillie, I'm glad to see you!"
+
+She made no reply, but opened the door into the cool and, shaded little
+parlor. He followed her in and closed the door behind him.
+
+"I couldn't help it. I know I promised."
+
+"Then she--?"
+
+"She's still living. Playing with paper dolls--that's the latest."
+
+Tillie sat down suddenly on one of the stiff chairs. Her lips were as
+white as her face.
+
+"I thought, when I saw you--"
+
+"I was afraid you'd think that."
+
+Neither spoke for a moment. Tillie's hands twisted nervously in her lap.
+Mr. Schwitter's eyes were fixed on the window, which looked back on the
+McKee yard.
+
+"That spiraea back there's not looking very good. If you'll save the
+cigar butts around here and put them in water, and spray it, you'll kill
+the lice."
+
+Tillie found speech at last.
+
+"I don't know why you come around bothering me," she said dully. "I've
+been getting along all right; now you come and upset everything."
+
+Mr. Schwitter rose and took a step toward her.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you why I came. Look at me. I ain't getting any
+younger, am I? Time's going on, and I'm wanting you all the time.
+And what am I getting? What've I got out of life, anyhow? I'm lonely,
+Tillie!"
+
+"What's that got to do with me?"
+
+"You're lonely, too, ain't you?"
+
+"Me? I haven't got time to be. And, anyhow, there's always a crowd
+here."
+
+"You can be lonely in a crowd, and I guess--is there any one around here
+you like better than me?"
+
+"Oh, what's the use!" cried poor Tillie. "We can talk our heads off and
+not get anywhere. You've got a wife living, and, unless you intend to do
+away with her, I guess that's all there is to it."
+
+"Is that all, Tillie? Haven't you got a right to be happy?"
+
+She was quick of wit, and she read his tone as well as his words.
+
+"You get out of here--and get out quick!"
+
+She had jumped to her feet; but he only looked at her with understanding
+eyes.
+
+"I know," he said. "That's the way I thought of it at first. Maybe I've
+just got used to the idea, but it doesn't seem so bad to me now. Here
+are you, drudging for other people when you ought to have a place all
+your own--and not gettin' younger any more than I am. Here's both of us
+lonely. I'd be a good husband to you, Till--because, whatever it'd be in
+law, I'd be your husband before God."
+
+Tillie cowered against the door, her eyes on his. Here before her,
+embodied in this man, stood all that she had wanted and never had. He
+meant a home, tenderness, children, perhaps. He turned away from the
+look in her eyes and stared out of the front window.
+
+"Them poplars out there ought to be taken away," he said heavily.
+"They're hell on sewers."
+
+Tillie found her voice at last:--
+
+"I couldn't do it, Mr. Schwitter. I guess I'm a coward. Maybe I'll be
+sorry."
+
+"Perhaps, if you got used to the idea--"
+
+"What's that to do with the right and wrong of it?"
+
+"Maybe I'm queer. It don't seem like wrongdoing to me. It seems to
+me that the Lord would make an exception of us if He knew the
+circumstances. Perhaps, after you get used to the idea--What I thought
+was like this. I've got a little farm about seven miles from the city
+limits, and the tenant on it says that nearly every Sunday somebody
+motors out from town and wants a chicken-and-waffle supper. There ain't
+much in the nursery business anymore. These landscape fellows buy their
+stuff direct, and the middleman's out. I've got a good orchard, and
+there's a spring, so I could put running water in the house. I'd be good
+to you, Tillie,--I swear it. It'd be just the same as marriage. Nobody
+need know it."
+
+"You'd know it. You wouldn't respect me."
+
+"Don't a man respect a woman that's got courage enough to give up
+everything for him?"
+
+Tillie was crying softly into her apron. He put a work-hardened hand on
+her head.
+
+"It isn't as if I'd run around after women," he said. "You're the only
+one, since Maggie--" He drew a long breath. "I'll give you time to think
+it over. Suppose I stop in to-morrow morning. It doesn't commit you to
+anything to talk it over."
+
+There had been no passion in the interview, and there was none in
+the touch of his hand. He was not young, and the tragic loneliness of
+approaching old age confronted him. He was trying to solve his problem
+and Tillie's, and what he had found was no solution, but a compromise.
+
+"To-morrow morning, then," he said quietly, and went out the door.
+
+All that hot August morning Tillie worked in a daze. Mrs. McKee watched
+her and said nothing. She interpreted the girl's white face and set lips
+as the result of having had to dismiss Schwitter again, and looked for
+time to bring peace, as it had done before.
+
+Le Moyne came late to his midday meal. For once, the mental anaesthesia
+of endless figures had failed him. On his way home he had drawn his
+small savings from the bank, and mailed them, in cash and registered, to
+a back street in the slums of a distant city. He had done this before,
+and always with a feeling of exaltation, as if, for a time at least,
+the burden he carried was lightened. But to-day he experienced no
+compensatory relief. Life was dull and stale to him, effort ineffectual.
+At thirty a man should look back with tenderness, forward with hope. K.
+Le Moyne dared not look back, and had no desire to look ahead into empty
+years.
+
+Although he ate little, the dining-room was empty when he finished.
+Usually he had some cheerful banter for Tillie, to which she responded
+in kind. But, what with the heat and with heaviness of spirit, he did
+not notice her depression until he rose.
+
+"Why, you're not sick, are you, Tillie?"
+
+"Me? Oh, no. Low in my mind, I guess."
+
+"It's the heat. It's fearful. Look here. If I send you two tickets to a
+roof garden where there's a variety show, can't you take a friend and go
+to-night?"
+
+"Thanks; I guess I'll not go out."
+
+Then, unexpectedly, she bent her head against a chair-back and fell to
+silent crying. K. let her cry for a moment. Then:--
+
+"Now--tell me about it."
+
+"I'm just worried; that's all."
+
+"Let's see if we can't fix up the worries. Come, now, out with them!"
+
+"I'm a wicked woman, Mr. Le Moyne."
+
+"Then I'm the person to tell it to. I--I'm pretty much a lost soul
+myself."
+
+He put an arm over her shoulders and drew her up, facing him.
+
+"Suppose we go into the parlor and talk it out. I'll bet things are not
+as bad as you imagine."
+
+But when, in the parlor that had seen Mr. Schwitter's strange proposal
+of the morning, Tillie poured out her story, K.'s face grew grave.
+
+"The wicked part is that I want to go with him," she finished. "I keep
+thinking about being out in the country, and him coming into supper, and
+everything nice for him and me cleaned up and waiting--O my God! I've
+always been a good woman until now."
+
+"I--I understand a great deal better than you think I do. You're not
+wicked. The only thing is--"
+
+"Go on. Hit me with it."
+
+"You might go on and be very happy. And as for the--for his wife, it
+won't do her any harm. It's only--if there are children."
+
+"I know. I've thought of that. But I'm so crazy for children!"
+
+"Exactly. So you should be. But when they come, and you cannot give
+them a name--don't you see? I'm not preaching morality. God forbid that
+I--But no happiness is built on a foundation of wrong. It's been tried
+before, Tillie, and it doesn't pan out."
+
+He was conscious of a feeling of failure when he left her at last. She
+had acquiesced in what he said, knew he was right, and even promised
+to talk to him again before making a decision one way or the other. But
+against his abstractions of conduct and morality there was pleading in
+Tillie the hungry mother-heart; law and creed and early training were
+fighting against the strongest instinct of the race. It was a losing
+battle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The hot August days dragged on. Merciless sunlight beat in through the
+slatted shutters of ward windows. At night, from the roof to which the
+nurses retired after prayers for a breath of air, lower surrounding
+roofs were seen to be covered with sleepers. Children dozed precariously
+on the edge of eternity; men and women sprawled in the grotesque
+postures of sleep.
+
+There was a sort of feverish irritability in the air. Even the nurses,
+stoically unmindful of bodily discomfort, spoke curtly or not at all.
+Miss Dana, in Sidney's ward, went down with a low fever, and for a day
+or so Sidney and Miss Grange got along as best they could. Sidney worked
+like two or more, performed marvels of bed-making, learned to give
+alcohol baths for fever with the maximum of result and the minimum
+of time, even made rounds with a member of the staff and came through
+creditably.
+
+Dr. Ed Wilson had sent a woman patient into the ward, and his visits
+were the breath of life to the girl.
+
+"How're they treating you?" he asked her, one day, abruptly.
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Look at me squarely. You're pretty and you're young. Some of them will
+try to take it out of you. That's human nature. Has anyone tried it
+yet?"
+
+Sidney looked distressed.
+
+"Positively, no. It's been hot, and of course it's troublesome to tell
+me everything. I--I think they're all very kind."
+
+He reached out a square, competent hand, and put it over hers.
+
+"We miss you in the Street," he said. "It's all sort of dead there since
+you left. Joe Drummond doesn't moon up and down any more, for one thing.
+What was wrong between you and Joe, Sidney?"
+
+"I didn't want to marry him; that's all."
+
+"That's considerable. The boy's taking it hard."
+
+Then, seeing her face:--
+
+"But you're right, of course. Don't marry anyone unless you can't live
+without him. That's been my motto, and here I am, still single."
+
+He went out and down the corridor. He had known Sidney all his life.
+During the lonely times when Max was at college and in Europe, he had
+watched her grow from a child to a young girl. He did not suspect for
+a moment that in that secret heart of hers he sat newly enthroned, in
+a glow of white light, as Max's brother; that the mere thought that
+he lived in Max's house (it was, of course Max's house to her), sat at
+Max's breakfast table, could see him whenever he wished, made the touch
+of his hand on hers a benediction and a caress.
+
+Sidney finished folding linen and went back to the ward. It was Friday
+and a visiting day. Almost every bed had its visitor beside it; but
+Sidney, running an eye over the ward, found the girl of whom she had
+spoken to Le Moyne quite alone. She was propped up in bed, reading; but
+at each new step in the corridor hope would spring into her eyes and die
+again.
+
+"Want anything, Grace?"
+
+"Me? I'm all right. If these people would only get out and let me read
+in peace--Say, sit down and talk to me, won't you? It beats the mischief
+the way your friends forget you when you're laid up in a place like
+this."
+
+"People can't always come at visiting hours. Besides, it's hot."
+
+"A girl I knew was sick here last year, and it wasn't too hot for me to
+trot in twice a week with a bunch of flowers for her. Do you think she's
+been here once? She hasn't."
+
+Then, suddenly:--
+
+"You know that man I told you about the other day?"
+
+Sidney nodded. The girl's anxious eyes were on her.
+
+"It was a shock to me, that's all. I didn't want you to think I'd break
+my heart over any fellow. All I meant was, I wished he'd let me know."
+
+Her eyes searched Sidney's. They looked unnaturally large and somber in
+her face. Her hair had been cut short, and her nightgown, open at the
+neck, showed her thin throat and prominent clavicles.
+
+"You're from the city, aren't you, Miss Page?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You told me the street, but I've forgotten it."
+
+Sidney repeated the name of the Street, and slipped a fresh pillow under
+the girl's head.
+
+"The evening paper says there's a girl going to be married on your
+street."
+
+"Really! Oh, I think I know. A friend of mine is going to be married.
+Was the name Lorenz?"
+
+"The girl's name was Lorenz. I--I don't remember the man's name."
+
+"She is going to marry a Mr. Howe," said Sidney briskly. "Now, how do
+you feel? More comfy?"
+
+"Fine! I suppose you'll be going to that wedding?"
+
+"If I ever get time to have a dress made, I'll surely go."
+
+Toward six o'clock the next morning, the night nurse was making out her
+reports. On one record, which said at the top, "Grace Irving, age 19,"
+and an address which, to the initiated, told all her story, the night
+nurse wrote:--
+
+"Did not sleep at all during night. Face set and eyes staring, but
+complains of no pain. Refused milk at eleven and three."
+
+Carlotta Harrison, back from her vacation, reported for duty the next
+morning, and was assigned to E ward, which was Sidney's. She gave Sidney
+a curt little nod, and proceeded to change the entire routine with the
+thoroughness of a Central American revolutionary president. Sidney, who
+had yet to learn that with some people authority can only assert itself
+by change, found herself confused, at sea, half resentful.
+
+Once she ventured a protest:--
+
+"I've been taught to do it that way, Miss Harrison. If my method is
+wrong, show me what you want, and I'll do my best."
+
+"I am not responsible for what you have been taught. And you will not
+speak back when you are spoken to."
+
+Small as the incident was, it marked a change in Sidney's position
+in the ward. She got the worst off-duty of the day, or none. Small
+humiliations were hers: late meals, disagreeable duties, endless and
+often unnecessary tasks. Even Miss Grange, now reduced to second place,
+remonstrated with her senior.
+
+"I think a certain amount of severity is good for a probationer," she
+said, "but you are brutal, Miss Harrison."
+
+"She's stupid."
+
+"She's not at all stupid. She's going to be one of the best nurses in
+the house."
+
+"Report me, then. Tell the Head I'm abusing Dr. Wilson's pet
+probationer, that I don't always say 'please' when I ask her to change a
+bed or take a temperature."
+
+Miss Grange was not lacking in keenness. She died not go to the Head,
+which is unethical under any circumstances; but gradually there spread
+through the training-school a story that Carlotta Harrison was jealous
+of the new Page girl, Dr. Wilson's protegee. Things were still highly
+unpleasant in the ward, but they grew much better when Sidney was off
+duty. She was asked to join a small class that was studying French at
+night. As ignorant of the cause of her popularity as of the reason of
+her persecution, she went steadily on her way.
+
+And she was gaining every day. Her mind was forming. She was learning
+to think for herself. For the first time, she was facing problems and
+demanding an answer. Why must there be Grace Irvings in the world? Why
+must the healthy babies of the obstetric ward go out to the slums and
+come back, in months or years, crippled for the great fight by the
+handicap of their environment, rickety, tuberculous, twisted? Why need
+the huge mills feed the hospitals daily with injured men?
+
+And there were other things that she thought of. Every night, on her
+knees in the nurses' parlor at prayers, she promised, if she were
+accepted as a nurse, to try never to become calloused, never to regard
+her patients as "cases," never to allow the cleanliness and routine of
+her ward to delay a cup of water to the thirsty, or her arms to a sick
+child.
+
+On the whole, the world was good, she found. And, of all the good things
+in it, the best was service. True, there were hot days and restless
+nights, weary feet, and now and then a heartache. There was Miss
+Harrison, too. But to offset these there was the sound of Dr. Max's step
+in the corridor, and his smiling nod from the door; there was a "God
+bless you" now and then for the comfort she gave; there were wonderful
+nights on the roof under the stars, until K.'s little watch warned her
+to bed.
+
+While Sidney watched the stars from her hospital roof, while all around
+her the slum children, on other roofs, fought for the very breath of
+life, others who knew and loved her watched the stars, too. K. was
+having his own troubles in those days. Late at night, when Anna and
+Harriet had retired, he sat on the balcony and thought of many things.
+Anna Page was not well. He had noticed that her lips were rather blue,
+and had called in Dr. Ed. It was valvular heart disease. Anna was not to
+be told, or Sidney. It was Harriet's ruling.
+
+"Sidney can't help any," said Harriet, "and for Heaven's sake let her
+have her chance. Anna may live for years. You know her as well as I do.
+If you tell her anything at all, she'll have Sidney here, waiting on her
+hand and foot."
+
+And Le Moyne, fearful of urging too much because his own heart was
+crying out to have the girl back, assented.
+
+Then, K. was anxious about Joe. The boy did not seem to get over the
+thing the way he should. Now and then Le Moyne, resuming his old habit
+of wearying himself into sleep, would walk out into the country. On one
+such night he had overtaken Joe, tramping along with his head down.
+
+Joe had not wanted his company, had plainly sulked. But Le Moyne had
+persisted.
+
+"I'll not talk," he said; "but, since we're going the same way, we might
+as well walk together."
+
+But after a time Joe had talked, after all. It was not much at first--a
+feverish complaint about the heat, and that if there was trouble in
+Mexico he thought he'd go.
+
+"Wait until fall, if you're thinking of it," K. advised. "This is tepid
+compared with what you'll get down there."
+
+"I've got to get away from here."
+
+K. nodded understandingly. Since the scene at the White Springs Hotel,
+both knew that no explanation was necessary.
+
+"It isn't so much that I mind her turning me down," Joe said, after a
+silence. "A girl can't marry all the men who want her. But I don't
+like this hospital idea. I don't understand it. She didn't have to go.
+Sometimes"--he turned bloodshot eyes on Le Moyne--"I think she went
+because she was crazy about somebody there."
+
+"She went because she wanted to be useful."
+
+"She could be useful at home."
+
+For almost twenty minutes they tramped on without speech. They had made
+a circle, and the lights of the city were close again. K. stopped and
+put a kindly hand on Joe's shoulder.
+
+"A man's got to stand up under a thing like this, you know. I mean, it
+mustn't be a knockout. Keeping busy is a darned good method."
+
+Joe shook himself free, but without resentment. "I'll tell you what's
+eating me up," he exploded. "It's Max Wilson. Don't talk to me about her
+going to the hospital to be useful. She's crazy about him, and he's as
+crooked as a dog's hind leg."
+
+"Perhaps. But it's always up to the girl. You know that."
+
+He felt immeasurably old beside Joe's boyish blustering--old and rather
+helpless.
+
+"I'm watching him. Some of these days I'll get something on him. Then
+she'll know what to think of her hero!"
+
+"That's not quite square, is it?"
+
+"He's not square."
+
+Joe had left him then, wheeling abruptly off into the shadows. K. had
+gone home alone, rather uneasy. There seemed to be mischief in the very
+air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Tillie was gone.
+
+Oddly enough, the last person to see her before she left was Harriet
+Kennedy. On the third day after Mr. Schwitter's visit, Harriet's colored
+maid had announced a visitor.
+
+Harriet's business instinct had been good. She had taken expensive rooms
+in a good location, and furnished them with the assistance of a decor
+store. Then she arranged with a New York house to sell her models on
+commission.
+
+Her short excursion to New York had marked for Harriet the beginning of
+a new heaven and a new earth. Here, at last, she found people speaking
+her own language. She ventured a suggestion to a manufacturer, and found
+it greeted, not, after the manner of the Street, with scorn, but with
+approval and some surprise.
+
+"About once in ten years," said Mr. Arthurs, "we have a woman from out
+of town bring us a suggestion that is both novel and practical. When we
+find people like that, we watch them. They climb, madame,--climb."
+
+Harriet's climbing was not so rapid as to make her dizzy; but business
+was coming. The first time she made a price of seventy-five dollars
+for an evening gown, she went out immediately after and took a drink of
+water. Her throat was parched.
+
+She began to learn little quips of the feminine mind: that a woman who
+can pay seventy-five will pay double that sum; that it is not considered
+good form to show surprise at a dressmaker's prices, no matter how high
+they may be; that long mirrors and artificial light help sales--no woman
+over thirty but was grateful for her pink-and-gray room with its soft
+lights. And Harriet herself conformed to the picture. She took a lesson
+from the New York modistes, and wore trailing black gowns. She strapped
+her thin figure into the best corset she could get, and had her black
+hair marcelled and dressed high. And, because she was a lady by birth
+and instinct, the result was not incongruous, but refined and rather
+impressive.
+
+She took her business home with her at night, lay awake scheming, and
+wakened at dawn to find fresh color combinations in the early sky. She
+wakened early because she kept her head tied up in a towel, so that her
+hair need be done only three times a week. That and the corset were the
+penalties she paid. Her high-heeled shoes were a torment, too; but in
+the work-room she kicked them off.
+
+To this new Harriet, then, came Tillie in her distress. Tillie was
+rather overwhelmed at first. The Street had always considered Harriet
+"proud." But Tillie's urgency was great, her methods direct.
+
+"Why, Tillie!" said Harriet.
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Will you sit down?"
+
+Tillie sat. She was not daunted now. While she worked at the fingers of
+her silk gloves, what Harriet took for nervousness was pure abstraction.
+
+"It's very nice of you to come to see me. Do you like my rooms?"
+
+Tillie surveyed the rooms, and Harriet caught her first full view of her
+face.
+
+"Is there anything wrong? Have you left Mrs. McKee?"
+
+"I think so. I came to talk to you about it."
+
+It was Harriet's turn to be overwhelmed.
+
+"She's very fond of you. If you have had any words--"
+
+"It's not that. I'm just leaving. I'd like to talk to you, if you don't
+mind."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Tillie hitched her chair closer.
+
+"I'm up against something, and I can't seem to make up my mind. Last
+night I said to myself, 'I've got to talk to some woman who's not
+married, like me, and not as young as she used to be. There's no use
+going to Mrs. McKee: she's a widow, and wouldn't understand.'"
+
+Harriet's voice was a trifle sharp as she replied. She never lied about
+her age, but she preferred to forget it.
+
+"I wish you'd tell me what you're getting at."
+
+"It ain't the sort of thing to come to too sudden. But it's like this.
+You and I can pretend all we like, Miss Harriet; but we're not getting
+all out of life that the Lord meant us to have. You've got them wax
+figures instead of children, and I have mealers."
+
+A little spot of color came into Harriet's cheek. But she was
+interested. Regardless of the corset, she bent forward.
+
+"Maybe that's true. Go on."
+
+"I'm almost forty. Ten years more at the most, and I'm through. I'm
+slowing up. Can't get around the tables as I used to. Why, yesterday I
+put sugar into Mr. Le Moyne's coffee--well, never mind about that. Now
+I've got a chance to get a home, with a good man to look after me--I
+like him pretty well, and he thinks a lot of me."
+
+"Mercy sake, Tillie! You are going to get married?"
+
+"No'm," said Tillie; "that's it." And sat silent for a moment.
+
+The gray curtains with their pink cording swung gently in the open
+windows. From the work-room came the distant hum of a sewing-machine and
+the sound of voices. Harriet sat with her hands in her lap and listened
+while Tillie poured out her story. The gates were down now. She told it
+all, consistently and with unconscious pathos: her little room under the
+roof at Mrs. McKee's, and the house in the country; her loneliness,
+and the loneliness of the man; even the faint stirrings of potential
+motherhood, her empty arms, her advancing age--all this she knit into
+the fabric of her story and laid at Harriet's feet, as the ancients put
+their questions to their gods.
+
+Harriet was deeply moved. Too much that Tillie poured out to her found
+an echo in her own breast. What was this thing she was striving for but
+a substitute for the real things of life--love and tenderness, children,
+a home of her own? Quite suddenly she loathed the gray carpet on the
+floor, the pink chairs, the shaded lamps. Tillie was no longer the
+waitress at a cheap boarding-house. She loomed large, potential,
+courageous, a woman who held life in her hands.
+
+"Why don't you go to Mrs. Rosenfeld? She's your aunt, isn't she?"
+
+"She thinks any woman's a fool to take up with a man."
+
+"You're giving me a terrible responsibility, Tillie, if you're asking my
+advice."
+
+"No'm. I'm asking what you'd do if it happened to you. Suppose you had
+no people that cared anything about you, nobody to disgrace, and all
+your life nobody had really cared anything about you. And then a chance
+like this came along. What would you do?"
+
+"I don't know," said poor Harriet. "It seems to me--I'm afraid I'd be
+tempted. It does seem as if a woman had the right to be happy, even
+if--"
+
+Her own words frightened her. It was as if some hidden self, and not
+she, had spoken. She hastened to point out the other side of the matter,
+the insecurity of it, the disgrace. Like K., she insisted that no right
+can be built out of a wrong. Tillie sat and smoothed her gloves. At
+last, when Harriet paused in sheer panic, the girl rose.
+
+"I know how you feel, and I don't want you to take the responsibility of
+advising me," she said quietly. "I guess my mind was made up anyhow. But
+before I did it I just wanted to be sure that a decent woman would think
+the way I do about it."
+
+And so, for a time, Tillie went out of the life of the Street as she
+went out of Harriet's handsome rooms, quietly, unobtrusively, with calm
+purpose in her eyes.
+
+There were other changes in the Street. The Lorenz house was being
+painted for Christine's wedding. Johnny Rosenfeld, not perhaps of the
+Street itself, but certainly pertaining to it, was learning to drive
+Palmer Howe's new car, in mingled agony and bliss. He walked along the
+Street, not "right foot, left foot," but "brake foot, clutch foot," and
+took to calling off the vintage of passing cars. "So-and-So 1910,"
+he would say, with contempt in his voice. He spent more than he could
+afford on a large streamer, meant to be fastened across the rear of the
+automobile, which said, "Excuse our dust," and was inconsolable when
+Palmer refused to let him use it.
+
+K. had yielded to Anna's insistence, and was boarding as well as
+rooming at the Page house. The Street, rather snobbish to its occasional
+floating population, was accepting and liking him. It found him tender,
+infinitely human. And in return he found that this seemingly empty eddy
+into which he had drifted was teeming with life. He busied himself with
+small things, and found his outlook gradually less tinged with despair.
+When he found himself inclined to rail, he organized a baseball
+club, and sent down to everlasting defeat the Linburgs, consisting of
+cash-boys from Linden and Hofburg's department store.
+
+The Rosenfelds adored him, with the single exception of the head of
+the family. The elder Rosenfeld having been "sent up," it was K. who
+discovered that by having him consigned to the workhouse his family
+would receive from the county some sixty-five cents a day for his labor.
+As this was exactly sixty-five cents a day more than he was worth to
+them free, Mrs. Rosenfeld voiced the pious hope that he be kept there
+forever.
+
+K. made no further attempt to avoid Max Wilson. Some day they would meet
+face to face. He hoped, when it happened, they two might be alone; that
+was all. Even had he not been bound by his promise to Sidney, flight
+would have been foolish. The world was a small place, and, one way and
+another, he had known many people. Wherever he went, there would be the
+same chance.
+
+And he did not deceive himself. Other things being equal,--the eddy
+and all that it meant--, he would not willingly take himself out of his
+small share of Sidney's life.
+
+She was never to know what she meant to him, of course. He had scourged
+his heart until it no longer shone in his eyes when he looked at her.
+But he was very human--not at all meek. There were plenty of days when
+his philosophy lay in the dust and savage dogs of jealousy tore at it;
+more than one evening when he threw himself face downward on the bed
+and lay without moving for hours. And of these periods of despair he was
+always heartily ashamed the next day.
+
+The meeting with Max Wilson took place early in September, and under
+better circumstances than he could have hoped for.
+
+Sidney had come home for her weekly visit, and her mother's condition
+had alarmed her for the first time. When Le Moyne came home at six
+o'clock, he found her waiting for him in the hall.
+
+"I am just a little frightened, K.," she said. "Do you think mother is
+looking quite well?"
+
+"She has felt the heat, of course. The summer--I often think--"
+
+"Her lips are blue!"
+
+"It's probably nothing serious."
+
+"She says you've had Dr. Ed over to see her."
+
+She put her hands on his arm and looked up at him with appeal and
+something of terror in her face.
+
+Thus cornered, he had to acknowledge that Anna had been out of sorts.
+
+"I shall come home, of course. It's tragic and absurd that I should be
+caring for other people, when my own mother--"
+
+She dropped her head on his arm, and he saw that she was crying. If he
+made a gesture to draw her to him, she never knew it. After a moment she
+looked up.
+
+"I'm much braver than this in the hospital. But when it's one's own!"
+
+K. was sorely tempted to tell her the truth and bring her back to the
+little house: to their old evenings together, to seeing the younger
+Wilson, not as the white god of the operating-room and the hospital, but
+as the dandy of the Street and the neighbor of her childhood--back even
+to Joe.
+
+But, with Anna's precarious health and Harriet's increasing engrossment
+in her business, he felt it more and more necessary that Sidney go on
+with her training. A profession was a safeguard. And there was another
+point: it had been decided that Anna was not to know her condition. If
+she was not worried she might live for years. There was no surer way to
+make her suspect it than by bringing Sidney home.
+
+Sidney sent Katie to ask Dr. Ed to come over after dinner. With the
+sunset Anna seemed better. She insisted on coming downstairs, and
+even sat with them on the balcony until the stars came out, talking
+of Christine's trousseau, and, rather fretfully, of what she would do
+without the parlors.
+
+"You shall have your own boudoir upstairs," said Sidney valiantly.
+"Katie can carry your tray up there. We are going to make the
+sewing-room into your private sitting-room, and I shall nail the
+machine-top down."
+
+This pleased her. When K. insisted on carrying her upstairs, she went in
+a flutter.
+
+"He is so strong, Sidney!" she said, when he had placed her on her bed.
+"How can a clerk, bending over a ledger, be so muscular? When I have
+callers, will it be all right for Katie to show them upstairs?"
+
+She dropped asleep before the doctor came; and when, at something after
+eight, the door of the Wilson house slammed and a figure crossed the
+street, it was not Ed at all, but the surgeon.
+
+Sidney had been talking rather more frankly than usual. Lately there
+had been a reserve about her. K., listening intently that night, read
+between words a story of small persecutions and jealousies. But the girl
+minimized them, after her way.
+
+"It's always hard for probationers," she said. "I often think Miss
+Harrison is trying my mettle."
+
+"Harrison!"
+
+"Carlotta Harrison. And now that Miss Gregg has said she will accept
+me, it's really all over. The other nurses are wonderful--so kind and so
+helpful. I hope I shall look well in my cap."
+
+Carlotta Harrison was in Sidney's hospital! A thousand contingencies
+flashed through his mind. Sidney might grow to like her and bring her to
+the house. Sidney might insist on the thing she always spoke of--that he
+visit the hospital; and he would meet her, face to face. He could have
+depended on a man to keep his secret. This girl with her somber eyes and
+her threat to pay him out for what had happened to her--she meant danger
+of a sort that no man could fight.
+
+"Soon," said Sidney, through the warm darkness, "I shall have a cap,
+and be always forgetting it and putting my hat on over it--the new ones
+always do. One of the girls slept in hers the other night! They are
+tulle, you know, and quite stiff, and it was the most erratic-looking
+thing the next day!"
+
+It was then that the door across the street closed. Sidney did not
+hear it, but K. bent forward. There was a part of his brain always
+automatically on watch.
+
+"I shall get my operating-room training, too," she went on. "That is
+the real romance of the hospital. A--a surgeon is a sort of hero in
+a hospital. You wouldn't think that, would you? There was a lot of
+excitement to-day. Even the probationers' table was talking about it.
+Dr. Max Wilson did the Edwardes operation."
+
+The figure across the Street was lighting a cigarette. Perhaps, after
+all--
+
+"Something tremendously difficult--I don't know what. It's going into
+the medical journals. A Dr. Edwardes invented it, or whatever they
+call it. They took a picture of the operating-room for the article.
+The photographer had to put on operating clothes and wrap the camera in
+sterilized towels. It was the most thrilling thing, they say--"
+
+Her voice died away as her eyes followed K.'s. Max, cigarette in
+hand, was coming across, under the ailanthus tree. He hesitated on the
+pavement, his eyes searching the shadowy balcony.
+
+"Sidney?"
+
+"Here! Right back here!"
+
+There was vibrant gladness in her tone. He came slowly toward them.
+
+"My brother is not at home, so I came over. How select you are, with
+your balcony!"
+
+"Can you see the step?"
+
+"Coming, with bells on."
+
+K. had risen and pushed back his chair. His mind was working quickly.
+Here in the darkness he could hold the situation for a moment. If he
+could get Sidney into the house, the rest would not matter. Luckily, the
+balcony was very dark.
+
+"Is any one ill?"
+
+"Mother is not well. This is Mr. Le Moyne, and he knows who you are very
+well, indeed."
+
+The two men shook hands.
+
+"I've heard a lot of Mr. Le Moyne. Didn't the Street beat the Linburgs
+the other day? And I believe the Rosenfelds are in receipt of sixty-five
+cents a day and considerable peace and quiet through you, Mr. Le Moyne.
+You're the most popular man on the Street."
+
+"I've always heard that about YOU. Sidney, if Dr. Wilson is here to see
+your mother--"
+
+"Going," said Sidney. "And Dr. Wilson is a very great person, K., so be
+polite to him."
+
+Max had roused at the sound of Le Moyne's voice, not to suspicion,
+of course, but to memory. Without any apparent reason, he was back in
+Berlin, tramping the country roads, and beside him--
+
+"Wonderful night!"
+
+"Great," he replied. "The mind's a curious thing, isn't it. In the
+instant since Miss Page went through that window I've been to Berlin and
+back! Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks; I have my pipe here."
+
+K. struck a match with his steady hands. Now that the thing had come, he
+was glad to face it. In the flare, his quiet profile glowed against the
+night. Then he flung the match over the rail.
+
+"Perhaps my voice took you back to Berlin."
+
+Max stared; then he rose. Blackness had descended on them again, except
+for the dull glow of K.'s old pipe.
+
+"For God's sake!"
+
+"Sh! The neighbors next door have a bad habit of sitting just inside the
+curtains."
+
+"But--you!"
+
+"Sit down. Sidney will be back in a moment. I'll talk to you, if you'll
+sit still. Can you hear me plainly?"
+
+After a moment--"Yes."
+
+"I've been here--in the city, I mean--for a year. Name's Le Moyne. Don't
+forget it--Le Moyne. I've got a position in the gas office, clerical. I
+get fifteen dollars a week. I have reason to think I'm going to be moved
+up. That will be twenty, maybe twenty-two."
+
+Wilson stirred, but he found no adequate words. Only a part of what K.
+said got to him. For a moment he was back in a famous clinic, and this
+man across from him--it was not believable!
+
+"It's not hard work, and it's safe. If I make a mistake there's no life
+hanging on it. Once I made a blunder, a month or two ago. It was a big
+one. It cost me three dollars out of my own pocket. But--that's all it
+cost."
+
+Wilson's voice showed that he was more than incredulous; he was
+profoundly moved.
+
+"We thought you were dead. There were all sorts of stories. When a year
+went by--the Titanic had gone down, and nobody knew but what you were on
+it--we gave up. I--in June we put up a tablet for you at the college. I
+went down for the--for the services."
+
+"Let it stay," said K. quietly. "I'm dead as far as the college goes,
+anyhow. I'll never go back. I'm Le Moyne now. And, for Heaven's sake,
+don't be sorry for me. I'm more contented than I've been for a long
+time."
+
+The wonder in Wilson's voice was giving way to irritation.
+
+"But--when you had everything! Why, good Heavens, man, I did your
+operation to-day, and I've been blowing about it ever since."
+
+"I had everything for a while. Then I lost the essential. When that
+happened I gave up. All a man in our profession has is a certain method,
+knowledge--call it what you like,--and faith in himself. I lost my
+self-confidence; that's all. Certain things happened; kept on happening.
+So I gave it up. That's all. It's not dramatic. For about a year I was
+damned sorry for myself. I've stopped whining now."
+
+"If every surgeon gave up because he lost cases--I've just told you I
+did your operation to-day. There was just a chance for the man, and I
+took my courage in my hands and tried it. The poor devil's dead."
+
+K. rose rather wearily and emptied his pipe over the balcony rail.
+
+"That's not the same. That's the chance he and you took. What happened
+to me was--different."
+
+Pipe in hand, he stood staring out at the ailanthus tree with its crown
+of stars. Instead of the Street with its quiet houses, he saw the men
+he had known and worked with and taught, his friends who spoke his
+language, who had loved him, many of them, gathered about a bronze
+tablet set in a wall of the old college; he saw their earnest faces and
+grave eyes. He heard--
+
+He heard the soft rustle of Sidney's dress as she came into the little
+room behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+A few days after Wilson's recognition of K., two most exciting things
+happened to Sidney. One was that Christine asked her to be maid of honor
+at her wedding. The other was more wonderful. She was accepted, and
+given her cap.
+
+Because she could not get home that night, and because the little house
+had no telephone, she wrote the news to her mother and sent a note to Le
+Moyne:
+
+DEAR K.,--I am accepted, and IT is on my head at this minute. I am as
+conscious of it as if it were a halo, and as if I had done something to
+deserve it, instead of just hoping that someday I shall. I am writing
+this on the bureau, so that when I lift my eyes I may see It. I am
+afraid just now I am thinking more of the cap than of what it means. It
+IS becoming!
+
+Very soon I shall slip down and show it to the ward. I have promised.
+I shall go to the door when the night nurse is busy somewhere, and
+turn all around and let them see it, without saying a word. They love a
+little excitement like that.
+
+You have been very good to me, dear K. It is you who have made possible
+this happiness of mine to-night. I am promising myself to be very good,
+and not so vain, and to love my enemies--, although I have none now.
+Miss Harrison has just congratulated me most kindly, and I am sure poor
+Joe has both forgiven and forgotten.
+
+Off to my first lecture!
+
+SIDNEY.
+
+K. found the note on the hall table when he got home that night, and
+carried it upstairs to read. Whatever faint hope he might have had that
+her youth would prevent her acceptance he knew now was over. With the
+letter in his hand, he sat by his table and looked ahead into the empty
+years. Not quite empty, of course. She would be coming home.
+
+But more and more the life of the hospital would engross her. He
+surmised, too, very shrewdly, that, had he ever had a hope that she
+might come to care for him, his very presence in the little house
+militated against him. There was none of the illusion of separation;
+he was always there, like Katie. When she opened the door, she called
+"Mother" from the hall. If Anna did not answer, she called him, in much
+the same voice.
+
+He had built a wall of philosophy that had withstood even Wilson's
+recognition and protest. But enduring philosophy comes only with time;
+and he was young. Now and then all his defenses crumbled before a
+passion that, when he dared to face it, shook him by its very strength.
+And that day all his stoicism went down before Sidney's letter. Its very
+frankness and affection hurt--not that he did not want her affection;
+but he craved so much more. He threw himself face down on the bed, with
+the paper crushed in his hand.
+
+Sidney's letter was not the only one he received that day. When, in
+response to Katie's summons, he rose heavily and prepared for dinner, he
+found an unopened envelope on the table. It was from Max Wilson:--
+
+DEAR LE MOYNE,--I have been going around in a sort of haze all day. The
+fact that I only heard your voice and scarcely saw you last night has
+made the whole thing even more unreal.
+
+I have a feeling of delicacy about trying to see you again so soon. I'm
+bound to respect your seclusion. But there are some things that have got
+to be discussed.
+
+You said last night that things were "different" with you. I know about
+that. You'd had one or two unlucky accidents. Do you know any man in our
+profession who has not? And, for fear you think I do not know what I am
+talking about, the thing was threshed out at the State Society when the
+question of the tablet came up. Old Barnes got up and said: "Gentlemen,
+all of us live more or less in glass houses. Let him who is without
+guilt among us throw the first stone!" By George! You should have heard
+them!
+
+I didn't sleep last night. I took my little car and drove around the
+country roads, and the farther I went the more outrageous your position
+became. I'm not going to write any rot about the world needing men like
+you, although it's true enough. But our profession does. You working in
+a gas office, while old O'Hara bungles and hacks, and I struggle along
+on what I learned from you!
+
+It takes courage to step down from the pinnacle you stood on. So it's
+not cowardice that has set you down here. It's wrong conception. And
+I've thought of two things. The first, and best, is for you to go back.
+No one has taken your place, because no one could do the work. But if
+that's out of the question,--and only you know that, for only you know
+the facts,--the next best thing is this, and in all humility I make the
+suggestion.
+
+Take the State exams under your present name, and when you've got your
+certificate, come in with me. This isn't magnanimity. I'll be getting a
+damn sight more than I give.
+
+Think it over, old man.
+
+M.W.
+
+It is a curious fact that a man who is absolutely untrustworthy about
+women is often the soul of honor to other men. The younger Wilson,
+taking his pleasures lightly and not too discriminatingly, was making an
+offer that meant his ultimate eclipse, and doing it cheerfully, with his
+eyes open.
+
+K. was moved. It was like Max to make such an offer, like him to make it
+as if he were asking a favor and not conferring one. But the offer left
+him untempted. He had weighed himself in the balance, and found himself
+wanting. No tablet on the college wall could change that. And when,
+late that night, Wilson found him on the balcony and added appeal to
+argument, the situation remained unchanged. He realized its hopelessness
+when K. lapsed into whimsical humor.
+
+"I'm not absolutely useless where I am, you know, Max," he said. "I've
+raised three tomato plants and a family of kittens this summer, helped
+to plan a trousseau, assisted in selecting wall-paper for the room just
+inside,--did you notice it?--and developed a boy pitcher with a ball
+that twists around the bat like a Colles fracture around a splint!"
+
+"If you're going to be humorous--"
+
+"My dear fellow," said K. quietly, "if I had no sense of humor, I should
+go upstairs to-night, turn on the gas, and make a stertorous entrance
+into eternity. By the way, that's something I forgot!"
+
+"Eternity?" "No. Among my other activities, I wired the parlor for
+electric light. The bride-to-be expects some electroliers as wedding
+gifts, and--"
+
+Wilson rose and flung his cigarette into the grass.
+
+"I wish to God I understood you!" he said irritably.
+
+K. rose with him, and all the suppressed feeling of the interview was
+crowded into his last few words.
+
+"I'm not as ungrateful as you think, Max," he said. "I--you've helped
+a lot. Don't worry about me. I'm as well off as I deserve to be, and
+better. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+Wilson's unexpected magnanimity put K. in a curious position--left him,
+as it were, with a divided allegiance. Sidney's frank infatuation for
+the young surgeon was growing. He was quick to see it. And where before
+he might have felt justified in going to the length of warning her, now
+his hands were tied.
+
+Max was interested in her. K. could see that, too. More than once he had
+taken Sidney back to the hospital in his car. Le Moyne, handicapped at
+every turn, found himself facing two alternatives, one but little better
+than the other. The affair might run a legitimate course, ending in
+marriage--a year of happiness for her, and then what marriage with
+Max, as he knew him, would inevitably mean: wanderings away, remorseful
+returns to her, infidelities, misery. Or, it might be less serious but
+almost equally unhappy for her. Max might throw caution to the winds,
+pursue her for a time,--K. had seen him do this,--and then, growing
+tired, change to some new attraction. In either case, he could only wait
+and watch, eating his heart out during the long evenings when Anna read
+her "Daily Thoughts" upstairs and he sat alone with his pipe on the
+balcony.
+
+Sidney went on night duty shortly after her acceptance. All of her
+orderly young life had been divided into two parts: day, when one
+played or worked, and night, when one slept. Now she was compelled to
+a readjustment: one worked in the night and slept in the day. Things
+seemed unnatural, chaotic. At the end of her first night report Sidney
+added what she could remember of a little verse of Stevenson's. She
+added it to the end of her general report, which was to the effect that
+everything had been quiet during the night except the neighborhood.
+
+     "And does it not seem hard to you,
+      When all the sky is clear and blue,
+      And I should like so much to play,
+      To have to go to bed by day?"
+
+The day assistant happened on the report, and was quite scandalized.
+
+"If the night nurses are to spend their time making up poetry," she
+said crossly, "we'd better change this hospital into a young ladies'
+seminary. If she wants to complain about the noise in the street, she
+should do so in proper form."
+
+"I don't think she made it up," said the Head, trying not to smile.
+"I've heard something like it somewhere, and, what with the heat and the
+noise of traffic, I don't see how any of them get any sleep."
+
+But, because discipline must be observed, she wrote on the slip the
+assistant carried around: "Please submit night reports in prose."
+
+Sidney did not sleep much. She tumbled into her low bed at nine o'clock
+in the morning, those days, with her splendid hair neatly braided down
+her back and her prayers said, and immediately her active young mind
+filled with images--Christine's wedding, Dr. Max passing the door of her
+old ward and she not there, Joe--even Tillie, whose story was now the
+sensation of the Street. A few months before she would not have cared
+to think of Tillie. She would have retired her into the land of
+things-one-must-forget. But the Street's conventions were not holding
+Sidney's thoughts now. She puzzled over Tillie a great deal, and over
+Grace and her kind.
+
+On her first night on duty, a girl had been brought in from the Avenue.
+She had taken a poison--nobody knew just what. When the internes had
+tried to find out, she had only said: "What's the use?"
+
+And she had died.
+
+Sidney kept asking herself, "Why?" those mornings when she could not get
+to sleep. People were kind--men were kind, really,--and yet, for some
+reason or other, those things had to be. Why?
+
+After a time Sidney would doze fitfully. But by three o'clock she was
+always up and dressing. After a time the strain told on her. Lack of
+sleep wrote hollows around her eyes and killed some of her bright color.
+Between three and four o'clock in the morning she was overwhelmed on
+duty by a perfect madness of sleep. There was a penalty for sleeping on
+duty. The old night watchman had a way of slipping up on one nodding.
+The night nurses wished they might fasten a bell on him!
+
+Luckily, at four came early-morning temperatures; that roused her. And
+after that came the clatter of early milk-wagons and the rose hues of
+dawn over the roofs. Twice in the night, once at supper and again toward
+dawn, she drank strong black coffee. But after a week or two her nerves
+were stretched taut as a string.
+
+Her station was in a small room close to her three wards. But she sat
+very little, as a matter of fact. Her responsibility was heavy on her;
+she made frequent rounds. The late summer nights were fitful, feverish;
+the darkened wards stretched away like caverns from the dim light near
+the door. And from out of these caverns came petulant voices, uneasy
+movements, the banging of a cup on a bedside, which was the signal of
+thirst.
+
+The older nurses saved themselves when they could. To them, perhaps just
+a little weary with time and much service, the banging cup meant not so
+much thirst as annoyance. They visited Sidney sometimes and cautioned
+her.
+
+"Don't jump like that, child; they're not parched, you know."
+
+"But if you have a fever and are thirsty--"
+
+"Thirsty nothing! They get lonely. All they want is to see somebody."
+
+"Then," Sidney would say, rising resolutely, "they are going to see me."
+
+Gradually the older girls saw that she would not save herself. They
+liked her very much, and they, too, had started in with willing feet
+and tender hands; but the thousand and one demands of their service
+had drained them dry. They were efficient, cool-headed, quick-thinking
+machines, doing their best, of course, but differing from Sidney in that
+their service was of the mind, while hers was of the heart. To them,
+pain was a thing to be recorded on a report; to Sidney, it was written
+on the tablets of her soul.
+
+Carlotta Harrison went on night duty at the same time--her last night
+service, as it was Sidney's first. She accepted it stoically. She had
+charge of the three wards on the floor just below Sidney, and of the
+ward into which all emergency cases were taken. It was a difficult
+service, perhaps the most difficult in the house. Scarcely a night went
+by without its patrol or ambulance case. Ordinarily, the emergency ward
+had its own night nurse. But the house was full to overflowing. Belated
+vacations and illness had depleted the training-school. Carlotta, given
+double duty, merely shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I've always had things pretty hard here," she commented briefly.
+"When I go out, I'll either be competent enough to run a whole hospital
+singlehanded, or I'll be carried out feet first."
+
+Sidney was glad to have her so near. She knew her better than she knew
+the other nurses. Small emergencies were constantly arising and finding
+her at a loss. Once at least every night, Miss Harrison would hear a
+soft hiss from the back staircase that connected the two floors, and,
+going out, would see Sidney's flushed face and slightly crooked cap
+bending over the stair-rail.
+
+"I'm dreadfully sorry to bother you," she would say, "but So-and-So
+won't have a fever bath"; or, "I've a woman here who refuses her
+medicine." Then would follow rapid questions and equally rapid answers.
+Much as Carlotta disliked and feared the girl overhead, it never
+occurred to her to refuse her assistance. Perhaps the angels who keep
+the great record will put that to her credit.
+
+Sidney saw her first death shortly after she went on night duty. It was
+the most terrible experience of all her life; and yet, as death goes, it
+was quiet enough. So gradual was it that Sidney, with K.'s little watch
+in hand, was not sure exactly when it happened. The light was very dim
+behind the little screen. One moment the sheet was quivering slightly
+under the struggle for breath, the next it was still. That was all. But
+to the girl it was catastrophe. That life, so potential, so tremendous a
+thing, could end so ignominiously, that the long battle should terminate
+always in this capitulation--it seemed to her that she could not stand
+it. Added to all her other new problems of living was this one of dying.
+
+She made mistakes, of course, which the kindly nurses forgot to
+report--basins left about, errors on her records. She rinsed her
+thermometer in hot water one night, and startled an interne by sending
+him word that Mary McGuire's temperature was a hundred and ten degrees.
+She let a delirious patient escape from the ward another night and go
+airily down the fire-escape before she discovered what had happened!
+Then she distinguished herself by flying down the iron staircase and
+bringing the runaway back single-handed.
+
+For Christine's wedding the Street threw off its drab attire and assumed
+a wedding garment. In the beginning it was incredulous about some of the
+details.
+
+"An awning from the house door to the curbstone, and a policeman!"
+reported Mrs. Rosenfeld, who was finding steady employment at the Lorenz
+house. "And another awning at the church, with a red carpet!"
+
+Mr. Rosenfeld had arrived home and was making up arrears of rest and
+recreation.
+
+"Huh!" he said. "Suppose it don't rain. What then?" His Jewish father
+spoke in him.
+
+"And another policeman at the church!" said Mrs. Rosenfeld triumphantly.
+
+"Why do they ask 'em if they don't trust 'em?"
+
+But the mention of the policemen had been unfortunate. It recalled to
+him many things that were better forgotten. He rose and scowled at his
+wife.
+
+"You tell Johnny something for me," he snarled. "You tell him when he
+sees his father walking down street, and he sittin' up there alone on
+that automobile, I want him to stop and pick me up when I hail him. Me
+walking, while my son swells around in a car! And another thing." He
+turned savagely at the door. "You let me hear of him road-housin', and
+I'll kill him!"
+
+The wedding was to be at five o'clock. This, in itself, defied all
+traditions of the Street, which was either married in the very early
+morning at the Catholic church or at eight o'clock in the evening at
+the Presbyterian. There was something reckless about five o'clock. The
+Street felt the dash of it. It had a queer feeling that perhaps such a
+marriage was not quite legal.
+
+The question of what to wear became, for the men, an earnest one. Dr. Ed
+resurrected an old black frock-coat and had a "V" of black cambric set
+in the vest. Mr. Jenkins, the grocer, rented a cutaway, and bought a
+new Panama to wear with it. The deaf-and-dumb book agent who boarded at
+McKees', and who, by reason of his affliction, was calmly ignorant of
+the excitement around him, wore a borrowed dress-suit, and considered
+himself to the end of his days the only properly attired man in the
+church.
+
+The younger Wilson was to be one of the ushers. When the newspapers came
+out with the published list and this was discovered, as well as that
+Sidney was the maid of honor, there was a distinct quiver through the
+hospital training-school. A probationer was authorized to find out
+particulars. It was the day of the wedding then, and Sidney, who had
+not been to bed at all, was sitting in a sunny window in the Dormitory
+Annex, drying her hair.
+
+The probationer was distinctly uneasy.
+
+"I--I just wonder," she said, "if you would let some of the girls come
+in to see you when you're dressed?"
+
+"Why, of course I will."
+
+"It's awfully thrilling, isn't it? And--isn't Dr. Wilson going to be an
+usher?"
+
+Sidney colored. "I believe so."
+
+"Are you going to walk down the aisle with him?"
+
+"I don't know. They had a rehearsal last night, but of course I was not
+there. I--I think I walk alone."
+
+The probationer had been instructed to find out other things; so she set
+to work with a fan at Sidney's hair.
+
+"You've known Dr. Wilson a long time, haven't you?"
+
+"Ages."
+
+"He's awfully good-looking, isn't he?"
+
+Sidney considered. She was not ignorant of the methods of the school. If
+this girl was pumping her--
+
+"I'll have to think that over," she said, with a glint of mischief in
+her eyes. "When you know a person terribly well, you hardly know whether
+he's good-looking or not."
+
+"I suppose," said the probationer, running the long strands of Sidney's
+hair through her fingers, "that when you are at home you see him often."
+
+Sidney got off the window-sill, and, taking the probationer smilingly by
+the shoulders, faced her toward the door.
+
+"You go back to the girls," she said, "and tell them to come in and see
+me when I am dressed, and tell them this: I don't know whether I am to
+walk down the aisle with Dr. Wilson, but I hope I am. I see him very
+often. I like him very much. I hope he likes me. And I think he's
+handsome."
+
+She shoved the probationer out into the hall and locked the door behind
+her.
+
+That message in its entirety reached Carlotta Harrison. Her smouldering
+eyes flamed. The audacity of it startled her. Sidney must be very sure
+of herself.
+
+She, too, had not slept during the day. When the probationer who
+had brought her the report had gone out, she lay in her long white
+night-gown, hands clasped under her head, and stared at the vault-like
+ceiling of her little room.
+
+She saw there Sidney in her white dress going down the aisle of the
+church; she saw the group around the altar; and, as surely as she lay
+there, she knew that Max Wilson's eyes would be, not on the bride, but
+on the girl who stood beside her.
+
+The curious thing was that Carlotta felt that she could stop the wedding
+if she wanted to. She'd happened on a bit of information--many a wedding
+had been stopped for less. It rather obsessed her to think of stopping
+the wedding, so that Sidney and Max would not walk down the aisle
+together.
+
+There came, at last, an hour before the wedding, a lull in the feverish
+activities of the previous month. Everything was ready. In the Lorenz
+kitchen, piles of plates, negro waiters, ice-cream freezers, and Mrs.
+Rosenfeld stood in orderly array. In the attic, in the center of a
+sheet, before a toilet-table which had been carried upstairs for her
+benefit, sat, on this her day of days, the bride. All the second story
+had been prepared for guests and presents.
+
+Florists were still busy in the room below. Bridesmaids were clustered
+on the little staircase, bending over at each new ring of the bell and
+calling reports to Christine through the closed door:--
+
+"Another wooden box, Christine. It looks like more plates. What will you
+ever do with them all?"
+
+"Good Heavens! Here's another of the neighbors who wants to see how you
+look. Do say you can't have any visitors now."
+
+Christine sat alone in the center of her sheet. The bridesmaids had been
+sternly forbidden to come into her room.
+
+"I haven't had a chance to think for a month," she said. "And I've got
+some things I've got to think out."
+
+But, when Sidney came, she sent for her. Sidney found her sitting on a
+stiff chair, in her wedding gown, with her veil spread out on a small
+stand.
+
+"Close the door," said Christine. And, after Sidney had kissed her:--
+
+"I've a good mind not to do it."
+
+"You're tired and nervous, that's all."
+
+"I am, of course. But that isn't what's wrong with me. Throw that veil
+some place and sit down."
+
+Christine was undoubtedly rouged, a very delicate touch. Sidney thought
+brides should be rather pale. But under her eyes were lines that Sidney
+had never seen there before.
+
+"I'm not going to be foolish, Sidney. I'll go through with it, of
+course. It would put mamma in her grave if I made a scene now."
+
+She suddenly turned on Sidney.
+
+"Palmer gave his bachelor dinner at the Country Club last night. They
+all drank more than they should. Somebody called father up to-day and
+said that Palmer had emptied a bottle of wine into the piano. He hasn't
+been here to-day."
+
+"He'll be along. And as for the other--perhaps it wasn't Palmer who did
+it."
+
+"That's not it, Sidney. I'm frightened."
+
+Three months before, perhaps, Sidney could not have comforted her; but
+three months had made a change in Sidney. The complacent sophistries
+of her girlhood no longer answered for truth. She put her arms around
+Christine's shoulders.
+
+"A man who drinks is a broken reed," said Christine. "That's what I'm
+going to marry and lean on the rest of my life--a broken reed. And that
+isn't all!"
+
+She got up quickly, and, trailing her long satin train across the floor,
+bolted the door. Then from inside her corsage she brought out and held
+to Sidney a letter. "Special delivery. Read it."
+
+It was very short; Sidney read it at a glance:--
+
+Ask your future husband if he knows a girl at 213 ---- Avenue.
+
+Three months before, the Avenue would have meant nothing to Sidney. Now
+she knew. Christine, more sophisticated, had always known.
+
+"You see," she said. "That's what I'm up against."
+
+Quite suddenly Sidney knew who the girl at 213 ---- Avenue was. The
+paper she held in her hand was hospital paper with the heading torn off.
+The whole sordid story lay before her: Grace Irving, with her thin face
+and cropped hair, and the newspaper on the floor of the ward beside her!
+
+One of the bridesmaids thumped violently on the door outside.
+
+"Another electric lamp," she called excitedly through the door. "And
+Palmer is downstairs."
+
+"You see," Christine said drearily. "I have received another electric
+lamp, and Palmer is downstairs! I've got to go through with it, I
+suppose. The only difference between me and other brides is that I know
+what I'm getting. Most of them do not."
+
+"You're going on with it?"
+
+"It's too late to do anything else. I am not going to give this
+neighborhood anything to talk about."
+
+She picked up her veil and set the coronet on her head. Sidney stood
+with the letter in her hands. One of K.'s answers to her hot question
+had been this:--
+
+"There is no sense in looking back unless it helps us to look ahead.
+What your little girl of the ward has been is not so important as what
+she is going to be."
+
+"Even granting this to be true," she said to Christine slowly,--"and it
+may only be malicious after all, Christine,--it's surely over and done
+with. It's not Palmer's past that concerns you now; it's his future with
+you, isn't it?"
+
+Christine had finally adjusted her veil. A band of duchesse lace rose
+like a coronet from her soft hair, and from it, sweeping to the end of
+her train, fell fold after fold of soft tulle. She arranged the coronet
+carefully with small pearl-topped pins. Then she rose and put her hands
+on Sidney's shoulders.
+
+"The simple truth is," she said quietly, "that I might hold Palmer if
+I cared--terribly. I don't. And I'm afraid he knows it. It's my pride
+that's hurt, nothing else."
+
+And thus did Christine Lorenz go down to her wedding.
+
+Sidney stood for a moment, her eyes on the letter she held. Already, in
+her new philosophy, she had learned many strange things. One of them was
+this: that women like Grace Irving did not betray their lovers; that the
+code of the underworld was "death to the squealer"; that one played the
+game, and won or lost, and if he lost, took his medicine. If not Grace,
+then who? Somebody else in the hospital who knew her story, of course.
+But who? And again--why?
+
+Before going downstairs, Sidney placed the letter in a saucer and set
+fire to it with a match. Some of the radiance had died out of her eyes.
+
+The Street voted the wedding a great success. The alley, however, was
+rather confused by certain things. For instance, it regarded the awning
+as essentially for the carriage guests, and showed a tendency to duck
+in under the side when no one was looking. Mrs. Rosenfeld absolutely
+refused to take the usher's arm which was offered her, and said she
+guessed she was able to walk up alone.
+
+Johnny Rosenfeld came, as befitted his position, in a complete
+chauffeur's outfit of leather cap and leggings, with the shield that was
+his State license pinned over his heart.
+
+The Street came decorously, albeit with a degree of uncertainty as to
+supper. Should they put something on the stove before they left, in case
+only ice cream and cake were served at the house? Or was it just as well
+to trust to luck, and, if the Lorenz supper proved inadequate, to sit
+down to a cold snack when they got home?
+
+To K., sitting in the back of the church between Harriet and Anna, the
+wedding was Sidney--Sidney only. He watched her first steps down the
+aisle, saw her chin go up as she gained poise and confidence, watched
+the swinging of her young figure in its gauzy white as she passed him
+and went forward past the long rows of craning necks. Afterward he could
+not remember the wedding party at all. The service for him was Sidney,
+rather awed and very serious, beside the altar. It was Sidney who came
+down the aisle to the triumphant strains of the wedding march, Sidney
+with Max beside her!
+
+On his right sat Harriet, having reached the first pinnacle of her
+new career. The wedding gowns were successful. They were more than
+that--they were triumphant. Sitting there, she cast comprehensive eyes
+over the church, filled with potential brides.
+
+To Harriet, then, that October afternoon was a future of endless lace
+and chiffon, the joy of creation, triumph eclipsing triumph. But to
+Anna, watching the ceremony with blurred eyes and ineffectual bluish
+lips, was coming her hour. Sitting back in the pew, with her hands
+folded over her prayer-book, she said a little prayer for her straight
+young daughter, facing out from the altar with clear, unafraid eyes.
+
+As Sidney and Max drew near the door, Joe Drummond, who had been
+standing at the back of the church, turned quickly and went out. He
+stumbled, rather, as if he could not see.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The supper at the White Springs Hotel had not been the last supper
+Carlotta Harrison and Max Wilson had taken together. Carlotta had
+selected for her vacation a small town within easy motoring distance of
+the city, and two or three times during her two weeks off duty Wilson
+had gone out to see her. He liked being with her. She stimulated him.
+For once that he could see Sidney, he saw Carlotta twice.
+
+She had kept the affair well in hand. She was playing for high stakes.
+She knew quite well the kind of man with whom she was dealing--that he
+would pay as little as possible. But she knew, too, that, let him want a
+thing enough, he would pay any price for it, even marriage.
+
+She was very skillful. The very ardor in her face was in her favor.
+Behind her hot eyes lurked cold calculation. She would put the thing
+through, and show those puling nurses, with their pious eyes and evening
+prayers, a thing or two.
+
+During that entire vacation he never saw her in anything more elaborate
+than the simplest of white dresses modestly open at the throat, sleeves
+rolled up to show her satiny arms. There were no other boarders at the
+little farmhouse. She sat for hours in the summer evenings in the square
+yard filled with apple trees that bordered the highway, carefully
+posed over a book, but with her keen eyes always on the road. She read
+Browning, Emerson, Swinburne. Once he found her with a book that she
+hastily concealed. He insisted on seeing it, and secured it. It was a
+book on brain surgery. Confronted with it, she blushed and dropped her
+eyes.
+
+His delighted vanity found in it the most insidious of compliments, as
+she had intended.
+
+"I feel such an idiot when I am with you," she said. "I wanted to know a
+little more about the things you do."
+
+That put their relationship on a new and advanced basis. Thereafter
+he occasionally talked surgery instead of sentiment. He found her
+responsive, intelligent. His work, a sealed book to his women before,
+lay open to her.
+
+Now and then their professional discussions ended in something
+different. The two lines of their interest converged.
+
+"Gad!" he said one day. "I look forward to these evenings. I can talk
+shop with you without either shocking or nauseating you. You are the
+most intelligent woman I know--and one of the prettiest."
+
+He had stopped the machine on the crest of a hill for the ostensible
+purpose of admiring the view.
+
+"As long as you talk shop," she said, "I feel that there is nothing
+wrong in our being together; but when you say the other thing--"
+
+"Is it wrong to tell a pretty woman you admire her?"
+
+"Under our circumstances, yes."
+
+He twisted himself around in the seat and sat looking at her.
+
+"The loveliest mouth in the world!" he said, and kissed her suddenly.
+
+She had expected it for at least a week, but her surprise was well done.
+Well done also was her silence during the homeward ride.
+
+No, she was not angry, she said. It was only that he had set her
+thinking. When she got out of the car, she bade him good-night and
+good-bye. He only laughed.
+
+"Don't you trust me?" he said, leaning out to her.
+
+She raised her dark eyes.
+
+"It is not that. I do not trust myself."
+
+After that nothing could have kept him away, and she knew it.
+
+"Man demands both danger and play; therefore he selects woman as the
+most dangerous of toys." A spice of danger had entered into their
+relationship. It had become infinitely piquant.
+
+He motored out to the farm the next day, to be told that Miss Harrison
+had gone for a long walk and had not said when she would be back. That
+pleased him. Evidently she was frightened. Every man likes to think that
+he is a bit of a devil. Dr. Max settled his tie, and, leaving his
+car outside the whitewashed fence, departed blithely on foot in the
+direction Carlotta had taken.
+
+She knew her man, of course. He found her, face down, under a tree,
+looking pale and worn and bearing all the evidence of a severe mental
+struggle. She rose in confusion when she heard his step, and retreated a
+foot or two, with her hands out before her.
+
+"How dare you?" she cried. "How dare you follow me! I--I have got to
+have a little time alone. I have got to think things out."
+
+He knew it was play-acting, but rather liked it; and, because he was
+quite as skillful as she was, he struck a match on the trunk of the tree
+and lighted a cigarette before he answered.
+
+"I was afraid of this," he said, playing up. "You take it entirely too
+hard. I am not really a villain, Carlotta."
+
+It was the first time he had used her name.
+
+"Sit down and let us talk things over."
+
+She sat down at a safe distance, and looked across the little clearing
+to him with the somber eyes that were her great asset.
+
+"You can afford to be very calm," she said, "because this is only play
+to you; I know it. I've known it all along. I'm a good listener and
+not--unattractive. But what is play for you is not necessarily play for
+me. I am going away from here."
+
+For the first time, he found himself believing in her sincerity. Why,
+the girl was white. He didn't want to hurt her. If she cried--he was at
+the mercy of any woman who cried.
+
+"Give up your training?"
+
+"What else can I do? This sort of thing cannot go on, Dr. Max."
+
+She did cry then--real tears; and he went over beside her and took her
+in his arms.
+
+"Don't do that," he said. "Please don't do that. You make me feel like
+a scoundrel, and I've only been taking a little bit of happiness. That's
+all. I swear it."
+
+She lifted her head from his shoulder.
+
+"You mean you are happy with me?"
+
+"Very, very happy," said Dr. Max, and kissed her again on the lips.
+
+
+The one element Carlotta had left out of her calculations was herself.
+She had known the man, had taken the situation at its proper value. But
+she had left out this important factor in the equation,--that factor
+which in every relationship between man and woman determines the
+equation,--the woman.
+
+Into her calculating ambition had come a new and destroying element. She
+who, like K. in his little room on the Street, had put aside love and
+the things thereof, found that it would not be put aside. By the end of
+her short vacation Carlotta Harrison was wildly in love with the younger
+Wilson.
+
+They continued to meet, not as often as before, but once a week,
+perhaps. The meetings were full of danger now; and if for the girl they
+lost by this quality, they gained attraction for the man. She was shrewd
+enough to realize her own situation. The thing had gone wrong. She
+cared, and he did not. It was all a game now, not hers.
+
+All women are intuitive; women in love are dangerously so. As well as
+she knew that his passion for her was not the real thing, so also she
+realized that there was growing up in his heart something akin to the
+real thing for Sidney Page. Suspicion became certainty after a talk
+they had over the supper table at a country road-house the day after
+Christine's wedding.
+
+"How was the wedding--tiresome?" she asked.
+
+"Thrilling! There's always something thrilling to me in a man tying
+himself up for life to one woman. It's--it's so reckless."
+
+Her eyes narrowed. "That's not exactly the Law and the Prophets, is it?"
+
+"It's the truth. To think of selecting out of all the world one woman,
+and electing to spend the rest of one's days with her! Although--"
+
+His eyes looked past Carlotta into distance.
+
+"Sidney Page was one of the bridesmaids," he said irrelevantly. "She was
+lovelier than the bride."
+
+"Pretty, but stupid," said Carlotta. "I like her. I've really tried to
+teach her things, but--you know--" She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+Dr. Max was learning wisdom. If there was a twinkle in his eye, he
+veiled it discreetly. But, once again in the machine, he bent over and
+put his cheek against hers.
+
+"You little cat! You're jealous," he said exultantly.
+
+Nevertheless, although he might smile, the image of Sidney lay very
+close to his heart those autumn days. And Carlotta knew it.
+
+Sidney came off night duty the middle of November. The night duty had
+been a time of comparative peace to Carlotta. There were no evenings
+when Dr. Max could bring Sidney back to the hospital in his car.
+
+Sidney's half-days at home were occasions for agonies of jealousy on
+Carlotta's part. On such an occasion, a month after the wedding, she
+could not contain herself. She pleaded her old excuse of headache, and
+took the trolley to a point near the end of the Street. After twilight
+fell, she slowly walked the length of the Street. Christine and Palmer
+had not returned from their wedding journey. The November evening was
+not cold, and on the little balcony sat Sidney and Dr. Max. K. was
+there, too, had she only known it, sitting back in the shadow and saying
+little, his steady eyes on Sidney's profile.
+
+But this Carlotta did not know. She went on down the Street in a frenzy
+of jealous anger.
+
+After that two ideas ran concurrent in Carlotta's mind: one was to get
+Sidney out of the way, the other was to make Wilson propose to her. In
+her heart she knew that on the first depended the second.
+
+A week later she made the same frantic excursion, but with a different
+result. Sidney was not in sight, or Wilson. But standing on the wooden
+doorstep of the little house was Le Moyne. The ailanthus trees were
+bare at that time, throwing gaunt arms upward to the November sky. The
+street-lamp, which in the summer left the doorstep in the shadow, now
+shone through the branches and threw into strong relief Le Moyne's tall
+figure and set face. Carlotta saw him too late to retreat. But he
+did not see her. She went on, startled, her busy brain scheming anew.
+Another element had entered into her plotting. It was the first time
+she had known that K. lived in the Page house. It gave her a sense of
+uncertainty and deadly fear.
+
+She made her first friendly overture of many days to Sidney the
+following day. They met in the locker-room in the basement where the
+street clothing for the ward patients was kept. Here, rolled in bundles
+and ticketed, side by side lay the heterogeneous garments in which
+the patients had met accident or illness. Rags and tidiness, filth and
+cleanliness, lay almost touching.
+
+Far away on the other side of the white-washed basement, men were
+unloading gleaming cans of milk. Floods of sunlight came down the
+cellar-way, touching their white coats and turning the cans to silver.
+Everywhere was the religion of the hospital, which is order.
+
+Sidney, harking back from recent slights to the staircase conversation
+of her night duty, smiled at Carlotta cheerfully.
+
+"A miracle is happening," she said. "Grace Irving is going out to-day.
+When one remembers how ill she was and how we thought she could not
+live, it's rather a triumph, isn't it?"
+
+"Are those her clothes?"
+
+Sidney examined with some dismay the elaborate negligee garments in her
+hand.
+
+"She can't go out in those; I shall have to lend her something." A
+little of the light died out of her face. "She's had a hard fight, and
+she has won," she said. "But when I think of what she's probably going
+back to--"
+
+Carlotta shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It's all in the day's work," she observed indifferently. "You can take
+them up into the kitchen and give them steady work paring potatoes, or
+put them in the laundry ironing. In the end it's the same thing. They
+all go back."
+
+She drew a package from the locker and looked at it ruefully.
+
+"Well, what do you know about this? Here's a woman who came in in a
+nightgown and pair of slippers. And now she wants to go out in half an
+hour!"
+
+She turned, on her way out of the locker-room, and shot a quick glance
+at Sidney.
+
+"I happened to be on your street the other night," she said. "You live
+across the street from Wilsons', don't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought so; I had heard you speak of the house. Your--your brother
+was standing on the steps."
+
+Sidney laughed.
+
+"I have no brother. That's a roomer, a Mr. Le Moyne. It isn't really
+right to call him a roomer; he's one of the family now."
+
+"Le Moyne!"
+
+He had even taken another name. It had hit him hard, for sure.
+
+K.'s name had struck an always responsive chord in Sidney. The two girls
+went toward the elevator together. With a very little encouragement,
+Sidney talked of K. She was pleased at Miss Harrison's friendly tone,
+glad that things were all right between them again. At her floor, she
+put a timid hand on the girl's arm.
+
+"I was afraid I had offended you or displeased you," she said. "I'm so
+glad it isn't so."
+
+Carlotta shivered under her hand.
+
+Things were not going any too well with K. True, he had received his
+promotion at the office, and with this present affluence of twenty-two
+dollars a week he was able to do several things. Mrs. Rosenfeld now
+washed and ironed one day a week at the little house, so that Katie
+might have more time to look after Anna. He had increased also the
+amount of money that he periodically sent East.
+
+So far, well enough. The thing that rankled and filled him with a sense
+of failure was Max Wilson's attitude. It was not unfriendly; it was,
+indeed, consistently respectful, almost reverential. But he clearly
+considered Le Moyne's position absurd.
+
+There was no true comradeship between the two men; but there was
+beginning to be constant association, and lately a certain amount of
+friction. They thought differently about almost everything.
+
+Wilson began to bring all his problems to Le Moyne. There were long
+consultations in that small upper room. Perhaps more than one man or
+woman who did not know of K.'s existence owed his life to him that fall.
+
+Under K.'s direction, Max did marvels. Cases began to come in to him
+from the surrounding towns. To his own daring was added a new and
+remarkable technique. But Le Moyne, who had found resignation if not
+content, was once again in touch with the work he loved. There were
+times when, having thrashed a case out together and outlined the next
+day's work for Max, he would walk for hours into the night out over the
+hills, fighting his battle. The longing was on him to be in the thick
+of things again. The thought of the gas office and its deadly round
+sickened him.
+
+It was on one of his long walks that K. found Tillie.
+
+It was December then, gray and raw, with a wet snow that changed to
+rain as it fell. The country roads were ankle-deep with mud, the wayside
+paths thick with sodden leaves. The dreariness of the countryside that
+Saturday afternoon suited his mood. He had ridden to the end of the
+street-car line, and started his walk from there. As was his custom, he
+wore no overcoat, but a short sweater under his coat. Somewhere along
+the road he had picked up a mongrel dog, and, as if in sheer desire for
+human society, it trotted companionably at his heels.
+
+Seven miles from the end of the car line he found a road-house, and
+stopped in for a glass of Scotch. He was chilled through. The dog
+went in with him, and stood looking up into his face. It was as if he
+submitted, but wondered why this indoors, with the scents of the road
+ahead and the trails of rabbits over the fields.
+
+The house was set in a valley at the foot of two hills. Through the mist
+of the December afternoon, it had loomed pleasantly before him. The door
+was ajar, and he stepped into a little hall covered with ingrain carpet.
+To the right was the dining-room, the table covered with a white cloth,
+and in its exact center an uncompromising bunch of dried flowers. To the
+left, the typical parlor of such places. It might have been the parlor
+of the White Springs Hotel in duplicate, plush self-rocker and all. Over
+everything was silence and a pervading smell of fresh varnish. The house
+was aggressive with new paint--the sagging old floors shone with it, the
+doors gleamed.
+
+"Hello!" called K.
+
+There were slow footsteps upstairs, the closing of a bureau drawer,
+the rustle of a woman's dress coming down the stairs. K., standing
+uncertainly on a carpet oasis that was the center of the parlor varnish,
+stripped off his sweater.
+
+"Not very busy here this afternoon!" he said to the unseen female on the
+staircase. Then he saw her. It was Tillie. She put a hand against the
+doorframe to steady herself. Tillie surely, but a new Tillie! With her
+hair loosened around her face, a fresh blue chintz dress open at the
+throat, a black velvet bow on her breast, here was a Tillie fuller,
+infinitely more attractive, than he had remembered her. But she did not
+smile at him. There was something about her eyes not unlike the dog's
+expression, submissive, but questioning.
+
+"Well, you've found me, Mr. Le Moyne." And, when he held out his hand,
+smiling: "I just had to do it, Mr. K."
+
+"And how's everything going? You look mighty fine and--happy, Tillie."
+
+"I'm all right. Mr. Schwitter's gone to the postoffice. He'll be back at
+five. Will you have a cup of tea, or will you have something else?"
+
+The instinct of the Street was still strong in Tillie. The Street did
+not approve of "something else."
+
+"Scotch-and-soda," said Le Moyne. "And shall I buy a ticket for you to
+punch?"
+
+But she only smiled faintly. He was sorry he had made the blunder.
+Evidently the Street and all that pertained was a sore subject.
+
+So this was Tillie's new home! It was for this that she had exchanged
+the virginal integrity of her life at Mrs. McKee's--for this wind-swept
+little house, tidily ugly, infinitely lonely. There were two crayon
+enlargements over the mantel. One was Schwitter, evidently. The
+other was the paper-doll wife. K. wondered what curious instinct of
+self-abnegation had caused Tillie to leave the wife there undisturbed.
+Back of its position of honor he saw the girl's realization of her own
+situation. On a wooden shelf, exactly between the two pictures, was
+another vase of dried flowers.
+
+Tillie brought the Scotch, already mixed, in a tall glass. K. would
+have preferred to mix it himself, but the Scotch was good. He felt a new
+respect for Mr. Schwitter.
+
+"You gave me a turn at first," said Tillie. "But I am right glad to see
+you, Mr. Le Moyne. Now that the roads are bad, nobody comes very much.
+It's lonely."
+
+Until now, K. and Tillie, when they met, had met conversationally on the
+common ground of food. They no longer had that, and between them both
+lay like a barrier their last conversation.
+
+"Are you happy, Tillie?" said K. suddenly.
+
+"I expected you'd ask me that. I've been thinking what to say."
+
+Her reply set him watching her face. More attractive it certainly was,
+but happy? There was a wistfulness about Tillie's mouth that set him
+wondering.
+
+"Is he good to you?"
+
+"He's about the best man on earth. He's never said a cross word to
+me--even at first, when I was panicky and scared at every sound."
+
+Le Moyne nodded understandingly.
+
+"I burned a lot of victuals when I first came, running off and hiding
+when I heard people around the place. It used to seem to me that what
+I'd done was written on my face. But he never said a word."
+
+"That's over now?"
+
+"I don't run. I am still frightened."
+
+"Then it has been worth while?"
+
+Tillie glanced up at the two pictures over the mantel.
+
+"Sometimes it is--when he comes in tired, and I've a chicken ready or
+some fried ham and eggs for his supper, and I see him begin to look
+rested. He lights his pipe, and many an evening he helps me with the
+dishes. He's happy; he's getting fat."
+
+"But you?" Le Moyne persisted.
+
+"I wouldn't go back to where I was, but I am not happy, Mr. Le Moyne.
+There's no use pretending. I want a baby. All along I've wanted a baby.
+He wants one. This place is his, and he'd like a boy to come into it
+when he's gone. But, my God! if I did have one; what would it be?"
+
+K.'s eyes followed hers to the picture and the everlastings underneath.
+
+"And she--there isn't any prospect of her--?"
+
+"No."
+
+There was no solution to Tillie's problem. Le Moyne, standing on the
+hearth and looking down at her, realized that, after all, Tillie must
+work out her own salvation. He could offer her no comfort.
+
+They talked far into the growing twilight of the afternoon. Tillie was
+hungry for news of the Street: must know of Christine's wedding, of
+Harriet, of Sidney in her hospital. And when he had told her all, she
+sat silent, rolling her handkerchief in her fingers. Then:--
+
+"Take the four of us," she said suddenly,--"Christine Lorenz and Sidney
+Page and Miss Harriet and me,--and which one would you have picked to
+go wrong like this? I guess, from the looks of things, most folks would
+have thought it would be the Lorenz girl. They'd have picked Harriet
+Kennedy for the hospital, and me for the dressmaking, and it would have
+been Sidney Page that got married and had an automobile. Well, that's
+life."
+
+She looked up at K. shrewdly.
+
+"There were some people out here lately. They didn't know me, and I
+heard them talking. They said Sidney Page was going to marry Dr. Max
+Wilson."
+
+"Possibly. I believe there is no engagement yet."
+
+He had finished with his glass. Tillie rose to take it away. As she
+stood before him she looked up into his face.
+
+"If you like her as well as I think you do, Mr. Le Moyne, you won't let
+him get her."
+
+"I am afraid that's not up to me, is it? What would I do with a wife,
+Tillie?"
+
+"You'd be faithful to her. That's more than he would be. I guess, in the
+long run, that would count more than money."
+
+That was what K. took home with him after his encounter with Tillie. He
+pondered it on his way back to the street-car, as he struggled against
+the wind. The weather had changed. Wagon-tracks along the road were
+filled with water and had begun to freeze. The rain had turned to a
+driving sleet that cut his face. Halfway to the trolley line, the dog
+turned off into a by-road. K. did not miss him. The dog stared after
+him, one foot raised. Once again his eyes were like Tillie's, as she had
+waved good-bye from the porch.
+
+His head sunk on his breast, K. covered miles of road with his long,
+swinging pace, and fought his battle. Was Tillie right, after all, and
+had he been wrong? Why should he efface himself, if it meant Sidney's
+unhappiness? Why not accept Wilson's offer and start over again? Then
+if things went well--the temptation was strong that stormy afternoon. He
+put it from him at last, because of the conviction that whatever he did
+would make no change in Sidney's ultimate decision. If she cared enough
+for Wilson, she would marry him. He felt that she cared enough.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Palmer and Christine returned from their wedding trip the day K.
+discovered Tillie. Anna Page made much of the arrival, insisted on
+dinner for them that night at the little house, must help Christine
+unpack her trunks and arrange her wedding gifts about the apartment. She
+was brighter than she had been for days, more interested. The wonders of
+the trousseau filled her with admiration and a sort of jealous envy for
+Sidney, who could have none of these things. In a pathetic sort of way,
+she mothered Christine in lieu of her own daughter.
+
+And it was her quick eye that discerned something wrong. Christine was
+not quite happy. Under her excitement was an undercurrent of reserve.
+Anna, rich in maternity if in nothing else, felt it, and in reply to
+some speech of Christine's that struck her as hard, not quite fitting,
+she gave her a gentle admonishing.
+
+"Married life takes a little adjusting, my dear," she said. "After we
+have lived to ourselves for a number of years, it is not easy to live
+for some one else."
+
+Christine straightened from the tea-table she was arranging.
+
+"That's true, of course. But why should the woman do all the adjusting?"
+
+"Men are more set," said poor Anna, who had never been set in anything
+in her life. "It is harder for them to give in. And, of course, Palmer
+is older, and his habits--"
+
+"The less said about Palmer's habits the better," flashed Christine. "I
+appear to have married a bunch of habits."
+
+She gave over her unpacking, and sat down listlessly by the fire, while
+Anna moved about, busy with the small activities that delighted her.
+
+Six weeks of Palmer's society in unlimited amounts had bored Christine
+to distraction. She sat with folded hands and looked into a future that
+seemed to include nothing but Palmer: Palmer asleep with his mouth open;
+Palmer shaving before breakfast, and irritable until he had had his
+coffee; Palmer yawning over the newspaper.
+
+And there was a darker side to the picture than that. There was a vision
+of Palmer slipping quietly into his room and falling into the heavy
+sleep, not of drunkenness perhaps, but of drink. That had happened
+twice. She knew now that it would happen again and again, as long as he
+lived. Drinking leads to other things. The letter she had received on
+her wedding day was burned into her brain. There would be that in the
+future too, probably.
+
+Christine was not without courage. She was making a brave clutch
+at happiness. But that afternoon of the first day at home she was
+terrified. She was glad when Anna went and left her alone by her fire.
+
+But when she heard a step in the hall, she opened the door herself. She
+had determined to meet Palmer with a smile. Tears brought nothing;
+she had learned that already. Men liked smiling women and good cheer.
+"Daughters of joy," they called girls like the one on the Avenue. So she
+opened the door smiling.
+
+But it was K. in the hall. She waited while, with his back to her, he
+shook himself like a great dog. When he turned, she was watching him.
+
+"You!" said Le Moyne. "Why, welcome home."
+
+He smiled down at her, his kindly eyes lighting.
+
+"It's good to be home and to see you again. Won't you come in to my
+fire?"
+
+"I'm wet."
+
+"All the more reason why you should come," she cried gayly, and held the
+door wide.
+
+The little parlor was cheerful with fire and soft lamps, bright with
+silver vases full of flowers. K. stepped inside and took a critical
+survey of the room.
+
+"Well!" he said. "Between us we have made a pretty good job of this, I
+with the paper and the wiring, and you with your pretty furnishings and
+your pretty self."
+
+He glanced at her appreciatively. Christine saw his approval, and was
+happier than she had been for weeks. She put on the thousand little airs
+and graces that were a part of her--held her chin high, looked up at
+him with the little appealing glances that she had found were wasted on
+Palmer. She lighted the spirit-lamp to make tea, drew out the best chair
+for him, and patted a cushion with her well-cared-for hands.
+
+"A big chair for a big man!" she said. "And see, here's a footstool."
+
+"I am ridiculously fond of being babied," said K., and quite basked in
+his new atmosphere of well-being. This was better than his empty room
+upstairs, than tramping along country roads, than his own thoughts.
+
+"And now, how is everything?" asked Christine from across the fire. "Do
+tell me all the scandal of the Street."
+
+"There has been no scandal since you went away," said K. And, because
+each was glad not to be left to his own thoughts, they laughed at this
+bit of unconscious humor.
+
+"Seriously," said Le Moyne, "we have been very quiet. I have had my
+salary raised and am now rejoicing in twenty-two dollars a week. I
+am still not accustomed to it. Just when I had all my ideas fixed for
+fifteen, I get twenty-two and have to reassemble them. I am disgustingly
+rich."
+
+"It is very disagreeable when one's income becomes a burden," said
+Christine gravely.
+
+She was finding in Le Moyne something that she needed just then--a
+solidity, a sort of dependability, that had nothing to do with
+heaviness. She felt that here was a man she could trust, almost confide
+in. She liked his long hands, his shabby but well-cut clothes, his fine
+profile with its strong chin. She left off her little affectations,--a
+tribute to his own lack of them,--and sat back in her chair, watching
+the fire.
+
+When K. chose, he could talk well. The Howes had been to Bermuda on
+their wedding trip. He knew Bermuda; that gave them a common ground.
+Christine relaxed under his steady voice. As for K., he frankly enjoyed
+the little visit--drew himself at last with regret out of his chair.
+
+"You've been very nice to ask me in, Mrs. Howe," he said. "I hope you
+will allow me to come again. But, of course, you are going to be very
+gay."
+
+It seemed to Christine she would never be gay again. She did not
+want him to go away. The sound of his deep voice gave her a sense of
+security. She liked the clasp of the hand he held out to her, when at
+last he made a move toward the door.
+
+"Tell Mr. Howe I am sorry he missed our little party," said Le Moyne.
+"And--thank you."
+
+"Will you come again?" asked Christine rather wistfully.
+
+"Just as often as you ask me."
+
+As he closed the door behind him, there was a new light in Christine's
+eyes. Things were not right, but, after all, they were not hopeless. One
+might still have friends, big and strong, steady of eye and voice. When
+Palmer came home, the smile she gave him was not forced.
+
+The day's exertion had been bad for Anna. Le Moyne found her on the
+couch in the transformed sewing-room, and gave her a quick glance of
+apprehension. She was propped up high with pillows, with a bottle of
+aromatic ammonia beside her.
+
+"Just--short of breath," she panted. "I--I must get down. Sidney--is
+coming home--to supper; and--the others--Palmer and--"
+
+That was as far as she got. K., watch in hand, found her pulse thin,
+stringy, irregular. He had been prepared for some such emergency, and he
+hurried into his room for amyl-nitrate. When he came back she was almost
+unconscious. There was no time even to call Katie. He broke the capsule
+in a towel, and held it over her face. After a time the spasm relaxed,
+but her condition remained alarming.
+
+Harriet, who had come home by that time, sat by the couch and held her
+sister's hand. Only once in the next hour or so did she speak. They had
+sent for Dr. Ed, but he had not come yet. Harriet was too wretched to
+notice the professional manner in which K. set to work over Anna.
+
+"I've been a very hard sister to her," she said. "If you can pull her
+through, I'll try to make up for it."
+
+Christine sat on the stairs outside, frightened and helpless. They had
+sent for Sidney; but the little house had no telephone, and the message
+was slow in getting off.
+
+At six o'clock Dr. Ed came panting up the stairs and into the room. K.
+stood back.
+
+"Well, this is sad, Harriet," said Dr. Ed. "Why in the name of Heaven,
+when I wasn't around, didn't you get another doctor. If she had had some
+amyl-nitrate--"
+
+"I gave her some nitrate of amyl," said K. quietly. "There was really no
+time to send for anybody. She almost went under at half-past five."
+
+Max had kept his word, and even Dr. Ed did not suspect K.'s secret. He
+gave a quick glance at this tall young man who spoke so quietly of what
+he had done for the sick woman, and went on with his work.
+
+Sidney arrived a little after six, and from that moment the confusion in
+the sick-room was at an end. She moved Christine from the stairs,
+where Katie on her numerous errands must crawl over her; set Harriet to
+warming her mother's bed and getting it ready; opened windows, brought
+order and quiet. And then, with death in her eyes, she took up her
+position beside her mother. This was no time for weeping; that would
+come later. Once she turned to K., standing watchfully beside her.
+
+"I think you have known this for a long time," she said. And, when he
+did not answer: "Why did you let me stay away from her? It would have
+been such a little time!"
+
+"We were trying to do our best for both of you," he replied.
+
+Anna was unconscious and sinking fast. One thought obsessed Sidney.
+She repeated it over and over. It came as a cry from the depths of the
+girl's new experience.
+
+"She has had so little of life," she said, over and over. "So little!
+Just this Street. She never knew anything else."
+
+And finally K. took it up.
+
+"After all, Sidney," he said, "the Street IS life: the world is only
+many streets. She had a great deal. She had love and content, and she
+had you."
+
+Anna died a little after midnight, a quiet passing, so that only Sidney
+and the two men knew when she went away. It was Harriet who collapsed.
+During all that long evening she had sat looking back over years of
+small unkindnesses. The thorn of Anna's inefficiency had always rankled
+in her flesh. She had been hard, uncompromising, thwarted. And now it
+was forever too late.
+
+K. had watched Sidney carefully. Once he thought she was fainting, and
+went to her. But she shook her head.
+
+"I am all right. Do you think you could get them all out of the room and
+let me have her alone for just a few minutes?"
+
+He cleared the room, and took up his vigil outside the door. And, as he
+stood there, he thought of what he had said to Sidney about the Street.
+It was a world of its own. Here in this very house were death and
+separation; Harriet's starved life; Christine and Palmer beginning a
+long and doubtful future together; himself, a failure, and an impostor.
+
+When he opened the door again, Sidney was standing by her mother's bed.
+He went to her, and she turned and put her head against his shoulder
+like a tired child.
+
+"Take me away, K.," she said pitifully.
+
+And, with his arm around her, he led her out of the room.
+
+Outside of her small immediate circle Anna's death was hardly felt.
+The little house went on much as before. Harriet carried back to her
+business a heaviness of spirit that made it difficult to bear with
+the small irritations of her day. Perhaps Anna's incapacity, which had
+always annoyed her, had been physical. She must have had her trouble a
+longtime. She remembered other women of the Street who had crept through
+inefficient days, and had at last laid down their burdens and closed
+their mild eyes, to the lasting astonishment of their families. What did
+they think about, these women, as they pottered about? Did they resent
+the impatience that met their lagging movements, the indifference
+that would not see how they were failing? Hot tears fell on Harriet's
+fashion-book as it lay on her knee. Not only for Anna--for Anna's
+prototypes everywhere.
+
+On Sidney--and in less measure, of course, on K.--fell the real brunt of
+the disaster. Sidney kept up well until after the funeral, but went down
+the next day with a low fever.
+
+"Overwork and grief," Dr. Ed said, and sternly forbade the hospital
+again until Christmas. Morning and evening K. stopped at her door and
+inquired for her, and morning and evening came Sidney's reply:--
+
+"Much better. I'll surely be up to-morrow!"
+
+But the days dragged on and she did not get about.
+
+Downstairs, Christine and Palmer had entered on the round of midwinter
+gayeties. Palmer's "crowd" was a lively one. There were dinners
+and dances, week-end excursions to country-houses. The Street grew
+accustomed to seeing automobiles stop before the little house at all
+hours of the night. Johnny Rosenfeld, driving Palmer's car, took to
+falling asleep at the wheel in broad daylight, and voiced his discontent
+to his mother.
+
+"You never know where you are with them guys," he said briefly. "We
+start out for half an hour's run in the evening, and get home with the
+milk-wagons. And the more some of them have had to drink, the more they
+want to drive the machine. If I get a chance, I'm going to beat it while
+the wind's my way."
+
+But, talk as he might, in Johnny Rosenfeld's loyal heart there was no
+thought of desertion. Palmer had given him a man's job, and he would
+stick by it, no matter what came.
+
+There were some things that Johnny Rosenfeld did not tell his mother.
+There were evenings when the Howe car was filled, not with Christine
+and her friends, but with women of a different world; evenings when the
+destination was not a country estate, but a road-house; evenings when
+Johnny Rosenfeld, ousted from the driver's seat by some drunken youth,
+would hold tight to the swinging car and say such fragments of prayers
+as he could remember. Johnny Rosenfeld, who had started life with few
+illusions, was in danger of losing such as he had.
+
+One such night Christine put in, lying wakefully in her bed, while the
+clock on the mantel tolled hour after hour into the night. Palmer did
+not come home at all. He sent a note from the office in the morning:
+
+"I hope you are not worried, darling. The car broke down near the
+Country Club last night, and there was nothing to do but to spend the
+night there. I would have sent you word, but I did not want to rouse
+you. What do you say to the theater to-night and supper afterward?"
+
+Christine was learning. She telephoned the Country Club that morning,
+and found that Palmer had not been there. But, although she knew now
+that he was deceiving her, as he always had deceived her, as probably
+he always would, she hesitated to confront him with what she knew. She
+shrank, as many a woman has shrunk before, from confronting him with his
+lie.
+
+But the second time it happened, she was roused. It was almost Christmas
+then, and Sidney was well on the way to recovery, thinner and very
+white, but going slowly up and down the staircase on K.'s arm, and
+sitting with Harriet and K. at the dinner table. She was begging to be
+back on duty for Christmas, and K. felt that he would have to give her
+up soon.
+
+At three o'clock one morning Sidney roused from a light sleep to hear a
+rapping on her door.
+
+"Is that you, Aunt Harriet?" she called.
+
+"It's Christine. May I come in?"
+
+Sidney unlocked her door. Christine slipped into the room. She carried a
+candle, and before she spoke she looked at Sidney's watch on the bedside
+table.
+
+"I hoped my clock was wrong," she said. "I am sorry to waken you,
+Sidney, but I don't know what to do."
+
+"Are you ill?"
+
+"No. Palmer has not come home."
+
+"What time is it?"
+
+"After three o'clock."
+
+Sidney had lighted the gas and was throwing on her dressing-gown.
+
+"When he went out did he say--"
+
+"He said nothing. We had been quarreling. Sidney, I am going home in the
+morning."
+
+"You don't mean that, do you?"
+
+"Don't I look as if I mean it? How much of this sort of thing is a woman
+supposed to endure?"
+
+"Perhaps he has been delayed. These things always seem terrible in the
+middle of the night, but by morning--"
+
+Christine whirled on her.
+
+"This isn't the first time. You remember the letter I got on my wedding
+day?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He's gone back to her."
+
+"Christine! Oh, I am sure you're wrong. He's devoted to you. I don't
+believe it!"
+
+"Believe it or not," said Christine doggedly, "that's exactly what has
+happened. I got something out of that little rat of a Rosenfeld boy, and
+the rest I know because I know Palmer. He's out with her to-night."
+
+The hospital had taught Sidney one thing: that it took many people to
+make a world, and that out of these some were inevitably vicious. But
+vice had remained for her a clear abstraction. There were such people,
+and because one was in the world for service one cared for them. Even
+the Saviour had been kind to the woman of the streets.
+
+But here abruptly Sidney found the great injustice of the world--that
+because of this vice the good suffer more than the wicked. Her young
+spirit rose in hot rebellion.
+
+"It isn't fair!" she cried. "It makes me hate all the men in the world.
+Palmer cares for you, and yet he can do a thing like this!"
+
+Christine was pacing nervously up and down the room. Mere companionship
+had soothed her. She was now, on the surface at least, less excited than
+Sidney.
+
+"They are not all like Palmer, thank Heaven," she said. "There are
+decent men. My father is one, and your K., here in the house, is
+another."
+
+At four o'clock in the morning Palmer Howe came home. Christine met
+him in the lower hall. He was rather pale, but entirely sober. She
+confronted him in her straight white gown and waited for him to speak.
+
+"I am sorry to be so late, Chris," he said. "The fact is, I am all in. I
+was driving the car out Seven Mile Run. We blew out a tire and the thing
+turned over."
+
+Christine noticed then that his right arm was hanging inert by his side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Young Howe had been firmly resolved to give up all his bachelor habits
+with his wedding day. In his indolent, rather selfish way, he was much
+in love with his wife.
+
+But with the inevitable misunderstandings of the first months of
+marriage had come a desire to be appreciated once again at his face
+value. Grace had taken him, not for what he was, but for what he seemed
+to be. With Christine the veil was rent. She knew him now--all his small
+indolences, his affectations, his weaknesses. Later on, like other
+women since the world began, she would learn to dissemble, to affect to
+believe him what he was not.
+
+Grace had learned this lesson long ago. It was the ABC of her knowledge.
+And so, back to Grace six weeks after his wedding day came Palmer
+Howe, not with a suggestion to renew the old relationship, but for
+comradeship.
+
+Christine sulked--he wanted good cheer; Christine was intolerant--he
+wanted tolerance; she disapproved of him and showed her disapproval--he
+wanted approval. He wanted life to be comfortable and cheerful, without
+recriminations, a little work and much play, a drink when one was
+thirsty. Distorted though it was, and founded on a wrong basis, perhaps,
+deep in his heart Palmer's only longing was for happiness; but this
+happiness must be of an active sort--not content, which is passive, but
+enjoyment.
+
+"Come on out," he said. "I've got a car now. No taxi working its head
+off for us. Just a little run over the country roads, eh?"
+
+It was the afternoon of the day before Christine's night visit to
+Sidney. The office had been closed, owing to a death, and Palmer was in
+possession of a holiday.
+
+"Come on," he coaxed. "We'll go out to the Climbing Rose and have
+supper."
+
+"I don't want to go."
+
+"That's not true, Grace, and you know it."
+
+"You and I are through."
+
+"It's your doing, not mine. The roads are frozen hard; an hour's run
+into the country will bring your color back."
+
+"Much you care about that. Go and ride with your wife," said the girl,
+and flung away from him.
+
+The last few weeks had filled out her thin figure, but she still bore
+traces of her illness. Her short hair was curled over her head. She
+looked curiously boyish, almost sexless.
+
+Because she saw him wince when she mentioned Christine, her ill temper
+increased. She showed her teeth.
+
+"You get out of here," she said suddenly. "I didn't ask you to come
+back. I don't want you."
+
+"Good Heavens, Grace! You always knew I would have to marry some day."
+
+"I was sick; I nearly died. I didn't hear any reports of you hanging
+around the hospital to learn how I was getting along."
+
+He laughed rather sheepishly.
+
+"I had to be careful. You know that as well as I do. I know half the
+staff there. Besides, one of--" He hesitated over his wife's name. "A
+girl I know very well was in the training-school. There would have been
+the devil to pay if I'd as much as called up."
+
+"You never told me you were going to get married."
+
+Cornered, he slipped an arm around her. But she shook him off.
+
+"I meant to tell you, honey; but you got sick. Anyhow, I--I hated to
+tell you, honey."
+
+He had furnished the flat for her. There was a comfortable feeling of
+coming home about going there again. And, now that the worst minute of
+their meeting was over, he was visibly happier. But Grace continued to
+stand eyeing him somberly.
+
+"I've got something to tell you," she said. "Don't have a fit, and don't
+laugh. If you do, I'll--I'll jump out of the window. I've got a place in
+a store. I'm going to be straight, Palmer."
+
+"Good for you!"
+
+He meant it. She was a nice girl and he was fond of her. The other was
+a dog's life. And he was not unselfish about it. She could not belong to
+him. He did not want her to belong to any one else.
+
+"One of the nurses in the hospital, a Miss Page, has got me something to
+do at Lipton and Homburg's. I am going on for the January white sale. If
+I make good they will keep me."
+
+He had put her aside without a qualm; and now he met her announcement
+with approval. He meant to let her alone. They would have a holiday
+together, and then they would say good-bye. And she had not fooled him.
+She still cared. He was getting off well, all things considered. She
+might have raised a row.
+
+"Good work!" he said. "You'll be a lot happier. But that isn't any
+reason why we shouldn't be friends, is it? Just friends; I mean that.
+I would like to feel that I can stop in now and then and say how do you
+do."
+
+"I promised Miss Page."
+
+"Never mind Miss Page."
+
+The mention of Sidney's name brought up in his mind Christine as he had
+left her that morning. He scowled. Things were not going well at home.
+There was something wrong with Christine. She used to be a good sport,
+but she had never been the same since the day of the wedding. He thought
+her attitude toward him was one of suspicion. It made him uncomfortable.
+But any attempt on his part to fathom it only met with cold silence.
+That had been her attitude that morning.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said. "We won't go to any of the old
+places. I've found a new roadhouse in the country that's respectable
+enough to suit anybody. We'll go out to Schwitter's and get some dinner.
+I'll promise to get you back early. How's that?"
+
+In the end she gave in. And on the way out he lived up to the letter of
+their agreement. The situation exhilarated him: Grace with her new air
+of virtue, her new aloofness; his comfortable car; Johnny Rosenfeld's
+discreet back and alert ears.
+
+The adventure had all the thrill of a new conquest in it. He treated the
+girl with deference, did not insist when she refused a cigarette, felt
+glowingly virtuous and exultant at the same time.
+
+When the car drew up before the Schwitter place, he slipped a
+five-dollar bill into Johnny Rosenfeld's not over-clean hand.
+
+"I don't mind the ears," he said. "Just watch your tongue, lad." And
+Johnny stalled his engine in sheer surprise.
+
+"There's just enough of the Jew in me," said Johnny, "to know how to
+talk a lot and say nothing, Mr. Howe."
+
+He crawled stiffly out of the car and prepared to crank it.
+
+"I'll just give her the 'once over' now and then," he said. "She'll
+freeze solid if I let her stand."
+
+Grace had gone up the narrow path to the house. She had the gift of
+looking well in her clothes, and her small hat with its long quill
+and her motor-coat were chic and becoming. She never overdressed, as
+Christine was inclined to do.
+
+Fortunately for Palmer, Tillie did not see him. A heavy German maid
+waited at the table in the dining-room, while Tillie baked waffles in
+the kitchen.
+
+Johnny Rosenfeld, going around the side path to the kitchen door with
+visions of hot coffee and a country supper for his frozen stomach, saw
+her through the window bending flushed over the stove, and hesitated.
+Then, without a word, he tiptoed back to the car again, and, crawling
+into the tonneau, covered himself with rugs. In his untutored mind were
+certain great qualities, and loyalty to his employer was one. The five
+dollars in his pocket had nothing whatever to do with it.
+
+At eighteen he had developed a philosophy of four words. It took the
+place of the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the Catechism. It
+was: "Mind your own business."
+
+The discovery of Tillie's hiding-place interested but did not thrill
+him. Tillie was his cousin. If she wanted to do the sort of thing she
+was doing, that was her affair. Tillie and her middle-aged lover, Palmer
+Howe and Grace--the alley was not unfamiliar with such relationships. It
+viewed them with tolerance until they were found out, when it raised its
+hands.
+
+True to his promise, Palmer wakened the sleeping boy before nine
+o'clock. Grace had eaten little and drunk nothing; but Howe was slightly
+stimulated.
+
+"Give her the 'once over,'" he told Johnny, "and then go back and crawl
+into the rugs again. I'll drive in."
+
+Grace sat beside him. Their progress was slow and rough over the
+country roads, but when they reached the State road Howe threw open the
+throttle. He drove well. The liquor was in his blood. He took chances
+and got away with them, laughing at the girl's gasps of dismay.
+
+"Wait until I get beyond Simkinsville," he said, "and I'll let her out.
+You're going to travel tonight, honey."
+
+The girl sat beside him with her eyes fixed ahead. He had been drinking,
+and the warmth of the liquor was in his voice. She was determined on one
+thing. She was going to make him live up to the letter of his promise to
+go away at the house door; and more and more she realized that it would
+be difficult. His mood was reckless, masterful. Instead of laughing when
+she drew back from a proffered caress, he turned surly. Obstinate lines
+that she remembered appeared from his nostrils to the corners of his
+mouth. She was uneasy.
+
+Finally she hit on a plan to make him stop somewhere in her neighborhood
+and let her get out of the car. She would not come back after that.
+
+There was another car going toward the city. Now it passed them, and as
+often they passed it. It became a contest of wits. Palmer's car lost on
+the hills, but gained on the long level stretches, which gleamed with a
+coating of thin ice.
+
+"I wish you'd let them get ahead, Palmer. It's silly and it's reckless."
+
+"I told you we'd travel to-night."
+
+He turned a little glance at her. What the deuce was the matter with
+women, anyhow? Were none of them cheerful any more? Here was Grace as
+sober as Christine. He felt outraged, defrauded.
+
+His light car skidded and struck the big car heavily. On a smooth road
+perhaps nothing more serious than broken mudguards would have been the
+result. But on the ice the small car slewed around and slid over the
+edge of the bank. At the bottom of the declivity it turned over.
+
+Grace was flung clear of the wreckage. Howe freed himself and stood
+erect, with one arm hanging at his side. There was no sound at all from
+the boy under the tonneau.
+
+The big car had stopped. Down the bank plunged a heavy, gorilla-like
+figure, long arms pushing aside the frozen branches of trees. When he
+reached the car, O'Hara found Grace sitting unhurt on the ground. In the
+wreck of the car the lamps had not been extinguished, and by their light
+he made out Howe, swaying dizzily.
+
+"Anybody underneath?"
+
+"The chauffeur. He's dead, I think. He doesn't answer."
+
+The other members of O'Hara's party had crawled down the bank by that
+time. With the aid of a jack, they got the car up. Johnny Rosenfeld lay
+doubled on his face underneath. When he came to and opened his eyes,
+Grace almost shrieked with relief.
+
+"I'm all right," said Johnny Rosenfeld. And, when they offered him
+whiskey: "Away with the fire-water. I am no drinker. I--I--" A spasm of
+pain twisted his face. "I guess I'll get up." With his arms he lifted
+himself to a sitting position, and fell back again.
+
+"God!" he said. "I can't move my legs."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+By Christmas Day Sidney was back in the hospital, a little wan, but
+valiantly determined to keep her life to its mark of service. She had a
+talk with K. the night before she left.
+
+Katie was out, and Sidney had put the dining-room in order. K. sat by
+the table and watched her as she moved about the room.
+
+The past few weeks had been very wonderful to him: to help her up and
+down the stairs, to read to her in the evenings as she lay on the couch
+in the sewing-room; later, as she improved, to bring small dainties home
+for her tray, and, having stood over Katie while she cooked them, to
+bear them in triumph to that upper room--he had not been so happy in
+years.
+
+And now it was over. He drew a long breath.
+
+"I hope you don't feel as if you must stay on," she said anxiously. "Not
+that we don't want you--you know better than that."
+
+"There is no place else in the whole world that I want to go to," he
+said simply.
+
+"I seem to be always relying on somebody's kindness to--to keep things
+together. First, for years and years, it was Aunt Harriet; now it is
+you."
+
+"Don't you realize that, instead of your being grateful to me, it is
+I who am undeniably grateful to you? This is home now. I have lived
+around--in different places and in different ways. I would rather be
+here than anywhere else in the world."
+
+But he did not look at her. There was so much that was hopeless in his
+eyes that he did not want her to see. She would be quite capable, he
+told himself savagely, of marrying him out of sheer pity if she ever
+guessed. And he was afraid--afraid, since he wanted her so much--that he
+would be fool and weakling enough to take her even on those terms. So he
+looked away.
+
+Everything was ready for her return to the hospital. She had been out
+that day to put flowers on the quiet grave where Anna lay with folded
+hands; she had made her round of little visits on the Street; and now
+her suit-case, packed, was in the hall.
+
+"In one way, it will be a little better for you than if Christine and
+Palmer were not in the house. You like Christine, don't you?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+"She likes you, K. She depends on you, too, especially since that night
+when you took care of Palmer's arm before we got Dr. Max. I often think,
+K., what a good doctor you would have been. You knew so well what to do
+for mother."
+
+She broke off. She still could not trust her voice about her mother.
+
+"Palmer's arm is going to be quite straight. Dr. Ed is so proud of Max
+over it. It was a bad fracture."
+
+He had been waiting for that. Once at least, whenever they were
+together, she brought Max into the conversation. She was quite
+unconscious of it.
+
+"You and Max are great friends. I knew you would like him. He is
+interesting, don't you think?"
+
+"Very," said K.
+
+To save his life, he could not put any warmth into his voice. He would
+be fair. It was not in human nature to expect more of him.
+
+"Those long talks you have, shut in your room--what in the world do you
+talk about? Politics?"
+
+"Occasionally."
+
+She was a little jealous of those evenings, when she sat alone, or
+when Harriet, sitting with her, made sketches under the lamp to the
+accompaniment of a steady hum of masculine voices from across the hall.
+Not that she was ignored, of course. Max came in always, before he went,
+and, leaning over the back of a chair, would inform her of the absolute
+blankness of life in the hospital without her.
+
+"I go every day because I must," he would assure her gayly; "but, I tell
+you, the snap is gone out of it. When there was a chance that every cap
+was YOUR cap, the mere progress along a corridor became thrilling." He
+had a foreign trick of throwing out his hands, with a little shrug of
+the shoulders. "Cui bono?" he said--which, being translated, means:
+"What the devil's the use!"
+
+And K. would stand in the doorway, quietly smoking, or go back to his
+room and lock away in his trunk the great German books on surgery with
+which he and Max had been working out a case.
+
+So K. sat by the dining-room table and listened to her talk of Max that
+last evening together.
+
+"I told Mrs. Rosenfeld to-day not to be too much discouraged about
+Johnny. I had seen Dr. Max do such wonderful things. Now that you are
+such friends,"--she eyed him wistfully,--"perhaps some day you will come
+to one of his operations. Even if you didn't understand exactly, I know
+it would thrill you. And--I'd like you to see me in my uniform, K. You
+never have."
+
+She grew a little sad as the evening went on. She was going to miss K.
+very much. While she was ill she had watched the clock for the time to
+listen for him. She knew the way he slammed the front door. Palmer never
+slammed the door. She knew too that, just after a bang that threatened
+the very glass in the transom, K. would come to the foot of the stairs
+and call:--
+
+"Ahoy, there!"
+
+"Aye, aye," she would answer--which was, he assured her, the proper
+response.
+
+Whether he came up the stairs at once or took his way back to Katie had
+depended on whether his tribute for the day was fruit or sweetbreads.
+
+Now that was all over. They were such good friends. He would miss her,
+too; but he would have Harriet and Christine and--Max. Back in a circle
+to Max, of course.
+
+She insisted, that last evening, on sitting up with him until midnight
+ushered in Christmas Day. Christine and Palmer were out; Harriet, having
+presented Sidney with a blouse that had been left over in the shop from
+the autumn's business, had yawned herself to bed.
+
+When the bells announced midnight, Sidney roused with a start. She
+realized that neither of them had spoken, and that K.'s eyes were
+fixed on her. The little clock on the shelf took up the burden of the
+churches, and struck the hour in quick staccato notes.
+
+Sidney rose and went over to K., her black dress in soft folds about
+her.
+
+"He is born, K."
+
+"He is born, dear."
+
+She stooped and kissed his cheek lightly.
+
+Christmas Day dawned thick and white. Sidney left the little house at
+six, with the street light still burning through a mist of falling snow.
+
+The hospital wards and corridors were still lighted when she went on
+duty at seven o'clock. She had been assigned to the men's surgical ward,
+and went there at once. She had not seen Carlotta Harrison since her
+mother's death; but she found her on duty in the surgical ward. For the
+second time in four months, the two girls were working side by side.
+
+Sidney's recollection of her previous service under Carlotta made her
+nervous. But the older girl greeted her pleasantly.
+
+"We were all sorry to hear of your trouble," she said. "I hope we shall
+get on nicely."
+
+Sidney surveyed the ward, full to overflowing. At the far end two cots
+had been placed.
+
+"The ward is heavy, isn't it?"
+
+"Very. I've been almost mad at dressing hour. There are three of
+us--you, myself, and a probationer."
+
+The first light of the Christmas morning was coming through the windows.
+Carlotta put out the lights and turned in a business-like way to her
+records.
+
+"The probationer's name is Wardwell," she said. "Perhaps you'd better
+help her with the breakfasts. If there's any way to make a mistake, she
+makes it."
+
+It was after eight when Sidney found Johnny Rosenfeld.
+
+"You here in the ward, Johnny!" she said.
+
+Suffering had refined the boy's features. His dark, heavily fringed eyes
+looked at her from a pale face. But he smiled up at her cheerfully.
+
+"I was in a private room; but it cost thirty plunks a week, so I moved.
+Why pay rent?"
+
+Sidney had not seen him since his accident. She had wished to go, but K.
+had urged against it. She was not strong, and she had already suffered
+much. And now the work of the ward pressed hard. She had only a moment.
+She stood beside him and stroked his hand.
+
+"I'm sorry, Johnny."
+
+He pretended to think that her sympathy was for his fall from the estate
+of a private patient to the free ward.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right, Miss Sidney," he said. "Mr. Howe is paying six
+dollars a week for me. The difference between me and the other fellows
+around here is that I get a napkin on my tray and they don't."
+
+Before his determined cheerfulness Sidney choked.
+
+"Six dollars a week for a napkin is going some. I wish you'd tell Mr.
+Howe to give ma the six dollars. She'll be needing it. I'm no bloated
+aristocrat; I don't have to have a napkin."
+
+"Have they told you what the trouble is?"
+
+"Back's broke. But don't let that worry you. Dr. Max Wilson is going to
+operate on me. I'll be doing the tango yet."
+
+Sidney's eyes shone. Of course, Max could do it. What a thing it was
+to be able to take this life-in-death of Johnny Rosenfeld's and make it
+life again!
+
+All sorts of men made up Sidney's world: the derelicts who wandered
+through the ward in flapping slippers, listlessly carrying trays; the
+unshaven men in the beds, looking forward to another day of boredom, if
+not of pain; Palmer Howe with his broken arm; K., tender and strong, but
+filling no especial place in the world. Towering over them all was the
+younger Wilson. He meant for her, that Christmas morning, all that the
+other men were not--to their weakness strength, courage, daring, power.
+
+Johnny Rosenfeld lay back on the pillows and watched her face.
+
+"When I was a kid," he said, "and ran along the Street, calling Dr. Max
+a dude, I never thought I'd lie here watching that door to see him come
+in. You have had trouble, too. Ain't it the hell of a world, anyhow? It
+ain't much of a Christmas to you, either."
+
+Sidney fed him his morning beef tea, and, because her eyes filled up
+with tears now and then at his helplessness, she was not so skillful as
+she might have been. When one spoonful had gone down his neck, he smiled
+up at her whimsically.
+
+"Run for your life. The dam's burst!" he said.
+
+As much as was possible, the hospital rested on that Christmas Day. The
+internes went about in fresh white ducks with sprays of mistletoe in
+their buttonholes, doing few dressings. Over the upper floors, where the
+kitchens were located, spread toward noon the insidious odor of roasting
+turkeys. Every ward had its vase of holly. In the afternoon, services
+were held in the chapel downstairs.
+
+Wheel-chairs made their slow progress along corridors and down
+elevators. Convalescents who were able to walk flapped along in carpet
+slippers.
+
+Gradually the chapel filled up. Outside the wide doors of the corridor
+the wheel-chairs were arranged in a semicircle. Behind them, dressed for
+the occasion, were the elevator-men, the orderlies, and Big John, who
+drove the ambulance.
+
+On one side of the aisle, near the front, sat the nurses in rows, in
+crisp caps and fresh uniforms. On the other side had been reserved a
+place for the staff. The internes stood back against the wall, ready to
+run out between rejoicings, as it were--for a cigarette or an ambulance
+call, as the case might be.
+
+Over everything brooded the after-dinner peace of Christmas afternoon.
+
+The nurses sang, and Sidney sang with them, her fresh young voice rising
+above the rest. Yellow winter sunlight came through the stained-glass
+windows and shone on her lovely flushed face, her smooth kerchief, her
+cap, always just a little awry.
+
+Dr. Max, lounging against the wall, across the chapel, found his eyes
+straying toward her constantly. How she stood out from the others! What
+a zest for living and for happiness she had!
+
+The Episcopal clergyman read the Epistle:
+
+"Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even
+thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows."
+
+That was Sidney. She was good, and she had been anointed with the oil of
+gladness. And he--
+
+His brother was singing. His deep bass voice, not always true, boomed
+out above the sound of the small organ. Ed had been a good brother to
+him; he had been a good son.
+
+Max's vagrant mind wandered away from the service to the picture of his
+mother over his brother's littered desk, to the Street, to K., to the
+girl who had refused to marry him because she did not trust him, to
+Carlotta last of all. He turned a little and ran his eyes along the line
+of nurses.
+
+Ah, there she was. As if she were conscious of his scrutiny, she lifted
+her head and glanced toward him. Swift color flooded her face.
+
+The nurses sang:--
+
+     "O holy Child of Bethlehem!
+      Descend to us, we pray;
+      Cast out our sin, and enter in,
+      Be born in us to-day."
+
+The wheel-chairs and convalescents quavered the familiar words. Dr. Ed's
+heavy throat shook with earnestness.
+
+The Head, sitting a little apart with her hands folded in her lap and
+weary with the suffering of the world, closed her eyes and listened.
+
+The Christmas morning had brought Sidney half a dozen gifts. K. sent her
+a silver thermometer case with her monogram, Christine a toilet mirror.
+But the gift of gifts, over which Sidney's eyes had glowed, was a
+great box of roses marked in Dr. Max's copper-plate writing, "From a
+neighbor."
+
+Tucked in the soft folds of her kerchief was one of the roses that
+afternoon.
+
+Services over, the nurses filed out. Max was waiting for Sidney in the
+corridor.
+
+"Merry Christmas!" he said, and held out his hand.
+
+"Merry Christmas!" she said. "You see!"--she glanced down to the rose
+she wore. "The others make the most splendid bit of color in the ward."
+
+"But they were for you!"
+
+"They are not any the less mine because I am letting other people have a
+chance to enjoy them."
+
+Under all his gayety he was curiously diffident with her. All the pretty
+speeches he would have made to Carlotta under the circumstances died
+before her frank glance.
+
+There were many things he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her
+that he was sorry her mother had died; that the Street was empty without
+her; that he looked forward to these daily meetings with her as a holy
+man to his hour before his saint. What he really said was to inquire
+politely whether she had had her Christmas dinner.
+
+Sidney eyed him, half amused, half hurt.
+
+"What have I done, Max? Is it bad for discipline for us to be good
+friends?"
+
+"Damn discipline!" said the pride of the staff.
+
+Carlotta was watching them from the chapel. Something in her eyes roused
+the devil of mischief that always slumbered in him.
+
+"My car's been stalled in a snowdrift downtown since early this morning,
+and I have Ed's Peggy in a sleigh. Put on your things and come for a
+ride."
+
+He hoped Carlotta could hear what he said; to be certain of it, he
+maliciously raised his voice a trifle.
+
+"Just a little run," he urged. "Put on your warmest things."
+
+Sidney protested. She was to be free that afternoon until six o'clock;
+but she had promised to go home.
+
+"K. is alone."
+
+"K. can sit with Christine. Ten to one, he's with her now."
+
+The temptation was very strong. She had been working hard all day. The
+heavy odor of the hospital, mingled with the scent of pine and evergreen
+in the chapel; made her dizzy. The fresh outdoors called her. And,
+besides, if K. were with Christine--
+
+"It's forbidden, isn't it?"
+
+"I believe it is." He smiled at her.
+
+"And yet, you continue to tempt me and expect me to yield!"
+
+"One of the most delightful things about temptation is yielding now and
+then."
+
+After all, the situation seemed absurd. Here was her old friend and
+neighbor asking to take her out for a daylight ride. The swift rebellion
+of youth against authority surged up in Sidney.
+
+"Very well; I'll go."
+
+Carlotta had gone by that time--gone with hate in her heart and black
+despair. She knew very well what the issue would be. Sidney would drive
+with him, and he would tell her how lovely she looked with the air on
+her face and the snow about her. The jerky motion of the little sleigh
+would throw them close together. How well she knew it all! He would
+touch Sidney's hand daringly and smile in her eyes. That was his method:
+to play at love-making like an audacious boy, until quite suddenly the
+cloak dropped and the danger was there.
+
+The Christmas excitement had not died out in the ward when Carlotta went
+back to it. On each bedside table was an orange, and beside it a pair
+of woolen gloves and a folded white handkerchief. There were sprays of
+holly scattered about, too, and the after-dinner content of roast turkey
+and ice-cream.
+
+The lame girl who played the violin limped down the corridor into the
+ward. She was greeted with silence, that truest tribute, and with the
+instant composing of the restless ward to peace.
+
+She was pretty in a young, pathetic way, and because to her Christmas
+was a festival and meant hope and the promise of the young Lord, she
+played cheerful things.
+
+The ward sat up, remembered that it was not the Sabbath, smiled across
+from bed to bed.
+
+The probationer, whose name was Wardwell, was a tall, lean girl with a
+long, pointed nose. She kept up a running accompaniment of small talk to
+the music.
+
+"Last Christmas," she said plaintively, "we went out into the country
+in a hay-wagon and had a real time. I don't know what I am here for,
+anyhow. I am a fool."
+
+"Undoubtedly," said Carlotta.
+
+"Turkey and goose, mince pie and pumpkin pie, four kinds of cake; that's
+the sort of spread we have up in our part of the world. When I think of
+what I sat down to to-day--!"
+
+She had a profound respect for Carlotta, and her motto in the hospital
+differed from Sidney's in that it was to placate her superiors, while
+Sidney's had been to care for her patients.
+
+Seeing Carlotta bored, she ventured a little gossip. She had idly
+glued the label of a medicine bottle on the back of her hand, and was
+scratching a skull and cross-bones on it.
+
+"I wonder if you have noticed something," she said, eyes on the label.
+
+"I have noticed that the three-o'clock medicines are not given," said
+Carlotta sharply; and Miss Wardwell, still labeled and adorned, made the
+rounds of the ward.
+
+When she came back she was sulky.
+
+"I'm no gossip," she said, putting the tray on the table. "If you won't
+see, you won't. That Rosenfeld boy is crying."
+
+As it was not required that tears be recorded on the record, Carlotta
+paid no attention to this.
+
+"What won't I see?"
+
+It required a little urging now. Miss Wardwell swelled with importance
+and let her superior ask her twice. Then:--
+
+"Dr. Wilson's crazy about Miss Page."
+
+A hand seemed to catch Carlotta's heart and hold it.
+
+"They're old friends."
+
+"Piffle! Being an old friend doesn't make you look at a girl as if you
+wanted to take a bite out of her. Mark my word, Miss Harrison, she'll
+never finish her training; she'll marry him. I wish," concluded the
+probationer plaintively, "that some good-looking fellow like that would
+take a fancy to me. I'd do him credit. I am as ugly as a mud fence, but
+I've got style."
+
+She was right, probably. She was long and sinuous, but she wore her
+lanky, ill-fitting clothes with a certain distinction. Harriet Kennedy
+would have dressed her in jade green to match her eyes, and with long
+jade earrings, and made her a fashion.
+
+Carlotta's lips were dry. The violinist had seen the tears on Johnny
+Rosenfeld's white cheeks, and had rushed into rollicking, joyous music.
+The ward echoed with it. "I'm twenty-one and she's eighteen," hummed the
+ward under its breath. Miss Wardwell's thin body swayed.
+
+"Lord, how I'd like to dance! If I ever get out of this charnel-house!"
+
+The medicine-tray lay at Carlotta's elbow; beside it the box of labels.
+This crude girl was right--right. Carlotta knew it down to the depths of
+her tortured brain. As inevitably as the night followed the day, she was
+losing her game. She had lost already, unless--
+
+If she could get Sidney out of the hospital, it would simplify things.
+She surmised shrewdly that on the Street their interests were wide
+apart. It was here that they met on common ground.
+
+The lame violin-player limped out of the ward; the shadows of the
+early winter twilight settled down. At five o'clock Carlotta sent Miss
+Wardwell to first supper, to the surprise of that seldom surprised
+person. The ward lay still or shuffled abut quietly. Christmas was over,
+and there were no evening papers to look forward to.
+
+Carlotta gave the five-o'clock medicines. Then she sat down at the table
+near the door, with the tray in front of her. There are certain thoughts
+that are at first functions of the brain; after a long time the spinal
+cord takes them up and converts them into acts almost automatically.
+Perhaps because for the last month she had done the thing so often in
+her mind, its actual performance was almost without conscious thought.
+
+Carlotta took a bottle from her medicine cupboard, and, writing a new
+label for it, pasted it over the old one. Then she exchanged it for one
+of the same size on the medicine tray.
+
+In the dining-room, at the probationers' table, Miss Wardwell was
+talking.
+
+"Believe me," she said, "me for the country and the simple life after
+this. They think I'm only a probationer and don't see anything, but I've
+got eyes in my head. Harrison is stark crazy over Dr. Wilson, and she
+thinks I don't see it. But never mind; I paid, her up to-day for a few
+of the jolts she has given me."
+
+Throughout the dining-room busy and competent young women came and ate,
+hastily or leisurely as their opportunity was, and went on their way
+again. In their hands they held the keys, not always of life and death
+perhaps, but of ease from pain, of tenderness, of smooth pillows, and
+cups of water to thirsty lips. In their eyes, as in Sidney's, burned the
+light of service.
+
+But here and there one found women, like Carlotta and Miss Wardwell,
+who had mistaken their vocation, who railed against the monotony of the
+life, its limitations, its endless sacrifices. They showed it in their
+eyes.
+
+Fifty or so against two--fifty who looked out on the world with the
+fearless glance of those who have seen life to its depths, and, with the
+broad understanding of actual contact, still found it good. Fifty who
+were learning or had learned not to draw aside their clean starched
+skirts from the drab of the streets. And the fifty, who found the very
+scum of the gutters not too filthy for tenderness and care, let Carlotta
+and, in lesser measure, the new probationer alone. They could not have
+voiced their reasons.
+
+The supper-room was filled with their soft voices, the rustle of their
+skirts, the gleam of their stiff white caps.
+
+When Carlotta came in, she greeted none of them. They did not like her,
+and she knew it.
+
+Before her, instead of the tidy supper-table, she was seeing the
+medicine-tray as she had left it.
+
+"I guess I've fixed her," she said to herself.
+
+Her very soul was sick with fear of what she had done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+K. saw Sidney for only a moment on Christmas Day. This was when the gay
+little sleigh had stopped in front of the house.
+
+Sidney had hurried radiantly in for a moment. Christine's parlor was
+gay with firelight and noisy with chatter and with the clatter of her
+tea-cups.
+
+K., lounging indolently in front of the fire, had turned to see Sidney
+in the doorway, and leaped to his feet.
+
+"I can't come in," she cried. "I am only here for a moment. I am out
+sleigh-riding with Dr. Wilson. It's perfectly delightful."
+
+"Ask him in for a cup of tea," Christine called out. "Here's Aunt
+Harriet and mother and even Palmer!"
+
+Christine had aged during the last weeks, but she was putting up a brave
+front.
+
+"I'll ask him."
+
+Sidney ran to the front door and called: "Will you come in for a cup of
+tea?"
+
+"Tea! Good Heavens, no. Hurry."
+
+As Sidney turned back into the house, she met Palmer. He had come out
+in the hall, and had closed the door into the parlor behind him. His arm
+was still in splints, and swung suspended in a gay silk sling.
+
+The sound of laughter came through the door faintly.
+
+"How is he to-day?" He meant Johnny, of course. The boy's face was
+always with him.
+
+"Better in some ways, but of course--"
+
+"When are they going to operate?"
+
+"When he is a little stronger. Why don't you come into see him?"
+
+"I can't. That's the truth. I can't face the poor youngster."
+
+"He doesn't seem to blame you; he says it's all in the game."
+
+"Sidney, does Christine know that I was not alone that night?"
+
+"If she guesses, it is not because of anything the boy has said. He has
+told nothing."
+
+Out of the firelight, away from the chatter and the laughter, Palmer's
+face showed worn and haggard. He put his free hand on Sidney's shoulder.
+
+"I was thinking that perhaps if I went away--"
+
+"That would be cowardly, wouldn't it?"
+
+"If Christine would only say something and get it over with! She doesn't
+sulk; I think she's really trying to be kind. But she hates me, Sidney.
+She turns pale every time I touch her hand."
+
+All the light had died out of Sidney's face. Life was terrible, after
+all--overwhelming. One did wrong things, and other people suffered; or
+one was good, as her mother had been, and was left lonely, a widow, or
+like Aunt Harriet. Life was a sham, too. Things were so different from
+what they seemed to be: Christine beyond the door, pouring tea and
+laughing with her heart in ashes; Palmer beside her, faultlessly dressed
+and wretched. The only one she thought really contented was K. He seemed
+to move so calmly in his little orbit. He was always so steady, so
+balanced. If life held no heights for him, at least it held no depths.
+
+So Sidney thought, in her ignorance!
+
+"There's only one thing, Palmer," she said gravely. "Johnny Rosenfeld
+is going to have his chance. If anybody in the world can save him, Max
+Wilson can."
+
+The light of that speech was in her eyes when she went out to the sleigh
+again. K. followed her out and tucked the robes in carefully about her.
+
+"Warm enough?"
+
+"All right, thank you."
+
+"Don't go too far. Is there any chance of having you home for supper?"
+
+"I think not. I am to go on duty at six again."
+
+If there was a shadow in K.'s eyes, she did not see it. He waved them
+off smilingly from the pavement, and went rather heavily back into the
+house.
+
+"Just how many men are in love with you, Sidney?" asked Max, as Peggy
+started up the Street.
+
+"No one that I know of, unless--"
+
+"Exactly. Unless--"
+
+"What I meant," she said with dignity, "is that unless one counts very
+young men, and that isn't really love."
+
+"We'll leave out Joe Drummond and myself--for, of course, I am very
+young. Who is in love with you besides Le Moyne? Any of the internes at
+the hospital?"
+
+"Me! Le Moyne is not in love with me."
+
+There was such sincerity in her voice that Wilson was relieved.
+
+K., older than himself and more grave, had always had an odd attraction
+for women. He had been frankly bored by them, but the fact had remained.
+And Max more than suspected that now, at last, he had been caught.
+
+"Don't you really mean that you are in love with Le Moyne?"
+
+"Please don't be absurd. I am not in love with anybody; I haven't time
+to be in love. I have my profession now."
+
+"Bah! A woman's real profession is love."
+
+Sidney differed from this hotly. So warm did the argument become that
+they passed without seeing a middle-aged gentleman, short and rather
+heavy set, struggling through a snowdrift on foot, and carrying in his
+hand a dilapidated leather bag.
+
+Dr. Ed hailed them. But the cutter slipped by and left him knee-deep,
+looking ruefully after them.
+
+"The young scamp!" he said. "So that's where Peggy is!"
+
+Nevertheless, there was no anger in Dr. Ed's mind, only a vague and
+inarticulate regret. These things that came so easily to Max, the
+affection of women, gay little irresponsibilities like the stealing
+of Peggy and the sleigh, had never been his. If there was any faint
+resentment, it was at himself. He had raised the boy wrong--he had
+taught him to be selfish. Holding the bag high out of the drifts, he
+made his slow progress up the Street.
+
+At something after two o'clock that night, K. put down his pipe
+and listened. He had not been able to sleep since midnight. In his
+dressing-gown he had sat by the small fire, thinking. The content of his
+first few months on the Street was rapidly giving way to unrest. He
+who had meant to cut himself off from life found himself again in close
+touch with it; his eddy was deep with it.
+
+For the first time, he had begun to question the wisdom of what he had
+done. Had it been cowardice, after all? It had taken courage, God knew,
+to give up everything and come away. In a way, it would have taken more
+courage to have stayed. Had he been right or wrong?
+
+And there was a new element. He had thought, at first, that he could
+fight down this love for Sidney. But it was increasingly hard. The
+innocent touch of her hand on his arm, the moment when he had held her
+in his arms after her mother's death, the thousand small contacts of her
+returns to the little house--all these set his blood on fire. And it was
+fighting blood.
+
+Under his quiet exterior K. fought many conflicts those winter
+days--over his desk and ledger at the office, in his room alone,
+with Harriet planning fresh triumphs beyond the partition, even by
+Christine's fire, with Christine just across, sitting in silence and
+watching his grave profile and steady eyes.
+
+He had a little picture of Sidney--a snap-shot that he had taken
+himself. It showed Sidney minus a hand, which had been out of range when
+the camera had been snapped, and standing on a steep declivity
+which would have been quite a level had he held the camera straight.
+Nevertheless it was Sidney, her hair blowing about her, eyes looking
+out, tender lips smiling. When she was not at home, it sat on K.'s
+dresser, propped against his collar-box. When she was in the house, it
+lay under the pin-cushion.
+
+Two o'clock in the morning, then, and K. in his dressing-gown, with the
+picture propped, not against the collar-box, but against his lamp, where
+he could see it.
+
+He sat forward in his chair, his hands folded around his knee, and
+looked at it. He was trying to picture the Sidney of the photograph
+in his old life--trying to find a place for her. But it was difficult.
+There had been few women in his old life. His mother had died many years
+before. There had been women who had cared for him, but he put them
+impatiently out of his mind.
+
+Then the bell rang.
+
+Christine was moving about below. He could hear her quick steps. Almost
+before he had heaved his long legs out of the chair, she was tapping at
+his door outside.
+
+"It's Mrs. Rosenfeld. She says she wants to see you."
+
+He went down the stairs. Mrs. Rosenfeld was standing in the lower hall,
+a shawl about her shoulders. Her face was white and drawn above it.
+
+"I've had word to go to the hospital," she said. "I thought maybe you'd
+go with me. It seems as if I can't stand it alone. Oh, Johnny, Johnny!"
+
+"Where's Palmer?" K. demanded of Christine.
+
+"He's not in yet."
+
+"Are you afraid to stay in the house alone?"
+
+"No; please go."
+
+He ran up the staircase to his room and flung on some clothing. In the
+lower hall, Mrs. Rosenfeld's sobs had become low moans; Christine stood
+helplessly over her.
+
+"I am terribly sorry," she said--"terribly sorry! When I think whose
+fault all this is!"
+
+Mrs. Rosenfeld put out a work-hardened hand and caught Christine's
+fingers.
+
+"Never mind that," she said. "You didn't do it. I guess you and I
+understand each other. Only pray God you never have a child."
+
+K. never forgot the scene in the small emergency ward to which Johnny
+had been taken. Under the white lights his boyish figure looked
+strangely long. There was a group around the bed--Max Wilson, two or
+three internes, the night nurse on duty, and the Head.
+
+Sitting just inside the door on a straight chair was Sidney--such a
+Sidney as he never had seen before, her face colorless, her eyes wide
+and unseeing, her hands clenched in her lap. When he stood beside her,
+she did not move or look up. The group around the bed had parted to
+admit Mrs. Rosenfeld, and closed again. Only Sidney and K. remained by
+the door, isolated, alone.
+
+"You must not take it like that, dear. It's sad, of course. But, after
+all, in that condition--"
+
+It was her first knowledge that he was there. But she did not turn.
+
+"They say I poisoned him." Her voice was dreary, inflectionless.
+
+"You--what?"
+
+"They say I gave him the wrong medicine; that he's dying; that I
+murdered him." She shivered.
+
+K. touched her hands. They were ice-cold.
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"There is nothing to tell. I came on duty at six o'clock and gave the
+medicines. When the night nurse came on at seven, everything was all
+right. The medicine-tray was just as it should be. Johnny was asleep. I
+went to say good-night to him and he--he was asleep. I didn't give him
+anything but what was on the tray," she finished piteously. "I looked at
+the label; I always look."
+
+By a shifting of the group around the bed, K.'s eyes looked for a moment
+directly into Carlotta's. Just for a moment; then the crowd closed up
+again. It was well for Carlotta that it did. She looked as if she had
+seen a ghost--closed her eyes, even reeled.
+
+"Miss Harrison is worn out," Dr. Wilson said brusquely. "Get some one to
+take her place."
+
+But Carlotta rallied. After all, the presence of this man in this room
+at such a time meant nothing. He was Sidney's friend, that was all.
+
+But her nerve was shaken. The thing had gone beyond her. She had not
+meant to kill. It was the boy's weakened condition that was turning her
+revenge into tragedy.
+
+"I am all right," she pleaded across the bed to the Head. "Let me stay,
+please. He's from my ward. I--I am responsible."
+
+Wilson was at his wits' end. He had done everything he knew without
+result. The boy, rousing for an instant, would lapse again into stupor.
+With a healthy man they could have tried more vigorous measures--could
+have forced him to his feet and walked him about, could have beaten him
+with knotted towels dipped in ice-water. But the wrecked body on the bed
+could stand no such heroic treatment.
+
+It was Le Moyne, after all, who saved Johnny Rosenfeld's life. For, when
+staff and nurses had exhausted all their resources, he stepped forward
+with a quiet word that brought the internes to their feet astonished.
+
+There was a new treatment for such cases--it had been tried abroad. He
+looked at Max.
+
+Max had never heard of it. He threw out his hands.
+
+"Try it, for Heaven's sake," he said. "I'm all in."
+
+The apparatus was not in the house--must be extemporized, indeed, at
+last, of odds and ends from the operating-room. K. did the work, his
+long fingers deft and skillful--while Mrs. Rosenfeld knelt by the bed
+with her face buried; while Sidney sat, dazed and bewildered, on her
+little chair inside the door; while night nurses tiptoed along the
+corridor, and the night watchman stared incredulous from outside the
+door.
+
+When the two great rectangles that were the emergency ward windows
+had turned from mirrors reflecting the room to gray rectangles in the
+morning light; Johnny Rosenfeld opened his eyes and spoke the first
+words that marked his return from the dark valley.
+
+"Gee, this is the life!" he said, and smiled into K.'s watchful face.
+
+When it was clear that the boy would live, K. rose stiffly from the
+bedside and went over to Sidney's chair.
+
+"He's all right now," he said--"as all right as he can be, poor lad!"
+
+"You did it--you! How strange that you should know such a thing. How am
+I to thank you?"
+
+The internes, talking among themselves, had wandered down to their
+dining-room for early coffee. Wilson was giving a few last instructions
+as to the boy's care. Quite unexpectedly, Sidney caught K.'s hand and
+held it to her lips. The iron repression of the night, of months indeed,
+fell away before her simple caress.
+
+"My dear, my dear," he said huskily. "Anything that I can do--for
+you--at any time--"
+
+It was after Sidney had crept like a broken thing to her room that
+Carlotta Harrison and K. came face to face. Johnny was quite conscious
+by that time, a little blue around the lips, but valiantly cheerful.
+
+"More things can happen to a fellow than I ever knew there was!" he
+said to his mother, and submitted rather sheepishly to her tears and
+caresses.
+
+"You were always a good boy, Johnny," she said. "Just you get well
+enough to come home. I'll take care of you the rest of my life. We will
+get you a wheel-chair when you can be about, and I can take you out in
+the park when I come from work."
+
+"I'll be passenger and you'll be chauffeur, ma."
+
+"Mr. Le Moyne is going to get your father sent up again. With sixty-five
+cents a day and what I make, we'll get along."
+
+"You bet we will!"
+
+"Oh, Johnny, if I could see you coming in the door again and yelling
+'mother' and 'supper' in one breath!"
+
+The meeting between Carlotta and Le Moyne was very quiet. She had been
+making a sort of subconscious impression on the retina of his mind
+during all the night. It would be difficult to tell when he actually
+knew her.
+
+When the preparations for moving Johnny back to the big ward had been
+made, the other nurses left the room, and Carlotta and the boy were
+together. K. stopped her on her way to the door.
+
+"Miss Harrison!"
+
+"Yes, Dr. Edwardes."
+
+"I am not Dr. Edwardes here; my name is Le Moyne."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"I have not seen you since you left St. John's."
+
+"No; I--I rested for a few months."
+
+"I suppose they do not know that you were--that you have had any
+previous hospital experience."
+
+"No. Are you going to tell them?"
+
+"I shall not tell them, of course."
+
+And thus, by simple mutual consent, it was arranged that each should
+respect the other's confidence.
+
+Carlotta staggered to her room. There had been a time, just before dawn,
+when she had had one of those swift revelations that sometimes come at
+the end of a long night. She had seen herself as she was. The boy was
+very low, hardly breathing. Her past stretched behind her, a series of
+small revenges and passionate outbursts, swift yieldings, slow remorse.
+She dared not look ahead. She would have given every hope she had in the
+world, just then, for Sidney's stainless past.
+
+She hated herself with that deadliest loathing that comes of complete
+self-revelation.
+
+And she carried to her room the knowledge that the night's struggle had
+been in vain--that, although Johnny Rosenfeld would live, she had gained
+nothing by what he had suffered. The whole night had shown her the
+hopelessness of any stratagem to win Wilson from his new allegiance. She
+had surprised him in the hallway, watching Sidney's slender figure
+as she made her way up the stairs to her room. Never, in all his past
+overtures to her, had she seen that look in his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+To Harriet Kennedy, Sidney's sentence of thirty days' suspension came
+as a blow. K. broke the news to her that evening before the time for
+Sidney's arrival.
+
+The little household was sharing in Harriet's prosperity. Katie had
+a helper now, a little Austrian girl named Mimi. And Harriet had
+established on the Street the innovation of after-dinner coffee. It was
+over the after-dinner coffee that K. made his announcement.
+
+"What do you mean by saying she is coming home for thirty days? Is the
+child ill?"
+
+"Not ill, although she is not quite well. The fact is, Harriet,"--for
+it was "Harriet" and "K." by this time,--"there has been a sort of
+semi-accident up at the hospital. It hasn't resulted seriously, but--"
+
+Harriet put down the apostle-spoon in her hand and stared across at him.
+
+"Then she has been suspended? What did she do? I don't believe she did
+anything!"
+
+"There was a mistake about the medicine, and she was blamed; that's
+all."
+
+"She'd better come home and stay home," said Harriet shortly. "I hope it
+doesn't get in the papers. This dressmaking business is a funny sort of
+thing. One word against you or any of your family, and the crowd's off
+somewhere else."
+
+"There's nothing against Sidney," K. reminded her. "Nothing in the
+world. I saw the superintendent myself this afternoon. It seems it's a
+mere matter of discipline. Somebody made a mistake, and they cannot let
+such a thing go by. But he believes, as I do, that it was not Sidney."
+
+However Harriet had hardened herself against the girl's arrival, all she
+had meant to say fled when she saw Sidney's circled eyes and pathetic
+mouth.
+
+"You child!" she said. "You poor little girl!" And took her corseted
+bosom.
+
+For the time at least, Sidney's world had gone to pieces about her. All
+her brave vaunt of service faded before her disgrace.
+
+When Christine would have seen her, she kept her door locked and asked
+for just that one evening alone. But after Harriet had retired, and
+Mimi, the Austrian, had crept out to the corner to mail a letter back to
+Gratz, Sidney unbolted her door and listened in the little upper hall.
+Harriet, her head in a towel, her face carefully cold-creamed, had gone
+to bed; but K.'s light, as usual, was shining over the transom. Sidney
+tiptoed to the door.
+
+"K.!"
+
+Almost immediately he opened the door.
+
+"May I come in and talk to you?"
+
+He turned and took a quick survey of the room. The picture was against
+the collar-box. But he took the risk and held the door wide.
+
+Sidney came in and sat down by the fire. By being adroit he managed to
+slip the little picture over and under the box before she saw it. It is
+doubtful if she would have realized its significance, had she seen it.
+
+"I've been thinking things over," she said. "It seems to me I'd better
+not go back."
+
+He had left the door carefully open. Men are always more conventional
+than women.
+
+"That would be foolish, wouldn't it, when you have done so well? And,
+besides, since you are not guilty, Sidney--"
+
+"I didn't do it!" she cried passionately. "I know I didn't. But I've
+lost faith in myself. I can't keep on; that's all there is to it. All
+last night, in the emergency ward, I felt it going. I clutched at it. I
+kept saying to myself: 'You didn't do it, you didn't do it'; and all the
+time something inside of me was saying, 'Not now, perhaps; but sometime
+you may.'"
+
+Poor K., who had reasoned all this out for himself and had come to the
+same impasse!
+
+"To go on like this, feeling that one has life and death in one's hand,
+and then perhaps some day to make a mistake like that!" She looked up at
+him forlornly. "I am just not brave enough, K."
+
+"Wouldn't it be braver to keep on? Aren't you giving up very easily?"
+
+Her world was in pieces about her, and she felt alone in a wide and
+empty place. And, because her nerves were drawn taut until they were
+ready to snap, Sidney turned on him shrewishly.
+
+"I think you are all afraid I will come back to stay. Nobody really
+wants me anywhere--in all the world! Not at the hospital, not here, not
+anyplace. I am no use."
+
+"When you say that nobody wants you," said K., not very steadily, "I--I
+think you are making a mistake."
+
+"Who?" she demanded. "Christine? Aunt Harriet? Katie? The only person
+who ever really wanted me was my mother, and I went away and left her!"
+
+She scanned his face closely, and, reading there something she did not
+understand, she colored suddenly.
+
+"I believe you mean Joe Drummond."
+
+"No; I do not mean Joe Drummond."
+
+If he had found any encouragement in her face, he would have gone on
+recklessly; but her blank eyes warned him.
+
+"If you mean Max Wilson," said Sidney, "you are entirely wrong. He's not
+in love with me--not, that is, any more than he is in love with a
+dozen girls. He likes to be with me--oh, I know that; but that doesn't
+mean--anything else. Anyhow, after this disgrace--"
+
+"There is no disgrace, child."
+
+"He'll think me careless, at the least. And his ideals are so high, K."
+
+"You say he likes to be with you. What about you?"
+
+Sidney had been sitting in a low chair by the fire. She rose with a
+sudden passionate movement. In the informality of the household, she,
+had visited K. in her dressing-gown and slippers; and now she stood
+before him, a tragic young figure, clutching the folds of her gown
+across her breast.
+
+"I worship him, K.," she said tragically. "When I see him coming, I want
+to get down and let him walk on me. I know his step in the hall. I
+know the very way he rings for the elevator. When I see him in the
+operating-room, cool and calm while every one else is flustered and
+excited, he--he looks like a god."
+
+Then, half ashamed of her outburst, she turned her back to him and stood
+gazing at the small coal fire. It was as well for K. that she did not
+see his face. For that one moment the despair that was in him shone in
+his eyes. He glanced around the shabby little room, at the sagging bed,
+the collar-box, the pincushion, the old marble-topped bureau under which
+Reginald had formerly made his nest, at his untidy table, littered with
+pipes and books, at the image in the mirror of his own tall figure,
+stooped and weary.
+
+"It's real, all this?" he asked after a pause. "You're sure it's not
+just--glamour, Sidney?"
+
+"It's real--terribly real." Her voice was muffled, and he knew then that
+she was crying.
+
+She was mightily ashamed of it. Tears, of course, except in the privacy
+of one's closet, were not ethical on the Street.
+
+"Perhaps he cares very much, too."
+
+"Give me a handkerchief," said Sidney in a muffled tone, and the little
+scene was broken into while K. searched through a bureau drawer. Then:
+
+"It's all over, anyhow, since this. If he'd really cared he'd have come
+over to-night. When one is in trouble one needs friends."
+
+Back in a circle she came inevitably to her suspension. She would never
+go back, she said passionately. She was innocent, had been falsely
+accused. If they could think such a thing about her, she didn't want to
+be in their old hospital.
+
+K. questioned her, alternately soothing and probing.
+
+"You are positive about it?"
+
+"Absolutely. I have given him his medicines dozens of times."
+
+"You looked at the label?"
+
+"I swear I did, K."
+
+"Who else had access to the medicine closet?"
+
+"Carlotta Harrison carried the keys, of course. I was off duty from four
+to six. When Carlotta left the ward, the probationer would have them."
+
+"Have you reason to think that either one of these girls would wish you
+harm?"
+
+"None whatever," began Sidney vehemently; and then, checking
+herself,--"unless--but that's rather ridiculous."
+
+"What is ridiculous?"
+
+"I've sometimes thought that Carlotta--but I am sure she is perfectly
+fair with me. Even if she--if she--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Even if she likes Dr. Wilson, I don't believe--Why, K., she wouldn't!
+It would be murder."
+
+"Murder, of course," said K., "in intention, anyhow. Of course she
+didn't do it. I'm only trying to find out whose mistake it was."
+
+Soon after that she said good-night and went out. She turned in the
+doorway and smiled tremulously back at him.
+
+"You have done me a lot of good. You almost make me believe in myself."
+
+"That's because I believe in you."
+
+With a quick movement that was one of her charms, Sidney suddenly closed
+the door and slipped back into the room. K., hearing the door close,
+thought she had gone, and dropped heavily into a chair.
+
+"My best friend in all the world!" said Sidney suddenly from behind him,
+and, bending over, she kissed him on the cheek.
+
+The next instant the door had closed behind her, and K. was left alone
+to such wretchedness and bliss as the evening had brought him.
+
+On toward morning, Harriet, who slept but restlessly in her towel,
+wakened to the glare of his light over the transom.
+
+"K.!" she called pettishly from her door. "I wish you wouldn't go to
+sleep and let your light burn!"
+
+K., surmising the towel and cold cream, had the tact not to open his
+door.
+
+"I am not asleep, Harriet, and I am sorry about the light. It's going
+out now."
+
+Before he extinguished the light, he walked over to the old dresser and
+surveyed himself in the glass. Two nights without sleep and much anxiety
+had told on him. He looked old, haggard; infinitely tired. Mentally he
+compared himself with Wilson, flushed with success, erect, triumphant,
+almost insolent. Nothing had more certainly told him the hopelessness
+of his love for Sidney than her good-night kiss. He was her brother, her
+friend. He would never be her lover. He drew a long breath and proceeded
+to undress in the dark.
+
+Joe Drummond came to see Sidney the next day. She would have avoided
+him if she could, but Mimi had ushered him up to the sewing-room boudoir
+before she had time to escape. She had not seen the boy for two months,
+and the change in him startled her. He was thinner, rather hectic,
+scrupulously well dressed.
+
+"Why, Joe!" she said, and then: "Won't you sit down?"
+
+He was still rather theatrical. He dramatized himself, as he had that
+night the June before when he had asked Sidney to marry him. He stood
+just inside the doorway. He offered no conventional greeting whatever;
+but, after surveying her briefly, her black gown, the lines around her
+eyes:--
+
+"You're not going back to that place, of course?"
+
+"I--I haven't decided."
+
+"Then somebody's got to decide for you. The thing for you to do is to
+stay right here, Sidney. People know you on the Street. Nobody here
+would ever accuse you of trying to murder anybody."
+
+In spite of herself, Sidney smiled a little.
+
+"Nobody thinks I tried to murder him. It was a mistake about the
+medicines. I didn't do it, Joe."
+
+His love was purely selfish, for he brushed aside her protest as if she
+had not spoken.
+
+"You give me the word and I'll go and get your things; I've got a car of
+my own now."
+
+"But, Joe, they have only done what they thought was right. Whoever made
+it, there was a mistake."
+
+He stared at her incredulously.
+
+"You don't mean that you are going to stand for this sort of thing?
+Every time some fool makes a mistake, are they going to blame it on
+you?"
+
+"Please don't be theatrical. Come in and sit down. I can't talk to you
+if you explode like a rocket all the time."
+
+Her matter-of-fact tone had its effect. He advanced into the room, but
+he still scorned a chair.
+
+"I guess you've been wondering why you haven't heard from me," he said.
+"I've seen you more than you've seen me."
+
+Sidney looked uneasy. The idea of espionage is always repugnant, and
+to have a rejected lover always in the offing, as it were, was
+disconcerting.
+
+"I wish you would be just a little bit sensible, Joe. It's so silly of
+you, really. It's not because you care for me; it's really because you
+care for yourself."
+
+"You can't look at me and say that, Sid."
+
+He ran his finger around his collar--an old gesture; but the collar was
+very loose. He was thin; his neck showed it.
+
+"I'm just eating my heart out for you, and that's the truth. And it
+isn't only that. Everywhere I go, people say, 'There's the fellow Sidney
+Page turned down when she went to the hospital.' I've got so I keep off
+the Street as much as I can."
+
+Sidney was half alarmed, half irritated. This wild, excited boy was not
+the doggedly faithful youth she had always known. It seemed to her
+that he was hardly sane--that underneath his quiet manner and carefully
+repressed voice there lurked something irrational, something she could
+not cope with. She looked up at him helplessly.
+
+"But what do you want me to do? You--you almost frighten me. If you'd
+only sit down--"
+
+"I want you to come home. I'm not asking anything else now. I just want
+you to come back, so that things will be the way they used to be. Now
+that they have turned you out--"
+
+"They've done nothing of the sort. I've told you that."
+
+"You're going back?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Because you love the hospital, or because you love somebody connected
+with the hospital?"
+
+Sidney was thoroughly angry by this time, angry and reckless. She had
+come through so much that every nerve was crying in passionate protest.
+
+"If it will make you understand things any better," she cried, "I am
+going back for both reasons!"
+
+She was sorry the next moment. But her words seemed, surprisingly
+enough, to steady him. For the first time, he sat down.
+
+"Then, as far as I am concerned, it's all over, is it?"
+
+"Yes, Joe. I told you that long ago."
+
+He seemed hardly to be listening. His thoughts had ranged far ahead.
+Suddenly:--
+
+"You think Christine has her hands full with Palmer, don't you? Well,
+if you take Max Wilson, you're going to have more trouble than Christine
+ever dreamed of. I can tell you some things about him now that will make
+you think twice."
+
+But Sidney had reached her limit. She went over and flung open the door.
+
+"Every word that you say shows me how right I am in not marrying you,
+Joe," she said. "Real men do not say those things about each other under
+any circumstances. You're behaving like a bad boy. I don't want you to
+come back until you have grown up."
+
+He was very white, but he picked up his hat and went to the door.
+
+"I guess I AM crazy," he said. "I've been wanting to go away, but mother
+raises such a fuss--I'll not annoy you any more."
+
+He reached in his pocket and, pulling out a small box, held it toward
+her. The lid was punched full of holes.
+
+"Reginald," he said solemnly. "I've had him all winter. Some boys caught
+him in the park, and I brought him home."
+
+He left her standing there speechless with surprise, with the box in her
+hand, and ran down the stairs and out into the Street. At the foot of
+the steps he almost collided with Dr. Ed.
+
+"Back to see Sidney?" said Dr. Ed genially. "That's fine, Joe. I'm glad
+you've made it up."
+
+The boy went blindly down the Street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Winter relaxed its clutch slowly that year. March was bitterly cold;
+even April found the roads still frozen and the hedgerows clustered with
+ice. But at mid-day there was spring in the air. In the courtyard of the
+hospital, convalescents sat on the benches and watched for robins. The
+fountain, which had frozen out, was being repaired. Here and there on
+ward window-sills tulips opened their gaudy petals to the sun.
+
+Harriet had gone abroad for a flying trip in March and came back laden
+with new ideas, model gowns, and fresh enthusiasm. She carried out and
+planted flowers on her sister's grave, and went back to her work with a
+feeling of duty done. A combination of crocuses and snow on the ground
+had given her an inspiration for a gown. She drew it in pencil on an
+envelope on her way back in the street car.
+
+Grace Irving, having made good during the white sales, had been sent to
+the spring cottons. She began to walk with her head higher. The day she
+sold Sidney material for a simple white gown, she was very happy. Once
+a customer brought her a bunch of primroses. All day she kept them under
+the counter in a glass of water, and at evening she took them to Johnny
+Rosenfeld, still lying prone in the hospital.
+
+On Sidney, on K., and on Christine the winter had left its mark heavily.
+Christine, readjusting her life to new conditions, was graver, more
+thoughtful. She was alone most of the time now. Under K.'s guidance, she
+had given up the "Duchess" and was reading real books. She was thinking
+real thoughts, too, for the first time in her life.
+
+Sidney, as tender as ever, had lost a little of the radiance from her
+eyes; her voice had deepened. Where she had been a pretty girl, she
+was now lovely. She was back in the hospital again, this time in the
+children's ward. K., going in one day to take Johnny Rosenfeld a basket
+of fruit, saw her there with a child in her arms, and a light in her
+eyes that he had never seen before. It hurt him, rather--things being as
+they were with him. When he came out he looked straight ahead.
+
+With the opening of spring the little house at Hillfoot took on fresh
+activities. Tillie was house-cleaning with great thoroughness. She
+scrubbed carpets, took down the clean curtains, and put them up again
+freshly starched. It was as if she found in sheer activity and fatigue a
+remedy for her uneasiness.
+
+Business had not been very good. The impeccable character of the little
+house had been against it. True, Mr. Schwitter had a little bar and
+served the best liquors he could buy; but he discouraged rowdiness--had
+been known to refuse to sell to boys under twenty-one and to men who had
+already overindulged. The word went about that Schwitter's was no place
+for a good time. Even Tillie's chicken and waffles failed against this
+handicap.
+
+By the middle of April the house-cleaning was done. One or two motor
+parties had come out, dined sedately and wined moderately, and had gone
+back to the city again. The next two weeks saw the weather clear. The
+roads dried up, robins filled the trees with their noisy spring songs,
+and still business continued dull.
+
+By the first day of May, Tillie's uneasiness had become certainty. On
+that morning Mr. Schwitter, coming in from the early milking, found her
+sitting in the kitchen, her face buried in her apron. He put down the
+milk-pails and, going over to her, put a hand on her head.
+
+"I guess there's no mistake, then?"
+
+"There's no mistake," said poor Tillie into her apron.
+
+He bent down and kissed the back of her neck. Then, when she failed to
+brighten, he tiptoed around the kitchen, poured the milk into pans,
+and rinsed the buckets, working methodically in his heavy way. The
+tea-kettle had boiled dry. He filled that, too. Then:--
+
+"Do you want to see a doctor?"
+
+"I'd better see somebody," she said, without looking up. "And--don't
+think I'm blaming you. I guess I don't really blame anybody. As far as
+that goes, I've wanted a child right along. It isn't the trouble I am
+thinking of either."
+
+He nodded. Words were unnecessary between them. He made some tea
+clumsily and browned her a piece of toast. When he had put them on one
+end of the kitchen table, he went over to her again.
+
+"I guess I'd ought to have thought of this before, but all I thought of
+was trying to get a little happiness out of life. And,"--he stroked
+her arm,--"as far as I am concerned, it's been worth while, Tillie. No
+matter what I've had to do, I've always looked forward to coming back
+here to you in the evening. Maybe I don't say it enough, but I guess you
+know I feel it all right."
+
+Without looking up, she placed her hand over his.
+
+"I guess we started wrong," he went on. "You can't build happiness on
+what isn't right. You and I can manage well enough; but now that there's
+going to be another, it looks different, somehow."
+
+After that morning Tillie took up her burden stoically. The hope of
+motherhood alternated with black fits of depression. She sang at her
+work, to burst out into sudden tears.
+
+Other things were not going well. Schwitter had given up his nursery
+business; but the motorists who came to Hillfoot did not come back.
+When, at last, he took the horse and buggy and drove about the country
+for orders, he was too late. Other nurserymen had been before him;
+shrubberies and orchards were already being set out. The second payment
+on his mortgage would be due in July. By the middle of May they were
+frankly up against it. Schwitter at last dared to put the situation into
+words.
+
+"We're not making good, Til," he said. "And I guess you know the reason.
+We are too decent; that's what's the matter with us." There was no irony
+in his words.
+
+With all her sophistication, Tillie was vastly ignorant of life. He had
+to explain.
+
+"We'll have to keep a sort of hotel," he said lamely. "Sell to everybody
+that comes along, and--if parties want to stay over-night--"
+
+Tillie's white face turned crimson.
+
+He attempted a compromise. "If it's bad weather, and they're married--"
+
+"How are we to know if they are married or not?"
+
+He admired her very much for it. He had always respected her. But the
+situation was not less acute. There were two or three unfurnished rooms
+on the second floor. He began to make tentative suggestions as to their
+furnishing. Once he got a catalogue from an installment house, and tried
+to hide it from her. Tillie's eyes blazed. She burned it in the kitchen
+stove.
+
+Schwitter himself was ashamed; but the idea obsessed him. Other people
+fattened on the frailties of human nature. Two miles away, on the other
+road, was a public house that had netted the owner ten thousand dollars
+profit the year before. They bought their beer from the same concern.
+He was not as young as he had been; there was the expense of keeping
+his wife--he had never allowed her to go into the charity ward at the
+asylum. Now that there was going to be a child, there would be three
+people dependent upon him. He was past fifty, and not robust.
+
+One night, after Tillie was asleep, he slipped noiselessly into his
+clothes and out to the barn, where he hitched up the horse with nervous
+fingers.
+
+Tillie never learned of that midnight excursion to the "Climbing Rose,"
+two miles away. Lights blazed in every window; a dozen automobiles were
+parked before the barn. Somebody was playing a piano. From the bar came
+the jingle of glasses and loud, cheerful conversation.
+
+When Schwitter turned the horse's head back toward Hillfoot, his
+mind was made up. He would furnish the upper rooms; he would bring a
+barkeeper from town--these people wanted mixed drinks; he could get a
+second-hand piano somewhere.
+
+Tillie's rebellion was instant and complete. When she found him
+determined, she made the compromise that her condition necessitated. She
+could not leave him, but she would not stay in the rehabilitated little
+house. When, a week after Schwitter's visit to the "Climbing Rose," an
+installment van arrived from town with the new furniture, Tillie
+moved out to what had been the harness-room of the old barn and there
+established herself.
+
+"I am not leaving you," she told him. "I don't even know that I am
+blaming you. But I am not going to have anything to do with it, and
+that's flat."
+
+So it happened that K., making a spring pilgrimage to see Tillie,
+stopped astounded in the road. The weather was warm, and he carried
+his Norfolk coat over his arm. The little house was bustling; a dozen
+automobiles were parked in the barnyard. The bar was crowded, and a
+barkeeper in a white coat was mixing drinks with the casual indifference
+of his kind. There were tables under the trees on the lawn, and a new
+sign on the gate.
+
+Even Schwitter bore a new look of prosperity. Over his schooner of beer
+K. gathered something of the story.
+
+"I'm not proud of it, Mr. Le Moyne. I've come to do a good many things
+the last year or so that I never thought I would do. But one thing leads
+to another. First I took Tillie away from her good position, and after
+that nothing went right. Then there were things coming on"--he looked at
+K. anxiously--"that meant more expense. I would be glad if you wouldn't
+say anything about it at Mrs. McKee's."
+
+"I'll not speak of it, of course."
+
+It was then, when K. asked for Tillie, that Mr. Schwitter's unhappiness
+became more apparent.
+
+"She wouldn't stand for it," he said. "She moved out the day I furnished
+the rooms upstairs and got the piano."
+
+"Do you mean she has gone?"
+
+"As far as the barn. She wouldn't stay in the house. I--I'll take you
+out there, if you would like to see her."
+
+K. shrewdly surmised that Tillie would prefer to see him alone, under
+the circumstances.
+
+"I guess I can find her," he said, and rose from the little table.
+
+"If you--if you can say anything to help me out, sir, I'd appreciate it.
+Of course, she understands how I am driven. But--especially if you would
+tell her that the Street doesn't know--"
+
+"I'll do all I can," K. promised, and followed the path to the barn.
+
+Tillie received him with a certain dignity. The little harness-room
+was very comfortable. A white iron bed in a corner, a flat table with
+a mirror above it, a rocking-chair, and a sewing-machine furnished the
+room.
+
+"I wouldn't stand for it," she said simply; "so here I am. Come in, Mr.
+Le Moyne."
+
+There being but one chair, she sat on the bed. The room was littered
+with small garments in the making. She made no attempt to conceal them;
+rather, she pointed to them with pride.
+
+"I am making them myself. I have a lot of time these days. He's got a
+hired girl at the house. It was hard enough to sew at first, with me
+making two right sleeves almost every time." Then, seeing his kindly eye
+on her: "Well, it's happened, Mr. Le Moyne. What am I going to do? What
+am I going to be?"
+
+"You're going to be a very good mother, Tillie."
+
+She was manifestly in need of cheering. K., who also needed cheering
+that spring day, found his consolation in seeing her brighten under the
+small gossip of the Street. The deaf-and-dumb book agent had taken on
+life insurance as a side issue, and was doing well; the grocery store at
+the corner was going to be torn down, and over the new store there
+were to be apartments; Reginald had been miraculously returned, and was
+building a new nest under his bureau; Harriet Kennedy had been to Paris,
+and had brought home six French words and a new figure.
+
+Outside the open door the big barn loomed cool and shadowy, full of
+empty spaces where later the hay would be stored; anxious mother hens
+led their broods about; underneath in the horse stable the restless
+horses pawed in their stalls. From where he sat, Le Moyne could see only
+the round breasts of the two hills, the fresh green of the orchard the
+cows in a meadow beyond.
+
+Tillie followed his eyes.
+
+"I like it here," she confessed. "I've had more time to think since I
+moved out than I ever had in my life before. Them hills help. When the
+noise is worst down at the house, I look at the hills there and--"
+
+There were great thoughts in her mind--that the hills meant God, and
+that in His good time perhaps it would all come right. But she was
+inarticulate. "The hills help a lot," she repeated.
+
+K. rose. Tillie's work-basket lay near him. He picked up one of the
+little garments. In his big hands it looked small, absurd.
+
+"I--I want to tell you something, Tillie. Don't count on it too much;
+but Mrs. Schwitter has been failing rapidly for the last month or two."
+
+Tillie caught his arm.
+
+"You've seen her?"
+
+"I was interested. I wanted to see things work out right for you."
+
+All the color had faded from Tillie's face.
+
+"You're very good to me, Mr. Le Moyne," she said. "I don't wish the poor
+soul any harm, but--oh, my God! if she's going, let it be before the
+next four months are over."
+
+K. had fallen into the habit, after his long walks, of dropping into
+Christine's little parlor for a chat before he went upstairs. Those
+early spring days found Harriet Kennedy busy late in the evenings, and,
+save for Christine and K., the house was practically deserted.
+
+The breach between Palmer and Christine was steadily widening. She was
+too proud to ask him to spend more of his evenings with her. On those
+occasions when he voluntarily stayed at home with her, he was so
+discontented that he drove her almost to distraction. Although she was
+convinced that he was seeing nothing of the girl who had been with
+him the night of the accident, she did not trust him. Not that girl,
+perhaps, but there were others. There would always be others.
+
+Into Christine's little parlor, then, K. turned, the evening after he
+had seen Tillie. She was reading by the lamp, and the door into the hall
+stood open.
+
+"Come in," she said, as he hesitated in the doorway.
+
+"I am frightfully dusty."
+
+"There's a brush in the drawer of the hat-rack--although I don't really
+mind how you look."
+
+The little room always cheered K. Its warmth and light appealed to his
+aesthetic sense; after the bareness of his bedroom, it spelled luxury.
+And perhaps, to be entirely frank, there was more than physical comfort
+and satisfaction in the evenings he spent in Christine's firelit parlor.
+He was entirely masculine, and her evident pleasure in his society
+gratified him. He had fallen into a way of thinking of himself as a sort
+of older brother to all the world because he was a sort of older brother
+to Sidney. The evenings with her did something to reinstate him in his
+own self-esteem. It was subtle, psychological, but also it was very
+human.
+
+"Come and sit down," said Christine. "Here's a chair, and here are
+cigarettes and there are matches. Now!"
+
+But, for once, K. declined the chair. He stood in front of the fireplace
+and looked down at her, his head bent slightly to one side.
+
+"I wonder if you would like to do a very kind thing," he said
+unexpectedly.
+
+"Make you coffee?"
+
+"Something much more trouble and not so pleasant."
+
+Christine glanced up at him. When she was with him, when his steady eyes
+looked down at her, small affectations fell away. She was more genuine
+with K. than with anyone else, even herself.
+
+"Tell me what it is, or shall I promise first?"
+
+"I want you to promise just one thing: to keep a secret."
+
+"Yours?"
+
+Christine was not over-intelligent, perhaps, but she was shrewd. That Le
+Moyne's past held a secret she had felt from the beginning. She sat up
+with eager curiosity.
+
+"No, not mine. Is it a promise?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"I've found Tillie, Christine. I want you to go out to see her."
+
+Christine's red lips parted. The Street did not go out to see women in
+Tillie's situation.
+
+"But, K.!" she protested.
+
+"She needs another woman just now. She's going to have a child,
+Christine; and she has had no one to talk to but her hus--but Mr.
+Schwitter and myself. She is depressed and not very well."
+
+"But what shall I say to her? I'd really rather not go, K. Not,"
+she hastened to set herself right in his eyes--"not that I feel any
+unwillingness to see her. I know you understand that. But--what in the
+world shall I say to her?"
+
+"Say what your own kind heart prompts."
+
+It had been rather a long time since Christine had been accused
+of having a kind heart. Not that she was unkind, but in all her
+self-centered young life there had been little call on her sympathies.
+Her eyes clouded.
+
+"I wish I were as good as you think I am."
+
+There was a little silence between them. Then Le Moyne spoke briskly:--
+
+"I'll tell you how to get there; perhaps I would better write it."
+
+He moved over to Christine's small writing-table and, seating himself,
+proceeded to write out the directions for reaching Hillfoot.
+
+Behind him, Christine had taken his place on the hearth-rug and stood
+watching his head in the light of the desk-lamp. "What a strong, quiet
+face it is," she thought. Why did she get the impression of such a
+tremendous reserve power in this man who was a clerk, and a clerk only?
+Behind him she made a quick, unconscious gesture of appeal, both hands
+out for an instant. She dropped them guiltily as K. rose with the paper
+in his hand.
+
+"I've drawn a sort of map of the roads," he began. "You see, this--"
+
+Christine was looking, not at the paper, but up at him.
+
+"I wonder if you know, K.," she said, "what a lucky woman the woman will
+be who marries you?"
+
+He laughed good-humoredly.
+
+"I wonder how long I could hypnotize her into thinking that."
+
+He was still holding out the paper.
+
+"I've had time to do a little thinking lately," she said, without
+bitterness. "Palmer is away so much now. I've been looking back,
+wondering if I ever thought that about him. I don't believe I ever did.
+I wonder--"
+
+She checked herself abruptly and took the paper from his hand.
+
+"I'll go to see Tillie, of course," she consented. "It is like you to
+have found her."
+
+She sat down. Although she picked up the book that she had been reading
+with the evident intention of discussing it, her thoughts were still on
+Tillie, on Palmer, on herself. After a moment:--
+
+"Has it ever occurred to you how terribly mixed up things are? Take this
+Street, for instance. Can you think of anybody on it that--that things
+have gone entirely right with?"
+
+"It's a little world of its own, of course," said K., "and it has plenty
+of contact points with life. But wherever one finds people, many or few,
+one finds all the elements that make up life--joy and sorrow, birth and
+death, and even tragedy. That's rather trite, isn't it?"
+
+Christine was still pursuing her thoughts.
+
+"Men are different," she said. "To a certain extent they make their own
+fates. But when you think of the women on the Street,--Tillie,
+Harriet Kennedy, Sidney Page, myself, even Mrs. Rosenfeld back in the
+alley,--somebody else moulds things for us, and all we can do is to sit
+back and suffer. I am beginning to think the world is a terrible place,
+K. Why do people so often marry the wrong people? Why can't a man
+care for one woman and only one all his life? Why--why is it all so
+complicated?"
+
+"There are men who care for only one woman all their lives."
+
+"You're that sort, aren't you?"
+
+"I don't want to put myself on any pinnacle. If I cared enough for
+a woman to marry her, I'd hope to--But we are being very tragic,
+Christine."
+
+"I feel tragic. There's going to be another mistake, K., unless you stop
+it."
+
+He tried to leaven the conversation with a little fun.
+
+"If you're going to ask me to interfere between Mrs. McKee and the
+deaf-and-dumb book and insurance agent, I shall do nothing of the sort.
+She can both speak and hear enough for both of them."
+
+"I mean Sidney and Max Wilson. He's mad about her, K.; and, because
+she's the sort she is, he'll probably be mad about her all his life,
+even if he marries her. But he'll not be true to her; I know the type
+now."
+
+K. leaned back with a flicker of pain in his eyes.
+
+"What can I do about it?"
+
+Astute as he was, he did not suspect that Christine was using this
+method to fathom his feeling for Sidney. Perhaps she hardly knew it
+herself.
+
+"You might marry her yourself, K."
+
+But he had himself in hand by this time, and she learned nothing from
+either his voice or his eyes.
+
+"On twenty dollars a week? And without so much as asking her consent?"
+He dropped his light tone. "I'm not in a position to marry anybody. Even
+if Sidney cared for me, which she doesn't, of course--"
+
+"Then you don't intend to interfere? You're going to let the Street see
+another failure?"
+
+"I think you can understand," said K. rather wearily, "that if I cared
+less, Christine, it would be easier to interfere."
+
+After all, Christine had known this, or surmised it, for weeks. But it
+hurt like a fresh stab in an old wound. It was K. who spoke again after
+a pause:--
+
+"The deadly hard thing, of course, is to sit by and see things happening
+that one--that one would naturally try to prevent."
+
+"I don't believe that you have always been of those who only stand and
+wait," said Christine. "Sometime, K., when you know me better and like
+me better, I want you to tell me about it, will you?"
+
+"There's very little to tell. I held a trust. When I discovered that I
+was unfit to hold that trust any longer, I quit. That's all."
+
+His tone of finality closed the discussion. But Christine's eyes were on
+him often that evening, puzzled, rather sad.
+
+They talked of books, of music--Christine played well in a dashing way.
+K. had brought her soft, tender little things, and had stood over her
+until her noisy touch became gentle. She played for him a little, while
+he sat back in the big chair with his hand screening his eyes.
+
+When, at last, he rose and picked up his cap; it was nine o'clock.
+
+"I've taken your whole evening," he said remorsefully. "Why don't you
+tell me I am a nuisance and send me off?"
+
+Christine was still at the piano, her hands on the keys. She spoke
+without looking at him:--
+
+"You're never a nuisance, K., and--"
+
+"You'll go out to see Tillie, won't you?"
+
+"Yes. But I'll not go under false pretenses. I am going quite frankly
+because you want me to."
+
+Something in her tone caught his attention.
+
+"I forgot to tell you," she went on. "Father has given Palmer five
+thousand dollars. He's going to buy a share in a business."
+
+"That's fine."
+
+"Possibly. I don't believe much in Palmer's business ventures."
+
+Her flat tone still held him. Underneath it he divined strain and
+repression.
+
+"I hate to go and leave you alone," he said at last from the door. "Have
+you any idea when Palmer will be back?"
+
+"Not the slightest. K., will you come here a moment? Stand behind me; I
+don't want to see you, and I want to tell you something."
+
+He did as she bade him, rather puzzled.
+
+"Here I am."
+
+"I think I am a fool for saying this. Perhaps I am spoiling the only
+chance I have to get any happiness out of life. But I have got to say
+it. It's stronger than I am. I was terribly unhappy, K., and then you
+came into my life, and I--now I listen for your step in the hall. I
+can't be a hypocrite any longer, K."
+
+When he stood behind her, silent and not moving, she turned slowly about
+and faced him. He towered there in the little room, grave eyes on hers.
+
+"It's a long time since I have had a woman friend, Christine," he said
+soberly. "Your friendship has meant a good deal. In a good many
+ways, I'd not care to look ahead if it were not for you. I value our
+friendship so much that I--"
+
+"That you don't want me to spoil it," she finished for him. "I know
+you don't care for me, K., not the way I--But I wanted you to know. It
+doesn't hurt a good man to know such a thing. And it--isn't going to
+stop your coming here, is it?"
+
+"Of course not," said K. heartily. "But to-morrow, when we are both
+clear-headed, we will talk this over. You are mistaken about this thing,
+Christine; I am sure of that. Things have not been going well, and just
+because I am always around, and all that sort of thing, you think things
+that aren't really so. I'm only a reaction, Christine."
+
+He tried to make her smile up at him. But just then she could not smile.
+
+If she had cried, things might have been different for every one; for
+perhaps K. would have taken her in his arms. He was heart-hungry enough,
+those days, for anything. And perhaps, too, being intuitive, Christine
+felt this. But she had no mind to force him into a situation against his
+will.
+
+"It is because you are good," she said, and held out her hand.
+"Good-night."
+
+Le Moyne took it and bent over and kissed it lightly. There was in
+the kiss all that he could not say of respect, of affection and
+understanding.
+
+"Good-night, Christine," he said, and went into the hall and upstairs.
+
+The lamp was not lighted in his room, but the street light glowed
+through the windows. Once again the waving fronds of the ailanthus tree
+flung ghostly shadows on the walls. There was a faint sweet odor of
+blossoms, so soon to become rank and heavy.
+
+Over the floor in a wild zigzag darted a strip of white paper which
+disappeared under the bureau. Reginald was building another nest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Sidney went into the operating-room late in the spring as the result of
+a conversation between the younger Wilson and the Head.
+
+"When are you going to put my protegee into the operating-room?" asked
+Wilson, meeting Miss Gregg in a corridor one bright, spring afternoon.
+
+"That usually comes in the second year, Dr. Wilson."
+
+He smiled down at her. "That isn't a rule, is it?"
+
+"Not exactly. Miss Page is very young, and of course there are other
+girls who have not yet had the experience. But, if you make the
+request--"
+
+"I am going to have some good cases soon. I'll not make a request, of
+course; but, if you see fit, it would be good training for Miss Page."
+
+Miss Gregg went on, knowing perfectly that at his next operation Dr.
+Wilson would expect Sidney Page in the operating-room. The other doctors
+were not so exigent. She would have liked to have all the staff old and
+settled, like Dr. O'Hara or the older Wilson. These young men came in
+and tore things up.
+
+She sighed as she went on. There were so many things to go wrong. The
+butter had been bad--she must speak to the matron. The sterilizer in
+the operating-room was out of order--that meant a quarrel with the chief
+engineer. Requisitions were too heavy--that meant going around to the
+wards and suggesting to the head nurses that lead pencils and bandages
+and adhesive plaster and safety-pins cost money.
+
+It was particularly inconvenient to move Sidney just then. Carlotta
+Harrison was off duty, ill. She had been ailing for a month, and now she
+was down with a temperature. As the Head went toward Sidney's ward,
+her busy mind was playing her nurses in their wards like pieces on a
+checkerboard.
+
+Sidney went into the operating-room that afternoon. For her blue
+uniform, kerchief, and cap she exchanged the hideous operating-room
+garb: long, straight white gown with short sleeves and mob-cap,
+gray-white from many sterilizations. But the ugly costume seemed to
+emphasize her beauty, as the habit of a nun often brings out the placid
+saintliness of her face.
+
+The relationship between Sidney and Max had reached that point that
+occurs in all relationships between men and women: when things must
+either go forward or go back, but cannot remain as they are. The
+condition had existed for the last three months. It exasperated the man.
+
+As a matter of fact, Wilson could not go ahead. The situation with
+Carlotta had become tense, irritating. He felt that she stood ready
+to block any move he made. He would not go back, and he dared not go
+forward.
+
+If Sidney was puzzled, she kept it bravely to herself. In her little
+room at night, with the door carefully locked, she tried to think things
+out. There were a few treasures that she looked over regularly: a dried
+flower from the Christmas roses; a label that he had pasted playfully
+on the back of her hand one day after the rush of surgical dressings was
+over and which said "Rx, Take once and forever."
+
+There was another piece of paper over which Sidney spent much time. It
+was a page torn out of an order book, and it read: "Sigsbee may have
+light diet; Rosenfeld massage." Underneath was written, very small:
+
+     "You are the most beautiful person in the world."
+
+Two reasons had prompted Wilson to request to have Sidney in the
+operating-room. He wanted her with him, and he wanted her to see him at
+work: the age-old instinct of the male to have his woman see him at his
+best.
+
+He was in high spirits that first day of Sidney's operating-room
+experience. For the time at least, Carlotta was out of the way. Her
+somber eyes no longer watched him. Once he looked up from his work and
+glanced at Sidney where she stood at strained attention.
+
+"Feeling faint?" he said.
+
+She colored under the eyes that were turned on her.
+
+"No, Dr. Wilson."
+
+"A great many of them faint on the first day. We sometimes have them
+lying all over the floor."
+
+He challenged Miss Gregg with his eyes, and she reproved him with a
+shake of her head, as she might a bad boy.
+
+One way and another, he managed to turn the attention of the
+operating-room to Sidney several times. It suited his whim, and it did
+more than that: it gave him a chance to speak to her in his teasing way.
+
+Sidney came through the operation as if she had been through fire--taut
+as a string, rather pale, but undaunted. But when the last case had been
+taken out, Max dropped his bantering manner. The internes were looking
+over instruments; the nurses were busy on the hundred and one tasks of
+clearing up; so he had a chance for a word with her alone.
+
+"I am proud of you, Sidney; you came through it like a soldier."
+
+"You made it very hard for me."
+
+A nurse was coming toward him; he had only a moment.
+
+"I shall leave a note in the mail-box," he said quickly, and proceeded
+with the scrubbing of his hands which signified the end of the day's
+work.
+
+The operations had lasted until late in the afternoon. The night nurses
+had taken up their stations; prayers were over. The internes were
+gathered in the smoking-room, threshing over the day's work, as was
+their custom. When Sidney was free, she went to the office for the note.
+It was very brief:--
+
+I have something I want to say to you, dear. I think you know what it
+is. I never see you alone at home any more. If you can get off for an
+hour, won't you take the trolley to the end of Division Street? I'll be
+there with the car at eight-thirty, and I promise to have you back by
+ten o'clock.
+
+MAX.
+
+The office was empty. No one saw her as she stood by the mail-box. The
+ticking of the office clock, the heavy rumble of a dray outside, the
+roll of the ambulance as it went out through the gateway, and in her
+hand the realization of what she had never confessed as a hope, even to
+herself! He, the great one, was going to stoop to her. It had been in
+his eyes that afternoon; it was there, in his letter, now.
+
+It was eight by the office clock. To get out of her uniform and into
+street clothing, fifteen minutes; on the trolley, another fifteen. She
+would need to hurry.
+
+But she did not meet him, after all. Miss Wardwell met her in the upper
+hall.
+
+"Did you get my message?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"What message?"
+
+"Miss Harrison wants to see you. She has been moved to a private room."
+
+Sidney glanced at K.'s little watch.
+
+"Must she see me to-night?"
+
+"She has been waiting for hours--ever since you went to the
+operating-room."
+
+Sidney sighed, but she went to Carlotta at once. The girl's condition
+was puzzling the staff. There was talk of "T.R."--which is hospital for
+"typhoid restrictions." But T.R. has apathy, generally, and Carlotta
+was not apathetic. Sidney found her tossing restlessly on her high white
+bed, and put her cool hand over Carlotta's hot one.
+
+"Did you send for me?"
+
+"Hours ago." Then, seeing her operating-room uniform: "You've been
+THERE, have you?"
+
+"Is there anything I can do, Carlotta?"
+
+Excitement had dyed Sidney's cheeks with color and made her eyes
+luminous. The girl in the bed eyed her, and then abruptly drew her hand
+away.
+
+"Were you going out?"
+
+"Yes; but not right away."
+
+"I'll not keep you if you have an engagement."
+
+"The engagement will have to wait. I'm sorry you're ill. If you would
+like me to stay with you tonight--"
+
+Carlotta shook her head on her pillow.
+
+"Mercy, no!" she said irritably. "I'm only worn out. I need a rest. Are
+you going home to-night?"
+
+"No," Sidney admitted, and flushed.
+
+Nothing escaped Carlotta's eyes--the younger girl's radiance, her
+confusion, even her operating room uniform and what it signified. How
+she hated her, with her youth and freshness, her wide eyes, her soft red
+lips! And this engagement--she had the uncanny divination of fury.
+
+"I was going to ask you to do something for me," she said shortly; "but
+I've changed my mind about it. Go on and keep your engagement."
+
+To end the interview, she turned over and lay with her face to the wall.
+Sidney stood waiting uncertainly. All her training had been to ignore
+the irritability of the sick, and Carlotta was very ill; she could see
+that.
+
+"Just remember that I am ready to do anything I can, Carlotta," she
+said. "Nothing will--will be a trouble."
+
+She waited a moment, but, receiving no acknowledgement of her offer, she
+turned slowly and went toward the door.
+
+"Sidney!"
+
+She went back to the bed.
+
+"Yes. Don't sit up, Carlotta. What is it?"
+
+"I'm frightened!"
+
+"You're feverish and nervous. There's nothing to be frightened about."
+
+"If it's typhoid, I'm gone."
+
+"That's childish. Of course you're not gone, or anything like it.
+Besides, it's probably not typhoid."
+
+"I'm afraid to sleep. I doze for a little, and when I waken there are
+people in the room. They stand around the bed and talk about me."
+
+Sidney's precious minutes were flying; but Carlotta had gone into a
+paroxysm of terror, holding to Sidney's hand and begging not to be left
+alone.
+
+"I'm too young to die," she would whimper. And in the next breath: "I
+want to die--I don't want to live!"
+
+The hands of the little watch pointed to eight-thirty when at last she
+lay quiet, with closed eyes. Sidney, tiptoeing to the door, was brought
+up short by her name again, this time in a more normal voice:--
+
+"Sidney."
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Perhaps you are right and I'm going to get over this."
+
+"Certainly you are. Your nerves are playing tricks with you to-night."
+
+"I'll tell you now why I sent for you."
+
+"I'm listening."
+
+"If--if I get very bad,--you know what I mean,--will you promise to do
+exactly what I tell you?"
+
+"I promise, absolutely."
+
+"My trunk key is in my pocket-book. There is a letter in the tray--just
+a name, no address on it. Promise to see that it is not delivered; that
+it is destroyed without being read."
+
+Sidney promised promptly; and, because it was too late now for her
+meeting with Wilson, for the next hour she devoted herself to making
+Carlotta comfortable. So long as she was busy, a sort of exaltation of
+service upheld her. But when at last the night assistant came to sit
+with the sick girl, and Sidney was free, all the life faded from her
+face. He had waited for her and she had not come. Would he understand?
+Would he ask her to meet him again? Perhaps, after all, his question had
+not been what she had thought.
+
+She went miserably to bed. K.'s little watch ticked under her pillow.
+Her stiff cap moved in the breeze as it swung from the corner of her
+mirror. Under her window passed and repassed the night life of the
+city--taxicabs, stealthy painted women, tired office-cleaners trudging
+home at midnight, a city patrol-wagon which rolled in through the gates
+to the hospital's always open door. When she could not sleep, she got up
+and padded to the window in bare feet. The light from a passing machine
+showed a youthful figure that looked like Joe Drummond.
+
+Life, that had always seemed so simple, was growing very complicated
+for Sidney: Joe and K., Palmer and Christine, Johnny Rosenfeld,
+Carlotta--either lonely or tragic, all of them, or both. Life in the
+raw.
+
+Toward morning Carlotta wakened. The night assistant was still there. It
+had been a quiet night and she was asleep in her chair. To save her cap
+she had taken it off, and early streaks of silver showed in her hair.
+
+Carlotta roused her ruthlessly.
+
+"I want something from my trunk," she said.
+
+The assistant wakened reluctantly, and looked at her watch. Almost
+morning. She yawned and pinned on her cap.
+
+"For Heaven's sake," she protested. "You don't want me to go to the
+trunk-room at this hour!"
+
+"I can go myself," said Carlotta, and put her feet out of bed.
+
+"What is it you want?"
+
+"A letter on the top tray. If I wait my temperature will go up and I
+can't think."
+
+"Shall I mail it for you?"
+
+"Bring it here," said Carlotta shortly. "I want to destroy it."
+
+The young woman went without haste, to show that a night assistant may
+do such things out of friendship, but not because she must. She stopped
+at the desk where the night nurse in charge of the rooms on that floor
+was filling out records.
+
+"Give me twelve private patients to look after instead of one nurse like
+Carlotta Harrison!" she complained. "I've got to go to the trunk-room
+for her at this hour, and it next door to the mortuary!"
+
+As the first rays of the summer sun came through the window, shadowing
+the fire-escape like a lattice on the wall of the little gray-walled
+room, Carlotta sat up in her bed and lighted the candle on the stand.
+The night assistant, who dreamed sometimes of fire, stood nervously by.
+
+"Why don't you let me do it?" she asked irritably.
+
+Carlotta did not reply at once. The candle was in her hand, and she was
+staring at the letter.
+
+"Because I want to do it myself," she said at last, and thrust the
+envelope into the flame. It burned slowly, at first a thin blue flame
+tipped with yellow, then, eating its way with a small fine crackling,
+a widening, destroying blaze that left behind it black ash and
+destruction. The acrid odor of burning filled the room. Not until it was
+consumed, and the black ash fell into the saucer of the candlestick, did
+Carlotta speak again. Then:--
+
+"If every fool of a woman who wrote a letter burnt it, there would be
+less trouble in the world," she said, and lay back among her pillows.
+
+The assistant said nothing. She was sleepy and irritated, and she had
+crushed her best cap by letting the lid of Carlotta's trunk fall on her.
+She went out of the room with disapproval in every line of her back.
+
+"She burned it," she informed the night nurse at her desk. "A letter to
+a man--one of her suitors, I suppose. The name was K. Le Moyne."
+
+The deepening and broadening of Sidney's character had been very
+noticeable in the last few months. She had gained in decision without
+becoming hard; had learned to see things as they are, not through the
+rose mist of early girlhood; and, far from being daunted, had developed
+a philosophy that had for its basis God in His heaven and all well with
+the world.
+
+But her new theory of acceptance did not comprehend everything. She was
+in a state of wild revolt, for instance, as to Johnny Rosenfeld, and
+more remotely but not less deeply concerned over Grace Irving. Soon
+she was to learn of Tillie's predicament, and to take up the cudgels
+valiantly for her.
+
+But her revolt was to be for herself too. On the day after her failure
+to keep her appointment with Wilson she had her half-holiday. No word
+had come from him, and when, after a restless night, she went to her new
+station in the operating-room, it was to learn that he had been called
+out of the city in consultation and would not operate that day. O'Hara
+would take advantage of the free afternoon to run in some odds and ends
+of cases.
+
+The operating-room made gauze that morning, and small packets of
+tampons: absorbent cotton covered with sterilized gauze, and fastened
+together--twelve, by careful count, in each bundle.
+
+Miss Grange, who had been kind to Sidney in her probation months, taught
+her the method.
+
+"Used instead of sponges," she explained. "If you noticed yesterday,
+they were counted before and after each operation. One of these missing
+is worse than a bank clerk out a dollar at the end of the day. There's
+no closing up until it's found!"
+
+Sidney eyed the small packet before her anxiously.
+
+"What a hideous responsibility!" she said.
+
+From that time on she handled the small gauze sponges almost reverently.
+
+The operating-room--all glass, white enamel, and shining
+nickel-plate--first frightened, then thrilled her. It was as if, having
+loved a great actor, she now trod the enchanted boards on which he
+achieved his triumphs. She was glad that it was her afternoon off, and
+that she would not see some lesser star--O'Hara, to wit--usurping his
+place.
+
+But Max had not sent her any word. That hurt. He must have known that
+she had been delayed.
+
+The operating-room was a hive of industry, and tongues kept pace with
+fingers. The hospital was a world, like the Street. The nurses had come
+from many places, and, like cloistered nuns, seemed to have left the
+other world behind. A new President of the country was less real than a
+new interne. The country might wash its soiled linen in public; what was
+that compared with enough sheets and towels for the wards? Big buildings
+were going up in the city. Ah! but the hospital took cognizance of that,
+gathering as it did a toll from each new story added. What news of
+the world came in through the great doors was translated at once into
+hospital terms. What the city forgot the hospital remembered. It took
+up life where the town left it at its gates, and carried it on or saw
+it ended, as the case might be. So these young women knew the ending of
+many stories, the beginning of some; but of none did they know both the
+first and last, the beginning and the end.
+
+By many small kindnesses Sidney had made herself popular. And there was
+more to it than that. She never shirked. The other girls had the respect
+for her of one honest worker for another. The episode that had caused
+her suspension seemed entirely forgotten. They showed her carefully what
+she was to do; and, because she must know the "why" of everything, they
+explained as best they could.
+
+It was while she was standing by the great sterilizer that she heard,
+through an open door, part of a conversation that sent her through the
+day with her world in revolt.
+
+The talkers were putting the anaesthetizing-room in readiness for the
+afternoon. Sidney, waiting for the time to open the sterilizer, was
+busy, for the first time in her hurried morning, with her own thoughts.
+Because she was very human, there was a little exultation in her mind.
+What would these girls say when they learned of how things stood between
+her and their hero--that, out of all his world of society and clubs and
+beautiful women, he was going to choose her?
+
+Not shameful, this: the honest pride of a woman in being chosen from
+many.
+
+The voices were very clear.
+
+"Typhoid! Of course not. She's eating her heart out."
+
+"Do you think he has really broken with her?"
+
+"Probably not. She knows it's coming; that's all."
+
+"Sometimes I have wondered--"
+
+"So have others. She oughtn't to be here, of course. But among so many
+there is bound to be one now and then who--who isn't quite--"
+
+She hesitated, at a loss for a word.
+
+"Did you--did you ever think over that trouble with Miss Page about the
+medicines? That would have been easy, and like her."
+
+"She hates Miss Page, of course, but I hardly think--If that's true, it
+was nearly murder."
+
+There were two voices, a young one, full of soft southern inflections,
+and an older voice, a trifle hard, as from disillusion.
+
+They were working as they talked. Sidney could hear the clatter of
+bottles on the tray, the scraping of a moved table.
+
+"He was crazy about her last fall."
+
+"Miss Page?" (The younger voice, with a thrill in it.)
+
+"Carlotta. Of course this is confidential."
+
+"Surely."
+
+"I saw her with him in his car one evening. And on her vacation last
+summer--"
+
+The voices dropped to a whisper. Sidney, standing cold and white by the
+sterilizer, put out a hand to steady herself. So that was it! No wonder
+Carlotta had hated her. And those whispering voices! What were they
+saying? How hateful life was, and men and women. Must there always be
+something hideous in the background? Until now she had only seen life.
+Now she felt its hot breath on her cheek.
+
+She was steady enough in a moment, cool and calm, moving about her work
+with ice-cold hands and slightly narrowed eyes. To a sort of physical
+nausea was succeeding anger, a blind fury of injured pride. He had been
+in love with Carlotta and had tired of her. He was bringing her his
+warmed-over emotions. She remembered the bitterness of her month's
+exile, and its probable cause. Max had stood by her then. Well he might,
+if he suspected the truth.
+
+For just a moment she had an illuminating flash of Wilson as he really
+was, selfish and self-indulgent, just a trifle too carefully dressed,
+daring as to eye and speech, with a carefully calculated daring, frankly
+pleasure-loving. She put her hands over her eyes.
+
+The voices in the next room had risen above their whisper.
+
+"Genius has privileges, of course," said the older voice. "He is a very
+great surgeon. To-morrow he is to do the Edwardes operation again. I am
+glad I am to see him do it."
+
+Sidney still held her hands over her eyes. He WAS a great surgeon: in
+his hands he held the keys of life and death. And perhaps he had never
+cared for Carlotta: she might have thrown herself at him. He was a man,
+at the mercy of any scheming woman.
+
+She tried to summon his image to her aid. But a curious thing happened.
+She could not visualize him. Instead, there came, clear and distinct, a
+picture of K. Le Moyne in the hall of the little house, reaching one of
+his long arms to the chandelier over his head and looking up at her as
+she stood on the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+"My God, Sidney, I'm asking you to marry me!"
+
+"I--I know that. I am asking you something else, Max."
+
+"I have never been in love with her."
+
+His voice was sulky. He had drawn the car close to a bank, and they were
+sitting in the shade, on the grass. It was the Sunday afternoon after
+Sidney's experience in the operating-room.
+
+"You took her out, Max, didn't you?"
+
+"A few times, yes. She seemed to have no friends. I was sorry for her."
+
+"That was all?"
+
+"Absolutely. Good Heavens, you've put me through a catechism in the last
+ten minutes!"
+
+"If my father were living, or even mother, I--one of them would have
+done this for me, Max. I'm sorry I had to. I've been very wretched for
+several days."
+
+It was the first encouragement she had given him. There was no coquetry
+about her aloofness. It was only that her faith in him had had a shock
+and was slow of reviving.
+
+"You are very, very lovely, Sidney. I wonder if you have any idea what
+you mean to me?"
+
+"You meant a great deal to me, too," she said frankly, "until a few days
+ago. I thought you were the greatest man I had ever known, and the best.
+And then--I think I'd better tell you what I overheard. I didn't try to
+hear. It just happened that way."
+
+He listened doggedly to her account of the hospital gossip, doggedly and
+with a sinking sense of fear, not of the talk, but of Carlotta herself.
+Usually one might count on the woman's silence, her instinct for
+self-protection. But Carlotta was different. Damn the girl, anyhow! She
+had known from the start that the affair was a temporary one; he had
+never pretended anything else.
+
+There was silence for a moment after Sidney finished. Then:
+
+"You are not a child any longer, Sidney. You have learned a great deal
+in this last year. One of the things you know is that almost every man
+has small affairs, many of them sometimes, before he finds the woman
+he wants to marry. When he finds her, the others are all off--there's
+nothing to them. It's the real thing then, instead of the sham."
+
+"Palmer was very much in love with Christine, and yet--"
+
+"Palmer is a cad."
+
+"I don't want you to think I'm making terms. I'm not. But if this thing
+went on, and I found out afterward that you--that there was anyone else,
+it would kill me."
+
+"Then you care, after all!"
+
+There was something boyish in his triumph, in the very gesture with
+which he held out his arms, like a child who has escaped a whipping. He
+stood up and, catching her hands, drew her to her feet. "You love me,
+dear."
+
+"I'm afraid I do, Max."
+
+"Then I'm yours, and only yours, if you want me," he said, and took her
+in his arms.
+
+He was riotously happy, must hold her off for the joy of drawing her to
+him again, must pull off her gloves and kiss her soft bare palms.
+
+"I love you, love you!" he cried, and bent down to bury his face in the
+warm hollow of her neck.
+
+Sidney glowed under his caresses--was rather startled at his passion, a
+little ashamed.
+
+"Tell me you love me a little bit. Say it."
+
+"I love you," said Sidney, and flushed scarlet.
+
+But even in his arms, with the warm sunlight on his radiant face, with
+his lips to her ear, whispering the divine absurdities of passion, in
+the back of her obstinate little head was the thought that, while she
+had given him her first embrace, he had held other women in his arms. It
+made her passive, prevented her complete surrender.
+
+And after a time he resented it. "You are only letting me love you," he
+complained. "I don't believe you care, after all."
+
+He freed her, took a step back from her.
+
+"I am afraid I am jealous," she said simply. "I keep thinking of--of
+Carlotta."
+
+"Will it help any if I swear that that is off absolutely?"
+
+"Don't be absurd. It is enough to have you say so."
+
+But he insisted on swearing, standing with one hand upraised, his eyes
+on her. The Sunday landscape was very still, save for the hum of busy
+insect life. A mile or so away, at the foot of two hills, lay a white
+farmhouse with its barn and outbuildings. In a small room in the barn
+a woman sat; and because it was Sunday, and she could not sew, she read
+her Bible.
+
+"--and that after this there will be only one woman for me," finished
+Max, and dropped his hand. He bent over and kissed Sidney on the lips.
+
+At the white farmhouse, a little man stood in the doorway and surveyed
+the road with eyes shaded by a shirt-sleeved arm. Behind him, in a
+darkened room, a barkeeper was wiping the bar with a clean cloth.
+
+"I guess I'll go and get my coat on, Bill," said the little man heavily.
+"They're starting to come now. I see a machine about a mile down the
+road."
+
+Sidney broke the news of her engagement to K. herself, the evening of
+the same day. The little house was quiet when she got out of the car at
+the door. Harriet was asleep on the couch at the foot of her bed,
+and Christine's rooms were empty. She found Katie on the back porch,
+mountains of Sunday newspapers piled around her.
+
+"I'd about give you up," said Katie. "I was thinking, rather than see
+your ice-cream that's left from dinner melt and go to waste, I'd take it
+around to the Rosenfelds."
+
+"Please take it to them. I'd really rather they had it."
+
+She stood in front of Katie, drawing off her gloves.
+
+"Aunt Harriet's asleep. Is--is Mr. Le Moyne around?"
+
+"You're gettin' prettier every day, Miss Sidney. Is that the blue suit
+Miss Harriet said she made for you? It's right stylish. I'd like to see
+the back."
+
+Sidney obediently turned, and Katie admired.
+
+"When I think how things have turned out!" she reflected. "You in a
+hospital, doing God knows what for all sorts of people, and Miss Harriet
+making a suit like that and asking a hundred dollars for it, and that
+tony that a person doesn't dare to speak to her when she's in the
+dining-room. And your poor ma...well, it's all in a lifetime! No; Mr.
+K.'s not here. He and Mrs. Howe are gallivanting around together."
+
+"Katie!"
+
+"Well, that's what I call it. I'm not blind. Don't I hear her dressing
+up about four o'clock every afternoon, and, when she's all ready,
+sittin' in the parlor with the door open, and a book on her knee, as if
+she'd been reading all afternoon? If he doesn't stop, she's at the foot
+of the stairs, calling up to him. 'K.,' she says, 'K., I'm waiting to
+ask you something!' or, 'K., wouldn't you like a cup of tea?' She's
+always feedin' him tea and cake, so that when he comes to table he won't
+eat honest victuals."
+
+Sidney had paused with one glove half off. Katie's tone carried
+conviction. Was life making another of its queer errors, and were
+Christine and K. in love with each other? K. had always been HER
+friend, HER confidant. To give him up to Christine--she shook herself
+impatiently. What had come over her? Why not be glad that he had some
+sort of companionship?
+
+She went upstairs to the room that had been her mother's, and took off
+her hat. She wanted to be alone, to realize what had happened to
+her. She did not belong to herself any more. It gave her an odd, lost
+feeling. She was going to be married--not very soon, but ultimately. A
+year ago her half promise to Joe had gratified her sense of romance. She
+was loved, and she had thrilled to it.
+
+But this was different. Marriage, that had been but a vision then,
+loomed large, almost menacing. She had learned the law of compensation:
+that for every joy one pays in suffering. Women who married went down
+into the valley of death for their children. One must love and be loved
+very tenderly to pay for that. The scale must balance.
+
+And there were other things. Women grew old, and age was not always
+lovely. This very maternity--was it not fatal to beauty? Visions of
+child-bearing women in the hospitals, with sagging breasts and relaxed
+bodies, came to her. That was a part of the price.
+
+Harriet was stirring, across the hall. Sidney could hear her moving
+about with flat, inelastic steps.
+
+That was the alternative. One married, happily or not as the case might
+be, and took the risk. Or one stayed single, like Harriet, growing a
+little hard, exchanging slimness for leanness and austerity of figure,
+flat-chested, thin-voiced. One blossomed and withered, then, or one
+shriveled up without having flowered. All at once it seemed very
+terrible to her. She felt as if she had been caught in an inexorable
+hand that had closed about her.
+
+Harriet found her a little later, face down on her mother's bed, crying
+as if her heart would break. She scolded her roundly.
+
+"You've been overworking," she said. "You've been getting thinner. Your
+measurements for that suit showed it. I have never approved of this
+hospital training, and after last January--"
+
+She could hardly credit her senses when Sidney, still swollen with
+weeping, told her of her engagement.
+
+"But I don't understand. If you care for him and he has asked you to
+marry him, why on earth are you crying your eyes out?"
+
+"I do care. I don't know why I cried. It just came over me, all at once,
+that I--It was just foolishness. I am very happy, Aunt Harriet."
+
+Harriet thought she understood. The girl needed her mother, and she,
+Harriet, was a hard, middle-aged woman and a poor substitute. She patted
+Sidney's moist hand.
+
+"I guess I understand," she said. "I'll attend to your wedding things,
+Sidney. We'll show this street that even Christine Lorenz can be
+outdone." And, as an afterthought: "I hope Max Wilson will settle down
+now. He's been none too steady."
+
+K. had taken Christine to see Tillie that Sunday afternoon. Palmer
+had the car out--had, indeed, not been home since the morning of the
+previous day. He played golf every Saturday afternoon and Sunday at the
+Country Club, and invariably spent the night there. So K. and Christine
+walked from the end of the trolley line, saying little, but under K.'s
+keen direction finding bright birds in the hedgerows, hidden field
+flowers, a dozen wonders of the country that Christine had never dreamed
+of.
+
+The interview with Tillie had been a disappointment to K. Christine,
+with the best and kindliest intentions, struck a wrong note. In her
+endeavor to cover the fact that everything in Tillie's world was wrong,
+she fell into the error of pretending that everything was right.
+
+Tillie, grotesque of figure and tragic-eyed, listened to her patiently,
+while K. stood, uneasy and uncomfortable, in the wide door of the
+hay-barn and watched automobiles turning in from the road. When
+Christine rose to leave, she confessed her failure frankly.
+
+"I've meant well, Tillie," she said. "I'm afraid I've said exactly
+what I shouldn't. I can only think that, no matter what is wrong, two
+wonderful pieces of luck have come to you. Your husband--that is, Mr.
+Schwitter--cares for you,--you admit that,--and you are going to have a
+child."
+
+Tillie's pale eyes filled.
+
+"I used to be a good woman, Mrs. Howe," she said simply. "Now I'm not.
+When I look in that glass at myself, and call myself what I am, I'd give
+a good bit to be back on the Street again."
+
+She found opportunity for a word with K. while Christine went ahead of
+him out of the barn.
+
+"I've been wanting to speak to you, Mr. Le Moyne." She lowered her
+voice. "Joe Drummond's been coming out here pretty regular. Schwitter
+says he's drinking a little. He don't like him loafing around here: he
+sent him home last Sunday. What's come over the boy?"
+
+"I'll talk to him."
+
+"The barkeeper says he carries a revolver around, and talks wild. I
+thought maybe Sidney Page could do something with him."
+
+"I think he'd not like her to know. I'll do what I can."
+
+K.'s face was thoughtful as he followed Christine to the road.
+
+Christine was very silent, on the way back to the city. More than once
+K. found her eyes fixed on him, and it puzzled him. Poor Christine was
+only trying to fit him into the world she knew--a world whose men were
+strong but seldom tender, who gave up their Sundays to golf, not to
+visiting unhappy outcasts in the country. How masculine he was, and
+yet how gentle! It gave her a choking feeling in her throat. She took
+advantage of a steep bit of road to stop and stand a moment, her fingers
+on his shabby gray sleeve.
+
+It was late when they got home. Sidney was sitting on the low step,
+waiting for them.
+
+Wilson had come across at seven, impatient because he must see a case
+that evening, and promising an early return. In the little hall he had
+drawn her to him and kissed her, this time not on the lips, but on the
+forehead and on each of her white eyelids.
+
+"Little wife-to-be!" he had said, and was rather ashamed of his own
+emotion. From across the Street, as he got into his car, he had waved
+his hand to her.
+
+Christine went to her room, and, with a long breath of content, K.
+folded up his long length on the step below Sidney.
+
+"Well, dear ministering angel," he said, "how goes the world?"
+
+"Things have been happening, K."
+
+He sat erect and looked at her. Perhaps because she had a woman's
+instinct for making the most of a piece of news, perhaps--more likely,
+indeed--because she divined that the announcement would not be entirely
+agreeable, she delayed it, played with it.
+
+"I have gone into the operating-room."
+
+"Fine!"
+
+"The costume is ugly. I look hideous in it."
+
+"Doubtless."
+
+He smiled up at her. There was relief in his eyes, and still a question.
+
+"Is that all the news?"
+
+"There is something else, K."
+
+It was a moment before he spoke. He sat looking ahead, his face set.
+Apparently he did not wish to hear her say it; for when, after a moment,
+he spoke, it was to forestall her, after all.
+
+"I think I know what it is, Sidney."
+
+"You expected it, didn't you?"
+
+"I--it's not an entire surprise."
+
+"Aren't you going to wish me happiness?"
+
+"If my wishing could bring anything good to you, you would have
+everything in the world."
+
+His voice was not entirely steady, but his eyes smiled into hers.
+
+"Am I--are we going to lose you soon?"
+
+"I shall finish my training. I made that a condition."
+
+Then, in a burst of confidence:--
+
+"I know so little, K., and he knows so much! I am going to read and
+study, so that he can talk to me about his work. That's what marriage
+ought to be, a sort of partnership. Don't you think so?"
+
+K. nodded. His mind refused to go forward to the unthinkable future.
+Instead, he was looking back--back to those days when he had hoped
+sometime to have a wife to talk to about his work, that beloved work
+that was no longer his. And, finding it agonizing, as indeed all thought
+was that summer night, he dwelt for a moment on that evening, a year
+before, when in the same June moonlight, he had come up the Street and
+had seen Sidney where she was now, with the tree shadows playing over
+her.
+
+Even that first evening he had been jealous.
+
+It had been Joe then. Now it was another and older man, daring,
+intelligent, unscrupulous. And this time he had lost her absolutely,
+lost her without a struggle to keep her. His only struggle had been with
+himself, to remember that he had nothing to offer but failure.
+
+"Do you know," said Sidney suddenly, "that it is almost a year since
+that night you came up the Street, and I was here on the steps?"
+
+"That's a fact, isn't it!" He managed to get some surprise into his
+voice.
+
+"How Joe objected to your coming! Poor Joe!"
+
+"Do you ever see him?"
+
+"Hardly ever now. I think he hates me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--well, you know, K. Why do men always hate a woman who just
+happens not to love them?"
+
+"I don't believe they do. It would be much better for them if they
+could. As a matter of fact, there are poor devils who go through life
+trying to do that very thing, and failing."
+
+Sidney's eyes were on the tall house across. It was Dr. Ed's evening
+office hour, and through the open window she could see a line of people
+waiting their turn. They sat immobile, inert, doggedly patient, until
+the opening of the back office door promoted them all one chair toward
+the consulting-room.
+
+"I shall be just across the Street," she said at last. "Nearer than I am
+at the hospital."
+
+"You will be much farther away. You will be married."
+
+"But we will still be friends, K.?"
+
+Her voice was anxious, a little puzzled. She was often puzzled with him.
+
+"Of course."
+
+But, after another silence, he astounded her. She had fallen into the
+way of thinking of him as always belonging to the house, even, in a
+sense, belonging to her. And now--
+
+"Shall you mind very much if I tell you that I am thinking of going
+away?"
+
+"K.!"
+
+"My dear child, you do not need a roomer here any more. I have always
+received infinitely more than I have paid for, even in the small
+services I have been able to render. Your Aunt Harriet is prosperous.
+You are away, and some day you are going to be married. Don't you see--I
+am not needed?"
+
+"That does not mean you are not wanted."
+
+"I shall not go far. I'll always be near enough, so that I can see
+you"--he changed this hastily--"so that we can still meet and talk
+things over. Old friends ought to be like that, not too near, but to be
+turned on when needed, like a tap."
+
+"Where will you go?"
+
+"The Rosenfelds are rather in straits. I thought of helping them to get
+a small house somewhere and of taking a room with them. It's largely a
+matter of furniture. If they could furnish it even plainly, it could be
+done. I--haven't saved anything."
+
+"Do you ever think of yourself?" she cried. "Have you always gone
+through life helping people, K.? Save anything! I should think not! You
+spend it all on others." She bent over and put her hand on his shoulder.
+"It will not be home without you, K."
+
+To save him, he could not have spoken just then. A riot of rebellion
+surged up in him, that he must let this best thing in his life go out
+of it. To go empty of heart through the rest of his days, while his very
+arms ached to hold her! And she was so near--just above, with her hand
+on his shoulder, her wistful face so close that, without moving, he
+could have brushed her hair.
+
+"You have not wished me happiness, K. Do you remember, when I was going
+to the hospital and you gave me the little watch--do you remember what
+you said?"
+
+"Yes"--huskily.
+
+"Will you say it again?"
+
+"But that was good-bye."
+
+"Isn't this, in a way? You are going to leave us, and I--say it, K."
+
+"Good-bye, dear, and--God bless you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+The announcement of Sidney's engagement was not to be made for a year.
+Wilson, chafing under the delay, was obliged to admit to himself that
+it was best. Many things could happen in a year. Carlotta would have
+finished her training, and by that time would probably be reconciled to
+the ending of their relationship.
+
+He intended to end that. He had meant every word of what he had sworn to
+Sidney. He was genuinely in love, even unselfishly--as far as he could
+be unselfish. The secret was to be carefully kept also for Sidney's
+sake. The hospital did not approve of engagements between nurses and the
+staff. It was disorganizing, bad for discipline.
+
+Sidney was very happy all that summer. She glowed with pride when her
+lover put through a difficult piece of work; flushed and palpitated when
+she heard his praises sung; grew to know, by a sort of intuition, when
+he was in the house. She wore his ring on a fine chain around her neck,
+and grew prettier every day.
+
+Once or twice, however, when she was at home, away from the glamour, her
+early fears obsessed her. Would he always love her? He was so handsome
+and so gifted, and there were women who were mad about him. That was the
+gossip of the hospital. Suppose she married him and he tired of her? In
+her humility she thought that perhaps only her youth, and such charm as
+she had that belonged to youth, held him. And before her, always, she
+saw the tragic women of the wards.
+
+K. had postponed his leaving until fall. Sidney had been insistent, and
+Harriet had topped the argument in her businesslike way. "If you insist
+on being an idiot and adopting the Rosenfeld family," she said, "wait
+until September. The season for boarders doesn't begin until fall."
+
+So K. waited for "the season," and ate his heart out for Sidney in the
+interval.
+
+Johnny Rosenfeld still lay in his ward, inert from the waist down. K.
+was his most frequent visitor. As a matter of fact, he was watching the
+boy closely, at Max Wilson's request.
+
+"Tell me when I'm to do it," said Wilson, "and when the time comes,
+for God's sake, stand by me. Come to the operation. He's got so much
+confidence that I'll help him that I don't dare to fail."
+
+So K. came on visiting days, and, by special dispensation, on Saturday
+afternoons. He was teaching the boy basket-making. Not that he knew
+anything about it himself; but, by means of a blind teacher, he kept
+just one lesson ahead. The ward was intensely interested. It found
+something absurd and rather touching in this tall, serious young man
+with the surprisingly deft fingers, tying raffia knots.
+
+The first basket went, by Johnny's request, to Sidney Page.
+
+"I want her to have it," he said. "She got corns on her fingers from
+rubbing me when I came in first; and, besides--"
+
+"Yes?" said K. He was tying a most complicated knot, and could not look
+up.
+
+"I know something," said Johnny. "I'm not going to get in wrong by
+talking, but I know something. You give her the basket."
+
+K. looked up then, and surprised Johnny's secret in his face.
+
+"Ah!" he said.
+
+"If I'd squealed she'd have finished me for good. They've got me, you
+know. I'm not running in 2.40 these days."
+
+"I'll not tell, or make it uncomfortable for you. What do you know?"
+
+Johnny looked around. The ward was in the somnolence of mid-afternoon.
+The nearest patient, a man in a wheel-chair, was snoring heavily.
+
+"It was the dark-eyed one that changed the medicine on me," he said.
+"The one with the heels that were always tapping around, waking me up.
+She did it; I saw her."
+
+After all, it was only what K. had suspected before. But a sense of
+impending danger to Sidney obsessed him. If Carlotta would do that, what
+would she do when she learned of the engagement? And he had known her
+before. He believed she was totally unscrupulous. The odd coincidence of
+their paths crossing again troubled him.
+
+Carlotta Harrison was well again, and back on duty. Luckily for Sidney,
+her three months' service in the operating-room kept them apart. For
+Carlotta was now not merely jealous. She found herself neglected,
+ignored. It ate her like a fever.
+
+But she did not yet suspect an engagement. It had been her theory that
+Wilson would not marry easily--that, in a sense, he would have to be
+coerced into marriage. Some clever woman would marry him some day, and
+no one would be more astonished than himself. She thought merely that
+Sidney was playing a game like her own, with different weapons. So she
+planned her battle, ignorant that she had lost already.
+
+Her method was simple enough. She stopped sulking, met Max with smiles,
+made no overtures toward a renewal of their relations. At first this
+annoyed him. Later it piqued him. To desert a woman was justifiable,
+under certain circumstances. But to desert a woman, and have her
+apparently not even know it, was against the rules of the game.
+
+During a surgical dressing in a private room, one day, he allowed his
+fingers to touch hers, as on that day a year before when she had taken
+Miss Simpson's place in his office. He was rewarded by the same slow,
+smouldering glance that had caught his attention before. So she was only
+acting indifference!
+
+Then Carlotta made her second move. A new interne had come into the
+house, and was going through the process of learning that from a senior
+at the medical school to a half-baked junior interne is a long step
+back. He had to endure the good-humored contempt of the older men, the
+patronizing instructions of nurses as to rules.
+
+Carlotta alone treated him with deference. His uneasy rounds in
+Carlotta's precinct took on the state and form of staff visitations. She
+flattered, cajoled, looked up to him.
+
+After a time it dawned on Wilson that this junior cub was getting more
+attention than himself: that, wherever he happened to be, somewhere in
+the offing would be Carlotta and the Lamb, the latter eyeing her with
+worship. Her indifference had only piqued him. The enthroning of a
+successor galled him. Between them, the Lamb suffered mightily--was
+subject to frequent "bawling out," as he termed it, in the
+operating-room as he assisted the anaesthetist. He took his troubles to
+Carlotta, who soothed him in the corridor--in plain sight of her quarry,
+of course--by putting a sympathetic hand on his sleeve.
+
+Then, one day, Wilson was goaded to speech.
+
+"For the love of Heaven, Carlotta," he said impatiently, "stop making
+love to that wretched boy. He wriggles like a worm if you look at him."
+
+"I like him. He is thoroughly genuine. I respect him, and--he respects
+me."
+
+"It's rather a silly game, you know."
+
+"What game?"
+
+"Do you think I don't understand?"
+
+"Perhaps you do. I--I don't really care a lot about him, Max. But I've
+been down-hearted. He cheers me up."
+
+Her attraction for him was almost gone--not quite. He felt rather sorry
+for her.
+
+"I'm sorry. Then you are not angry with me?"
+
+"Angry? No." She lifted her eyes to his, and for once she was not
+acting. "I knew it would end, of course. I have lost a--a lover. I
+expected that. But I wanted to keep a friend."
+
+It was the right note. Why, after all, should he not be her friend? He
+had treated her cruelly, hideously. If she still desired his friendship,
+there was no disloyalty to Sidney in giving it. And Carlotta was very
+careful. Not once again did she allow him to see what lay in her eyes.
+She told him of her worries. Her training was almost over. She had
+a chance to take up institutional work. She abhorred the thought of
+private duty. What would he advise?
+
+The Lamb was hovering near, hot eyes on them both. It was no place to
+talk.
+
+"Come to the office and we'll talk it over."
+
+"I don't like to go there; Miss Simpson is suspicious."
+
+The institution she spoke of was in another city. It occurred to
+Wilson that if she took it the affair would have reached a graceful and
+legitimate end.
+
+Also, the thought of another stolen evening alone with her was not
+unpleasant. It would be the last, he promised himself. After all, it was
+owing to her. He had treated her badly.
+
+Sidney would be at a lecture that night. The evening loomed temptingly
+free.
+
+"Suppose you meet me at the old corner," he said carelessly, eyes on
+the Lamb, who was forgetting that he was only a junior interne and was
+glaring ferociously. "We'll run out into the country and talk things
+over."
+
+She demurred, with her heart beating triumphantly.
+
+"What's the use of going back to that? It's over, isn't it?"
+
+Her objection made him determined. When at last she had yielded, and he
+made his way down to the smoking-room, it was with the feeling that he
+had won a victory.
+
+K. had been uneasy all that day; his ledgers irritated him. He had been
+sleeping badly since Sidney's announcement of her engagement. At five
+o'clock, when he left the office, he found Joe Drummond waiting outside
+on the pavement.
+
+"Mother said you'd been up to see me a couple of times. I thought I'd
+come around."
+
+K. looked at his watch.
+
+"What do you say to a walk?"
+
+"Not out in the country. I'm not as muscular as you are. I'll go about
+town for a half-hour or so."
+
+Thus forestalled, K. found his subject hard to lead up to. But here
+again Joe met him more than halfway.
+
+"Well, go on," he said, when they found themselves in the park; "I don't
+suppose you were paying a call."
+
+"No."
+
+"I guess I know what you are going to say."
+
+"I'm not going to preach, if you're expecting that. Ordinarily, if a man
+insists on making a fool of himself, I let him alone."
+
+"Why make an exception of me?"
+
+"One reason is that I happen to like you. The other reason is that,
+whether you admit it or not, you are acting like a young idiot, and are
+putting the responsibility on the shoulders of some one else."
+
+"She is responsible, isn't she?"
+
+"Not in the least. How old are you, Joe?"
+
+"Twenty-three, almost."
+
+"Exactly. You are a man, and you are acting like a bad boy. It's a
+disappointment to me. It's more than that to Sidney."
+
+"Much she cares! She's going to marry Wilson, isn't she?"
+
+"There is no announcement of any engagement."
+
+"She is, and you know it. Well, she'll be happy--not! If I'd go to her
+to-night and tell her what I know, she'd never see him again." The idea,
+thus born in his overwrought brain, obsessed him. He returned to it
+again and again. Le Moyne was uneasy. He was not certain that the boy's
+statement had any basis in fact. His single determination was to save
+Sidney from any pain.
+
+When Joe suddenly announced his inclination to go out into the country
+after all, he suspected a ruse to get rid of him, and insisted on going
+along. Joe consented grudgingly.
+
+"Car's at Bailey's garage," he said sullenly. "I don't know when I'll
+get back."
+
+"That won't matter." K.'s tone was cheerful. "I'm not sleeping, anyhow."
+
+That passed unnoticed until they were on the highroad, with the car
+running smoothly between yellowing fields of wheat. Then:--
+
+"So you've got it too!" he said. "We're a fine pair of fools. We'd both
+be better off if I sent the car over a bank."
+
+He gave the wheel a reckless twist, and Le Moyne called him to time
+sternly.
+
+They had supper at the White Springs Hotel--not on the terrace, but in
+the little room where Carlotta and Wilson had taken their first meal
+together. K. ordered beer for them both, and Joe submitted with bad
+grace.
+
+But the meal cheered and steadied him. K. found him more amenable to
+reason, and, gaining his confidence, learned of his desire to leave the
+city.
+
+"I'm stuck here," he said. "I'm the only one, and mother yells blue
+murder when I talk about it. I want to go to Cuba. My uncle owns a farm
+down there."
+
+"Perhaps I can talk your mother over. I've been there."
+
+Joe was all interest. His dilated pupils became more normal, his
+restless hands grew quiet. K.'s even voice, the picture he drew of
+life on the island, the stillness of the little hotel in its mid-week
+dullness, seemed to quiet the boy's tortured nerves. He was nearer
+to peace than he had been for many days. But he smoked incessantly,
+lighting one cigarette from another.
+
+At ten o'clock he left K. and went for the car. He paused for a moment,
+rather sheepishly, by K.'s chair.
+
+"I'm feeling a lot better," he said. "I haven't got the band around my
+head. You talk to mother."
+
+That was the last K. saw of Joe Drummond until the next day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Carlotta dressed herself with unusual care--not in black this time, but
+in white. She coiled her yellow hair in a soft knot at the back of her
+head, and she resorted to the faintest shading of rouge. She intended to
+be gay, cheerful. The ride was to be a bright spot in Wilson's memory.
+He expected recriminations; she meant to make him happy. That was the
+secret of the charm some women had for men. They went to such women to
+forget their troubles. She set the hour of their meeting at nine, when
+the late dusk of summer had fallen; and she met him then, smiling, a
+faintly perfumed white figure, slim and young, with a thrill in her
+voice that was only half assumed.
+
+"It's very late," he complained. "Surely you are not going to be back at
+ten."
+
+"I have special permission to be out late."
+
+"Good!" And then, recollecting their new situation: "We have a lot to
+talk over. It will take time."
+
+At the White Springs Hotel they stopped to fill the gasolene tank of the
+car. Joe Drummond saw Wilson there, in the sheet-iron garage alongside
+of the road. The Wilson car was in the shadow. It did not occur to Joe
+that the white figure in the car was not Sidney. He went rather white,
+and stepped out of the zone of light. The influence of Le Moyne was
+still on him, however, and he went on quietly with what he was doing.
+But his hands shook as he filled the radiator.
+
+When Wilson's car had gone on, he went automatically about his
+preparations for the return trip--lifted a seat cushion to investigate
+his own store of gasolene, replacing carefully the revolver he always
+carried under the seat and packed in waste to prevent its accidental
+discharge, lighted his lamps, examined a loose brake-band.
+
+His coolness gratified him. He had been an ass: Le Moyne was right. He'd
+get away--to Cuba if he could--and start over again. He would forget the
+Street and let it forget him.
+
+The men in the garage were talking.
+
+"To Schwitter's, of course," one of them grumbled. "We might as well go
+out of business."
+
+"There's no money in running a straight place. Schwitter and half a
+dozen others are getting rich."
+
+"That was Wilson, the surgeon in town. He cut off my brother-in-law's
+leg--charged him as much as if he had grown a new one for him. He used
+to come here. Now he goes to Schwitter's, like the rest. Pretty girl he
+had with him. You can bet on Wilson."
+
+So Max Wilson was taking Sidney to Schwitter's, making her the butt of
+garage talk! The smiles of the men were evil. Joe's hands grew cold, his
+head hot. A red mist spread between him and the line of electric lights.
+He knew Schwitter's, and he knew Wilson.
+
+He flung himself into his car and threw the throttle open. The car
+jerked, stalled.
+
+"You can't start like that, son," one of the men remonstrated. "You let
+'er in too fast."
+
+"You go to hell!" Joe snarled, and made a second ineffectual effort.
+
+Thus adjured, the men offered neither further advice nor assistance. The
+minutes went by in useless cranking--fifteen. The red mist grew heavier.
+Every lamp was a danger signal. But when K., growing uneasy, came out
+into the yard, the engine had started at last. He was in time to see Joe
+run his car into the road and turn it viciously toward Schwitter's.
+
+Carlotta's nearness was having its calculated effect on Max Wilson. His
+spirits rose as the engine, marking perfect time, carried them along the
+quiet roads.
+
+Partly it was reaction--relief that she should be so reasonable, so
+complaisant--and a sort of holiday spirit after the day's hard work.
+Oddly enough, and not so irrational as may appear, Sidney formed a
+part of the evening's happiness--that she loved him; that, back in the
+lecture-room, eyes and even mind on the lecturer, her heart was with
+him.
+
+So, with Sidney the basis of his happiness, he made the most of his
+evening's freedom. He sang a little in his clear tenor--even, once when
+they had slowed down at a crossing, bent over audaciously and kissed
+Carlotta's hand in the full glare of a passing train.
+
+"How reckless of you!"
+
+"I like to be reckless," he replied.
+
+His boyishness annoyed Carlotta. She did not want the situation to get
+out of hand. Moreover, what was so real for her was only too plainly a
+lark for him. She began to doubt her power.
+
+The hopelessness of her situation was dawning on her. Even when the
+touch of her beside him and the solitude of the country roads got in
+his blood, and he bent toward her, she found no encouragement in his
+words:--"I am mad about you to-night."
+
+She took her courage in her hands:--"Then why give me up for some one
+else?"
+
+"That's--different."
+
+"Why is it different? I am a woman. I--I love you, Max. No one else will
+ever care as I do."
+
+"You are in love with the Lamb!"
+
+"That was a trick. I'm sorry, Max. I don't care for anyone else in the
+world. If you let me go I'll want to die."
+
+Then, as he was silent:--
+
+"If you'll marry me, I'll be true to you all my life. I swear it. There
+will be nobody else, ever."
+
+The sense, if not the words, of what he had sworn to Sidney that Sunday
+afternoon under the trees, on this very road! Swift shame overtook
+him, that he should be here, that he had allowed Carlotta to remain in
+ignorance of how things really stood between them.
+
+"I'm sorry, Carlotta. It's impossible. I'm engaged to marry some one
+else."
+
+"Sidney Page?"--almost a whisper.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He was ashamed at the way she took the news. If she had stormed or wept,
+he would have known what to do. But she sat still, not speaking.
+
+"You must have expected it, sooner or later."
+
+Still she made no reply. He thought she might faint, and looked at her
+anxiously. Her profile, indistinct beside him, looked white and drawn.
+But Carlotta was not fainting. She was making a desperate plan. If their
+escapade became known, it would end things between Sidney and him. She
+was sure of that. She needed time to think it out. It must become known
+without any apparent move on her part. If, for instance, she became ill,
+and was away from the hospital all night, that might answer. The thing
+would be investigated, and who knew--
+
+The car turned in at Schwitter's road and drew up before the house.
+The narrow porch was filled with small tables, above which hung rows of
+electric lights enclosed in Japanese paper lanterns. Midweek, which had
+found the White Springs Hotel almost deserted, saw Schwitter's crowded
+tables set out under the trees. Seeing the crowd, Wilson drove directly
+to the yard and parked his machine.
+
+"No need of running any risk," he explained to the still figure beside
+him. "We can walk back and take a table under the trees, away from those
+infernal lanterns."
+
+She reeled a little as he helped her out.
+
+"Not sick, are you?"
+
+"I'm dizzy. I'm all right."
+
+She looked white. He felt a stab of pity for her. She leaned rather
+heavily on him as they walked toward the house. The faint perfume that
+had almost intoxicated him, earlier, vaguely irritated him now.
+
+At the rear of the house she shook off his arm and preceded him around
+the building. She chose the end of the porch as the place in which to
+drop, and went down like a stone, falling back.
+
+There was a moderate excitement. The visitors at Schwitter's were too
+much engrossed with themselves to be much interested. She opened her
+eyes almost as soon as she fell--to forestall any tests; she was
+shrewd enough to know that Wilson would detect her malingering very
+quickly--and begged to be taken into the house. "I feel very ill," she
+said, and her white face bore her out.
+
+Schwitter and Bill carried her in and up the stairs to one of the newly
+furnished rooms. The little man was twittering with anxiety. He had a
+horror of knockout drops and the police. They laid her on the bed, her
+hat beside her; and Wilson, stripping down the long sleeve of her glove,
+felt her pulse.
+
+"There's a doctor in the next town," said Schwitter. "I was going to
+send for him, anyhow--my wife's not very well."
+
+"I'm a doctor."
+
+"Is it anything serious?"
+
+"Nothing serious."
+
+He closed the door behind the relieved figure of the landlord, and,
+going back to Carlotta, stood looking down at her.
+
+"What did you mean by doing that?"
+
+"Doing what?"
+
+"You were no more faint than I am."
+
+She closed her eyes.
+
+"I don't remember. Everything went black. The lanterns--"
+
+He crossed the room deliberately and went out, closing the door behind
+him. He saw at once where he stood--in what danger. If she insisted
+that she was ill and unable to go back, there would be a fuss. The story
+would come out. Everything would be gone. Schwitter's, of all places!
+
+At the foot of the stairs, Schwitter pulled himself together. After all,
+the girl was only ill. There was nothing for the police. He looked at
+his watch. The doctor ought to be here by this time. It was sooner than
+they had expected. Even the nurse had not come. Tillie was alone, out
+in the harness-room. He looked through the crowded rooms, at the
+overflowing porch with its travesty of pleasure, and he hated the whole
+thing with a desperate hatred.
+
+Another car. Would they never stop coming! But perhaps it was the
+doctor. A young man edged his way into the hall and confronted him.
+
+"Two people just arrived here. A man and a woman--in white. Where are
+they?"
+
+It was trouble then, after all!
+
+"Upstairs--first bedroom to the right." His teeth chattered. Surely, as
+a man sowed he reaped.
+
+Joe went up the staircase. At the top, on the landing, he confronted
+Wilson. He fired at him without a word--saw him fling up his arms and
+fall back, striking first the wall, then the floor.
+
+The buzz of conversation on the porch suddenly ceased. Joe put his
+revolver in his pocket and went quietly down the stairs. The crowd
+parted to let him through.
+
+Carlotta, crouched in her room, listening, not daring to open the door,
+heard the sound of a car as it swung out into the road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+On the evening of the shooting at Schwitter's, there had been a late
+operation at the hospital. Sidney, having duly transcribed her lecture
+notes and said her prayers, was already asleep when she received the
+insistent summons to the operating-room. She dressed again with flying
+fingers. These night battles with death roused all her fighting blood.
+There were times when she felt as if, by sheer will, she could force
+strength, life itself, into failing bodies. Her sensitive nostrils
+dilated, her brain worked like a machine.
+
+That night she received well-deserved praise. When the Lamb, telephoning
+hysterically, had failed to locate the younger Wilson, another staff
+surgeon was called. His keen eyes watched Sidney--felt her capacity, her
+fiber, so to speak; and, when everything was over, he told her what was
+in his mind.
+
+"Don't wear yourself out, girl," he said gravely. "We need people like
+you. It was good work to-night--fine work. I wish we had more like you."
+
+By midnight the work was done, and the nurse in charge sent Sidney to
+bed.
+
+It was the Lamb who received the message about Wilson; and because he
+was not very keen at the best, and because the news was so startling, he
+refused to credit his ears.
+
+"Who is this at the 'phone?"
+
+"That doesn't matter. Le Moyne's my name. Get the message to Dr. Ed
+Wilson at once. We are starting to the city."
+
+"Tell me again. I mustn't make a mess of this."
+
+"Dr. Wilson, the surgeon, has been shot," came slowly and distinctly.
+"Get the staff there and have a room ready. Get the operating-room
+ready, too."
+
+The Lamb wakened then, and roused the house. He was incoherent, rather,
+so that Dr. Ed got the impression that it was Le Moyne who had been
+shot, and only learned the truth when he got to the hospital.
+
+"Where is he?" he demanded. He liked K., and his heart was sore within
+him.
+
+"Not in yet, sir. A Mr. Le Moyne is bringing him. Staff's in the
+executive committee room, sir."
+
+"But--who has been shot? I thought you said--"
+
+The Lamb turned pale at that, and braced himself.
+
+"I'm sorry--I thought you understood. I believe it's not--not serious.
+It's Dr. Max, sir."
+
+Dr. Ed, who was heavy and not very young, sat down on an office chair.
+Out of sheer habit he had brought the bag. He put it down on the floor
+beside him, and moistened his lips.
+
+"Is he living?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. I gathered that Mr. Le Moyne did not think it serious."
+
+He lied, and Dr. Ed knew he lied.
+
+The Lamb stood by the door, and Dr. Ed sat and waited. The office
+clock said half after three. Outside the windows, the night world went
+by--taxi-cabs full of roisterers, women who walked stealthily close
+to the buildings, a truck carrying steel, so heavy that it shook the
+hospital as it rumbled by.
+
+Dr. Ed sat and waited. The bag with the dog-collar in it was on the
+floor. He thought of many things, but mostly of the promise he had made
+his mother. And, having forgotten the injured man's shortcomings, he
+was remembering his good qualities--his cheerfulness, his courage, his
+achievements. He remembered the day Max had done the Edwardes operation,
+and how proud he had been of him. He figured out how old he was--not
+thirty-one yet, and already, perhaps--There he stopped thinking. Cold
+beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
+
+"I think I hear them now, sir," said the Lamb, and stood back
+respectfully to let him pass out of the door.
+
+Carlotta stayed in the room during the consultation. No one seemed to
+wonder why she was there, or to pay any attention to her. The staff was
+stricken. They moved back to make room for Dr. Ed beside the bed, and
+then closed in again.
+
+Carlotta waited, her hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming.
+Surely they would operate; they wouldn't let him die like that!
+
+When she saw the phalanx break up, and realized that they would not
+operate, she went mad. She stood against the door, and accused them of
+cowardice--taunted them.
+
+"Do you think he would let any of you die like that?" she cried. "Die
+like a hurt dog, and none of you to lift a hand?"
+
+It was Pfeiffer who drew her out of the room and tried to talk reason
+and sanity to her.
+
+"It's hopeless," he said. "If there was a chance, we'd operate, and you
+know it."
+
+The staff went hopelessly down the stairs to the smoking-room, and
+smoked. It was all they could do. The night assistant sent coffee down
+to them, and they drank it. Dr. Ed stayed in his brother's room, and
+said to his mother, under his breath, that he'd tried to do his best by
+Max, and that from now on it would be up to her.
+
+K. had brought the injured man in. The country doctor had come, too,
+finding Tillie's trial not imminent. On the way in he had taken it
+for granted that K. was a medical man like himself, and had placed his
+hypodermic case at his disposal.
+
+When he missed him,--in the smoking-room, that was,--he asked for him.
+
+"I don't see the chap who came in with us," he said. "Clever fellow.
+Like to know his name."
+
+The staff did not know.
+
+K. sat alone on a bench in the hall. He wondered who would tell Sidney;
+he hoped they would be very gentle with her. He sat in the shadow,
+waiting. He did not want to go home and leave her to what she might have
+to face. There was a chance she would ask for him. He wanted to be near,
+in that case.
+
+He sat in the shadow, on the bench. The night watchman went by twice and
+stared at him. At last he asked K. to mind the door until he got some
+coffee.
+
+"One of the staff's been hurt," he explained. "If I don't get some
+coffee now, I won't get any."
+
+K. promised to watch the door.
+
+A desperate thing had occurred to Carlotta. Somehow, she had not thought
+of it before. Now she wondered how she could have failed to think of it.
+If only she could find him and he would do it! She would go down on her
+knees--would tell him everything, if only he would consent.
+
+When she found him on his bench, however, she passed him by. She had a
+terrible fear that he might go away if she put the thing to him first.
+He clung hard to his new identity.
+
+So first she went to the staff and confronted them. They were men of
+courage, only declining to undertake what they considered hopeless work.
+The one man among them who might have done the thing with any chance
+of success lay stricken. Not one among them but would have given of his
+best--only his best was not good enough.
+
+"It would be the Edwardes operation, wouldn't it?" demanded Carlotta.
+
+The staff was bewildered. There were no rules to cover such conduct on
+the part of a nurse. One of them--Pfeiffer again, by chance--replied
+rather heavily:--
+
+"If any, it would be the Edwardes operation."
+
+"Would Dr. Edwardes himself be able to do anything?"
+
+This was going a little far.
+
+"Possibly. One chance in a thousand, perhaps. But Edwardes is dead. How
+did this thing happen, Miss Harrison?"
+
+She ignored his question. Her face was ghastly, save for the trace of
+rouge; her eyes were red-rimmed.
+
+"Dr. Edwardes is sitting on a bench in the hall outside!" she announced.
+
+Her voice rang out. K. heard her and raised his head. His attitude was
+weary, resigned. The thing had come, then! He was to take up the old
+burden. The girl had told.
+
+Dr. Ed had sent for Sidney. Max was still unconscious. Ed remembered
+about her when, tracing his brother's career from his babyhood to man's
+estate and to what seemed now to be its ending, he had remembered that
+Max was very fond of Sidney. He had hoped that Sidney would take him and
+do for him what he, Ed, had failed to do.
+
+So Sidney was summoned.
+
+She thought it was another operation, and her spirit was just a little
+weary. But her courage was indomitable. She forced her shoes on her
+tired feet, and bathed her face in cold water to rouse herself.
+
+The night watchman was in the hall. He was fond of Sidney; she always
+smiled at him; and, on his morning rounds at six o'clock to waken the
+nurses, her voice was always amiable. So she found him in the hall,
+holding a cup of tepid coffee. He was old and bleary, unmistakably dirty
+too--but he had divined Sidney's romance.
+
+"Coffee! For me?" She was astonished.
+
+"Drink it. You haven't had much sleep."
+
+She took it obediently, but over the cup her eyes searched his.
+
+"There is something wrong, daddy."
+
+That was his name, among the nurses. He had had another name, but it was
+lost in the mists of years.
+
+"Get it down."
+
+So she finished it, not without anxiety that she might be needed. But
+daddy's attentions were for few, and not to be lightly received.
+
+"Can you stand a piece of bad news?"
+
+Strangely, her first thought was of K.
+
+"There has been an accident. Dr. Wilson--"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Dr. Max--has been hurt. It ain't much, but I guess you'd like to know
+it."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Downstairs, in Seventeen."
+
+So she went down alone to the room where Dr. Ed sat in a chair, with
+his untidy bag beside him on the floor, and his eyes fixed on a straight
+figure on the bed. When he saw Sidney, he got up and put his arms around
+her. His eyes told her the truth before he told her anything. She hardly
+listened to what he said. The fact was all that concerned her--that her
+lover was dying there, so near that she could touch him with her hand,
+so far away that no voice, no caress of hers, could reach him.
+
+The why would come later. Now she could only stand, with Dr. Ed's arms
+about her, and wait.
+
+"If they would only do something!" Sidney's voice sounded strange to her
+ears.
+
+"There is nothing to do."
+
+But that, it seemed, was wrong. For suddenly Sidney's small world, which
+had always sedately revolved in one direction, began to move the other
+way.
+
+The door opened, and the staff came in. But where before they had
+moved heavily, with drooped heads, now they came quickly, as men with a
+purpose. There was a tall man in a white coat with them. He ordered them
+about like children, and they hastened to do his will. At first Sidney
+only knew that now, at last, they were going to do something--the tall
+man was going to do something. He stood with his back to Sidney, and
+gave orders.
+
+The heaviness of inactivity lifted. The room buzzed. The nurses stood
+by, while the staff did nurses' work. The senior surgical interne,
+essaying assistance, was shoved aside by the senior surgical consultant,
+and stood by, aggrieved.
+
+It was the Lamb, after all, who brought the news to Sidney. The new
+activity had caught Dr. Ed, and she was alone now, her face buried
+against the back of a chair.
+
+"There'll be something doing now, Miss Page," he offered.
+
+"What are they going to do?"
+
+"Going after the bullet. Do you know who's going to do it?"
+
+His voice echoed the subdued excitement of the room--excitement and new
+hope.
+
+"Did you ever hear of Edwardes, the surgeon?--the Edwardes operation,
+you know. Well, he's here. It sounds like a miracle. They found him
+sitting on a bench in the hall downstairs."
+
+Sidney raised her head, but she could not see the miraculously found
+Edwardes. She could see the familiar faces of the staff, and that other
+face on the pillow, and--she gave a little cry. There was K.! How like
+him to be there, to be wherever anyone was in trouble! Tears came to her
+eyes--the first tears she had shed.
+
+As if her eyes had called him, he looked up and saw her. He came toward
+her at once. The staff stood back to let him pass, and gazed after him.
+The wonder of what had happened was growing on them.
+
+K. stood beside Sidney, and looked down at her. Just at first it seemed
+as if he found nothing to say. Then:
+
+"There's just a chance, Sidney dear. Don't count too much on it."
+
+"I have got to count on it. If I don't, I shall die."
+
+If a shadow passed over his face, no one saw it.
+
+"I'll not ask you to go back to your room. If you will wait somewhere
+near, I'll see that you have immediate word."
+
+"I am going to the operating-room."
+
+"Not to the operating-room. Somewhere near."
+
+His steady voice controlled her hysteria. But she resented it. She was
+not herself, of course, what with strain and weariness.
+
+"I shall ask Dr. Edwardes."
+
+He was puzzled for a moment. Then he understood. After all, it was as
+well. Whether she knew him as Le Moyne or as Edwardes mattered very
+little, after all. The thing that really mattered was that he must try
+to save Wilson for her. If he failed--It ran through his mind that if he
+failed she might hate him the rest of her life--not for himself, but for
+his failure; that, whichever way things went, he must lose.
+
+"Dr. Edwardes says you are to stay away from the operation, but to
+remain near. He--he promises to call you if--things go wrong."
+
+She had to be content with that.
+
+Nothing about that night was real to Sidney. She sat in the
+anaesthetizing-room, and after a time she knew that she was not alone.
+There was somebody else. She realized dully that Carlotta was there,
+too, pacing up and down the little room. She was never sure, for
+instance, whether she imagined it, or whether Carlotta really stopped
+before her and surveyed her with burning eyes.
+
+"So you thought he was going to marry you!" said Carlotta--or the dream.
+"Well, you see he isn't."
+
+Sidney tried to answer, and failed--or that was the way the dream went.
+
+"If you had enough character, I'd think you did it. How do I know you
+didn't follow us, and shoot him as he left the room?"
+
+It must have been reality, after all; for Sidney's numbed mind grasped
+the essential fact here, and held on to it. He had been out with
+Carlotta. He had promised--sworn that this should not happen. It had
+happened. It surprised her. It seemed as if nothing more could hurt her.
+
+In the movement to and from the operating room, the door stood open for
+a moment. A tall figure--how much it looked like K.!--straightened and
+held out something in its hand.
+
+"The bullet!" said Carlotta in a whisper.
+
+Then more waiting, a stir of movement in the room beyond the closed
+door. Carlotta was standing, her face buried in her hands, against the
+door. Sidney suddenly felt sorry for her. She cared a great deal. It
+must be tragic to care like that! She herself was not caring much; she
+was too numb.
+
+Beyond, across the courtyard, was the stable. Before the day of the
+motor ambulances, horses had waited there for their summons, eager as
+fire horses, heads lifted to the gong. When Sidney saw the outline of
+the stable roof, she knew that it was dawn. The city still slept, but
+the torturing night was over. And in the gray dawn the staff, looking
+gray too, and elderly and weary, came out through the closed door and
+took their hushed way toward the elevator. They were talking among
+themselves. Sidney, straining her ears, gathered that they had seen a
+miracle, and that the wonder was still on them.
+
+Carlotta followed them out.
+
+Almost on their heels came K. He was in the white coat, and more and
+more he looked like the man who had raised up from his work and held out
+something in his hand. Sidney's head was aching and confused.
+
+She sat there in her chair, looking small and childish. The dawn was
+morning now--horizontal rays of sunlight on the stable roof and across
+the windowsill of the anaesthetizing-room, where a row of bottles sat on
+a clean towel.
+
+The tall man--or was it K.?--looked at her, and then reached up and
+turned off the electric light. Why, it was K., of course; and he was
+putting out the hall light before he went upstairs. When the light was
+out everything was gray. She could not see. She slid very quietly out of
+her chair, and lay at his feet in a dead faint.
+
+K. carried her to the elevator. He held her as he had held her that day
+at the park when she fell in the river, very carefully, tenderly, as one
+holds something infinitely precious. Not until he had placed her on her
+bed did she open her eyes. But she was conscious before that. She was
+so tired, and to be carried like that, in strong arms, not knowing where
+one was going, or caring--
+
+The nurse he had summoned hustled out for aromatic ammonia. Sidney,
+lying among her pillows, looked up at K.
+
+"How is he?"
+
+"A little better. There's a chance, dear."
+
+"I have been so mixed up. All the time I was sitting waiting, I kept
+thinking that it was you who were operating! Will he really get well?"
+
+"It looks promising."
+
+"I should like to thank Dr. Edwardes."
+
+The nurse was a long time getting the ammonia. There was so much to talk
+about: that Dr. Max had been out with Carlotta Harrison, and had been
+shot by a jealous woman; the inexplicable return to life of the great
+Edwardes; and--a fact the nurse herself was willing to vouch for, and
+that thrilled the training-school to the core--that this very Edwardes,
+newly risen, as it were, and being a miracle himself as well as
+performing one, this very Edwardes, carrying Sidney to her bed and
+putting her down, had kissed her on her white forehead.
+
+The training-school doubted this. How could he know Sidney Page? And,
+after all, the nurse had only seen it in the mirror, being occupied
+at the time in seeing if her cap was straight. The school, therefore,
+accepted the miracle, but refused the kiss.
+
+The miracle was no miracle, of course. But something had happened to K.
+that savored of the marvelous. His faith in himself was coming back--not
+strongly, with a rush, but with all humility. He had been loath to
+take up the burden; but, now that he had it, he breathed a sort of
+inarticulate prayer to be able to carry it.
+
+And, since men have looked for signs since the beginning of time, he too
+asked for a sign. Not, of course, that he put it that way, or that he
+was making terms with Providence. It was like this: if Wilson got well,
+he'd keep on working. He'd feel that, perhaps, after all, this was
+meant. If Wilson died--Sidney held out her hand to him.
+
+"What should I do without you, K.?" she asked wistfully.
+
+"All you have to do is to want me."
+
+His voice was not too steady, and he took her pulse in a most
+businesslike way to distract her attention from it.
+
+"How very many things you know! You are quite professional about
+pulses."
+
+Even then he did not tell her. He was not sure, to be frank, that she'd
+be interested. Now, with Wilson as he was, was no time to obtrude his
+own story. There was time enough for that.
+
+"Will you drink some beef tea if I send it to you?"
+
+"I'm not hungry. I will, of course."
+
+"And--will you try to sleep?"
+
+"Sleep, while he--"
+
+"I promise to tell you if there is any change. I shall stay with him."
+
+"I'll try to sleep."
+
+But, as he rose from the chair beside her low bed, she put out her hand
+to him.
+
+"K."
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"He was out with Carlotta. He promised, and he broke his promise."
+
+"There may have been reasons. Suppose we wait until he can explain."
+
+"How can he explain?" And, when he hesitated: "I bring all my troubles
+to you, as if you had none. Somehow, I can't go to Aunt Harriet, and of
+course mother--Carlotta cares a great deal for him. She said that I shot
+him. Does anyone really think that?"
+
+"Of course not. Please stop thinking."
+
+"But who did, K.? He had so many friends, and no enemies that I knew
+of."
+
+Her mind seemed to stagger about in a circle, making little excursions,
+but always coming back to the one thing.
+
+"Some drunken visitor to the road-house."
+
+He could have killed himself for the words the moment they were spoken.
+
+"They were at a road-house?"
+
+"It is not just to judge anyone before you hear the story."
+
+She stirred restlessly.
+
+"What time is it?"
+
+"Half-past six."
+
+"I must get up and go on duty."
+
+He was glad to be stern with her. He forbade her rising. When the nurse
+came in with the belated ammonia, she found K. making an arbitrary
+ruling, and Sidney looking up at him mutinously.
+
+"Miss Page is not to go on duty to-day. She is to stay in bed until
+further orders."
+
+"Very well, Dr. Edwardes."
+
+The confusion in Sidney's mind cleared away suddenly. K. was Dr.
+Edwardes! It was K. who had performed the miracle operation--K. who
+had dared and perhaps won! Dear K., with his steady eyes and his long
+surgeon's fingers! Then, because she seemed to see ahead as well as
+back into the past in that flash that comes to the drowning and to those
+recovering from shock, and because she knew that now the little house
+would no longer be home to K., she turned her face into her pillow and
+cried. Her world had fallen indeed. Her lover was not true and might
+be dying; her friend would go away to his own world, which was not the
+Street.
+
+K. left her at last and went back to Seventeen, where Dr. Ed still sat
+by the bed. Inaction was telling on him. If Max would only open
+his eyes, so he could tell him what had been in his mind all these
+years--his pride in him and all that.
+
+With a sort of belated desire to make up for where he had failed, he put
+the bag that had been Max's bete noir on the bedside table, and began
+to clear it of rubbish--odd bits of dirty cotton, the tubing from a long
+defunct stethoscope, glass from a broken bottle, a scrap of paper on
+which was a memorandum, in his illegible writing, to send Max a check
+for his graduating suit. When K. came in, he had the old dog-collar in
+his hand.
+
+"Belonged to an old collie of ours," he said heavily. "Milkman ran over
+him and killed him. Max chased the wagon and licked the driver with his
+own whip."
+
+His face worked.
+
+"Poor old Bobby Burns!" he said. "We'd raised him from a pup. Got him in
+a grape-basket."
+
+The sick man opened his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Max had rallied well, and things looked bright for him. His patient did
+not need him, but K. was anxious to find Joe; so he telephoned the
+gas office and got a day off. The sordid little tragedy was easy to
+reconstruct, except that, like Joe, K. did not believe in the innocence
+of the excursion to Schwitter's. His spirit was heavy with the
+conviction that he had saved Wilson to make Sidney ultimately wretched.
+
+For the present, at least, K.'s revealed identity was safe. Hospitals
+keep their secrets well. And it is doubtful if the Street would
+have been greatly concerned even had it known. It had never heard of
+Edwardes, of the Edwardes clinic or the Edwardes operation. Its medical
+knowledge comprised the two Wilsons and the osteopath around the corner.
+When, as would happen soon, it learned of Max Wilson's injury, it would
+be more concerned with his chances of recovery than with the manner of
+it. That was as it should be.
+
+But Joe's affair with Sidney had been the talk of the neighborhood. If
+the boy disappeared, a scandal would be inevitable. Twenty people had
+seen him at Schwitter's and would know him again.
+
+To save Joe, then, was K.'s first care.
+
+At first it seemed as if the boy had frustrated him. He had not been
+home all night. Christine, waylaying K. in the little hall, told him
+that. "Mrs. Drummond was here," she said. "She is almost frantic. She
+says Joe has not been home all night. She says he looks up to you, and
+she thought if you could find him and would talk to him--"
+
+"Joe was with me last night. We had supper at the White Springs Hotel.
+Tell Mrs. Drummond he was in good spirits, and that she's not to worry.
+I feel sure she will hear from him to-day. Something went wrong with his
+car, perhaps, after he left me."
+
+He bathed and shaved hurriedly. Katie brought his coffee to his room,
+and he drank it standing. He was working out a theory about the boy.
+Beyond Schwitter's the highroad stretched, broad and inviting, across
+the State. Either he would have gone that way, his little car eating up
+the miles all that night, or--K. would not formulate his fear of what
+might have happened, even to himself.
+
+As he went down the Street, he saw Mrs. McKee in her doorway, with a
+little knot of people around her. The Street was getting the night's
+news.
+
+He rented a car at a local garage, and drove himself out into the
+country. He was not minded to have any eyes on him that day. He went
+to Schwitter's first. Schwitter himself was not in sight. Bill was
+scrubbing the porch, and a farmhand was gathering bottles from the grass
+into a box. The dead lanterns swung in the morning air, and from back on
+the hill came the staccato sounds of a reaping-machine.
+
+"Where's Schwitter?"
+
+"At the barn with the missus. Got a boy back there."
+
+Bill grinned. He recognized K., and, mopping dry a part of the porch,
+shoved a chair on it.
+
+"Sit down. Well, how's the man who got his last night? Dead?"
+
+"No."
+
+"County detectives were here bright and early. After the lady's husband.
+I guess we lose our license over this."
+
+"What does Schwitter say?"
+
+"Oh, him!" Bill's tone was full of disgust. "He hopes we do. He hates
+the place. Only man I ever knew that hated money. That's what this house
+is--money."
+
+"Bill, did you see the man who fired that shot last night?"
+
+A sort of haze came over Bill's face, as if he had dropped a curtain
+before his eyes. But his reply came promptly:
+
+"Surest thing in the world. Close to him as you are to me. Dark man,
+about thirty, small mustache--"
+
+"Bill, you're lying, and I know it. Where is he?"
+
+The barkeeper kept his head, but his color changed.
+
+"I don't know anything about him." He thrust his mop into the pail. K.
+rose.
+
+"Does Schwitter know?"
+
+"He doesn't know nothing. He's been out at the barn all night."
+
+The farmhand had filled his box and disappeared around the corner of the
+house. K. put his hand on Bill's shirt-sleeved arm.
+
+"We've got to get him away from here, Bill."
+
+"Get who away?"
+
+"You know. The county men may come back to search the premises."
+
+"How do I know you aren't one of them?"
+
+"I guess you know I'm not. He's a friend of mine. As a matter of fact,
+I followed him here; but I was too late. Did he take the revolver away
+with him?"
+
+"I took it from him. It's under the bar."
+
+"Get it for me."
+
+In sheer relief, K.'s spirits rose. After all, it was a good world:
+Tillie with her baby in her arms; Wilson conscious and rallying; Joe
+safe, and, without the revolver, secure from his own remorse. Other
+things there were, too--the feel of Sidney's inert body in his arms, the
+way she had turned to him in trouble. It was not what he wanted, this
+last, but it was worth while. The reaping-machine was in sight now; it
+had stopped on the hillside. The men were drinking out of a bucket that
+flashed in the sun.
+
+There was one thing wrong. What had come over Wilson, to do so reckless
+a thing? K., who was a one-woman man, could not explain it.
+
+From inside the bar Bill took a careful survey of Le Moyne. He noted his
+tall figure and shabby suit, the slight stoop, the hair graying over his
+ears. Barkeepers know men: that's a part of the job. After his survey he
+went behind the bar and got the revolver from under an overturned pail.
+
+K. thrust it into his pocket.
+
+"Now," he said quietly, "where is he?"
+
+"In my room--top of the house."
+
+K. followed Bill up the stairs. He remembered the day when he had sat
+waiting in the parlor, and had heard Tillie's slow step coming down.
+And last night he himself had carried down Wilson's unconscious figure.
+Surely the wages of sin were wretchedness and misery. None of it paid.
+No one got away with it.
+
+The room under the eaves was stifling. An unmade bed stood in a corner.
+From nails in the rafters hung Bill's holiday wardrobe. A tin cup and a
+cracked pitcher of spring water stood on the window-sill.
+
+Joe was sitting in the corner farthest from the window. When the door
+swung open, he looked up. He showed no interest on seeing K., who had to
+stoop to enter the low room.
+
+"Hello, Joe."
+
+"I thought you were the police."
+
+"Not much. Open that window, Bill. This place is stifling."
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"I wish I'd killed him!"
+
+"Oh, no, you don't. You're damned glad you didn't, and so am I."
+
+"What will they do with me?"
+
+"Nothing until they find you. I came to talk about that. They'd better
+not find you."
+
+"Huh!"
+
+"It's easier than it sounds."
+
+K. sat down on the bed.
+
+"If I only had some money!" he said. "But never mind about that, Joe;
+I'll get some."
+
+Loud calls from below took Bill out of the room. As he closed the door
+behind him, K.'s voice took on a new tone: "Joe, why did you do it?"
+
+"You know."
+
+"You saw him with somebody at the White Springs, and followed them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know who was with him?"
+
+"Yes, and so do you. Don't go into that. I did it, and I'll stand by
+it."
+
+"Has it occurred to you that you made a mistake?"
+
+"Go and tell that to somebody who'll believe you!" he sneered. "They
+came here and took a room. I met him coming out of it. I'd do it again
+if I had a chance, and do it better."
+
+"It was not Sidney."
+
+"Aw, chuck it!"
+
+"It's a fact. I got here not two minutes after you left. The girl was
+still there. It was some one else. Sidney was not out of the hospital
+last night. She attended a lecture, and then an operation."
+
+Joe listened. It was undoubtedly a relief to him to know that it had not
+been Sidney; but if K. expected any remorse, he did not get it.
+
+"If he is that sort, he deserves what he got," said the boy grimly.
+
+And K. had no reply. But Joe was glad to talk. The hours he had spent
+alone in the little room had been very bitter, and preceded by a time
+that he shuddered to remember. K. got it by degrees--his descent of the
+staircase, leaving Wilson lying on the landing above; his resolve to
+walk back and surrender himself at Schwitter's, so that there could be
+no mistake as to who had committed the crime.
+
+"I intended to write a confession and then shoot myself," he told K.
+"But the barkeeper got my gun out of my pocket. And--"
+
+After a pause: "Does she know who did it?"
+
+"Sidney? No."
+
+"Then, if he gets better, she'll marry him anyhow."
+
+"Possibly. That's not up to us, Joe. The thing we've got to do is to
+hush the thing up, and get you away."
+
+"I'd go to Cuba, but I haven't the money."
+
+K. rose. "I think I can get it."
+
+He turned in the doorway.
+
+"Sidney need never know who did it."
+
+"I'm not ashamed of it." But his face showed relief.
+
+There are times when some cataclysm tears down the walls of reserve
+between men. That time had come for Joe, and to a lesser extent for K.
+The boy rose and followed him to the door.
+
+"Why don't you tell her the whole thing?--the whole filthy story?" he
+asked. "She'd never look at him again. You're crazy about her. I haven't
+got a chance. It would give you one."
+
+"I want her, God knows!" said K. "But not that way, boy."
+
+Schwitter had taken in five hundred dollars the previous day.
+
+"Five hundred gross," the little man hastened to explain. "But you're
+right, Mr. Le Moyne. And I guess it would please HER. It's going hard
+with her, just now, that she hasn't any women friends about. It's in the
+safe, in cash; I haven't had time to take it to the bank." He seemed
+to apologize to himself for the unbusinesslike proceeding of lending
+an entire day's gross receipts on no security. "It's better to get him
+away, of course. It's good business. I have tried to have an orderly
+place. If they arrest him here--"
+
+His voice trailed off. He had come a far way from the day he had walked
+down the Street, and eyed Its poplars with appraising eyes--a far way.
+Now he had a son, and the child's mother looked at him with tragic eyes.
+It was arranged that K. should go back to town, returning late that
+night to pick up Joe at a lonely point on the road, and to drive him to
+a railroad station. But, as it happened, he went back that afternoon.
+
+He had told Schwitter he would be at the hospital, and the message found
+him there. Wilson was holding his own, conscious now and making a hard
+fight. The message from Schwitter was very brief:--
+
+"Something has happened, and Tillie wants you. I don't like to trouble
+you again, but she--wants you."
+
+K. was rather gray of face by that time, having had no sleep and little
+food since the day before. But he got into the rented machine again--its
+rental was running up; he tried to forget it--and turned it toward
+Hillfoot. But first of all he drove back to the Street, and walked
+without ringing into Mrs. McKee's.
+
+Neither a year's time nor Mrs. McKee's approaching change of state had
+altered the "mealing" house. The ticket-punch still lay on the hat-rack
+in the hall. Through the rusty screen of the back parlor window one
+viewed the spiraea, still in need of spraying. Mrs. McKee herself was in
+the pantry, placing one slice of tomato and three small lettuce leaves
+on each of an interminable succession of plates.
+
+K., who was privileged, walked back.
+
+"I've got a car at the door," he announced, "and there's nothing so
+extravagant as an empty seat in an automobile. Will you take a ride?"
+
+Mrs. McKee agreed. Being of the class who believe a boudoir cap the
+ideal headdress for a motor-car, she apologized for having none.
+
+"If I'd known you were coming I would have borrowed a cap," she said.
+"Miss Tripp, third floor front, has a nice one. If you'll take me in my
+toque--"
+
+K. said he'd take her in her toque, and waited with some anxiety,
+having not the faintest idea what a toque was. He was not without other
+anxieties. What if the sight of Tillie's baby did not do all that he
+expected? Good women could be most cruel. And Schwitter had been very
+vague. But here K. was more sure of himself: the little man's voice had
+expressed as exactly as words the sense of a bereavement that was not a
+grief.
+
+He was counting on Mrs. McKee's old fondness for the girl to bring them
+together. But, as they neared the house with its lanterns and tables,
+its whitewashed stones outlining the drive, its small upper window
+behind which Joe was waiting for night, his heart failed him, rather. He
+had a masculine dislike for meddling, and yet--Mrs. McKee had suddenly
+seen the name in the wooden arch over the gate: "Schwitter's."
+
+"I'm not going in there, Mr. Le Moyne."
+
+"Tillie's not in the house. She's back in the barn."
+
+"In the barn!"
+
+"She didn't approve of all that went on there, so she moved out. It's
+very comfortable and clean; it smells of hay. You'd be surprised how
+nice it is."
+
+"The like of her!" snorted Mrs. McKee. "She's late with her conscience,
+I'm thinking."
+
+"Last night," K. remarked, hands on the wheel, but car stopped, "she
+had a child there. It--it's rather like very old times, isn't it? A
+man-child, Mrs. McKee, not in a manger, of course."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" Mrs. McKee's tone, which had been fierce at
+the beginning, ended feebly.
+
+"I want you to go in and visit her, as you would any woman who'd had a
+new baby and needed a friend. Lie a little--" Mrs. McKee gasped. "Tell
+her the baby's pretty. Tell her you've been wanting to see her." His
+tone was suddenly stern. "Lie a little, for your soul's sake."
+
+She wavered, and while she wavered he drove her in under the arch with
+the shameful name, and back to the barn. But there he had the tact to
+remain in the car, and Mrs. McKee's peace with Tillie was made alone.
+When, five minutes later, she beckoned him from the door of the barn,
+her eyes were red.
+
+"Come in, Mr. K.," she said. "The wife's dead, poor thing. They're going
+to be married right away."
+
+The clergyman was coming along the path with Schwitter at his heels. K.
+entered the barn. At the door to Tillie's room he uncovered his head.
+The child was asleep at her breast.
+
+
+The five thousand dollar check from Mr. Lorenz had saved Palmer Howe's
+credit. On the strength of the deposit, he borrowed a thousand at the
+bank with which he meant to pay his bills, arrears at the University and
+Country Clubs, a hundred dollars lost throwing aces with poker dice, and
+various small obligations of Christine's.
+
+The immediate result of the money was good. He drank nothing for a week,
+went into the details of the new venture with Christine's father, sat at
+home with Christine on her balcony in the evenings. With the knowledge
+that he could pay his debts, he postponed the day. He liked the feeling
+of a bank account in four figures.
+
+The first evening or two Christine's pleasure in having him there
+gratified him. He felt kind, magnanimous, almost virtuous. On the third
+evening he was restless. It occurred to him that his wife was beginning
+to take his presence as a matter of course. He wanted cold bottled beer.
+When he found that the ice was out and the beer warm and flat, he was
+furious.
+
+Christine had been making a fight, although her heart was only half
+in it. She was resolutely good-humored, ignored the past, dressed for
+Palmer in the things he liked. They still took their dinners at the
+Lorenz house up the street. When she saw that the haphazard table
+service there irritated him, she coaxed her mother into getting a
+butler.
+
+The Street sniffed at the butler behind his stately back. Secretly and
+in its heart, it was proud of him. With a half-dozen automobiles, and
+Christine Howe putting on low neck in the evenings, and now a butler,
+not to mention Harriet Kennedy's Mimi, it ceased to pride itself on
+its commonplaceness, ignorant of the fact that in its very lack of
+affectation had lain its charm.
+
+On the night that Joe shot Max Wilson, Palmer was noticeably restless.
+He had seen Grace Irving that day for the first time but once since
+the motor accident. To do him justice, his dissipation of the past few
+months had not included women.
+
+The girl had a strange fascination for him. Perhaps she typified the
+care-free days before his marriage; perhaps the attraction was deeper,
+fundamental. He met her in the street the day before Max Wilson was
+shot. The sight of her walking sedately along in her shop-girl's black
+dress had been enough to set his pulses racing. When he saw that she
+meant to pass him, he fell into step beside her.
+
+"I believe you were going to cut me!"
+
+"I was in a hurry."
+
+"Still in the store?"
+
+"Yes." And, after a second's hesitation: "I'm keeping straight, too."
+
+"How are you getting along?"
+
+"Pretty well. I've had my salary raised."
+
+"Do you have to walk as fast as this?"
+
+"I said I was in a hurry. Once a week I get off a little early. I--"
+
+He eyed her suspiciously.
+
+"Early! What for?"
+
+"I go to the hospital. The Rosenfeld boy is still there, you know."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+But a moment later he burst out irritably:--
+
+"That was an accident, Grace. The boy took the chance when he engaged
+to drive the car. I'm sorry, of course. I dream of the little
+devil sometimes, lying there. I'll tell you what I'll do," he added
+magnanimously. "I'll stop in and talk to Wilson. He ought to have done
+something before this."
+
+"The boy's not strong enough yet. I don't think you can do anything for
+him, unless--"
+
+The monstrous injustice of the thing overcame her. Palmer and she
+walking about, and the boy lying on his hot bed! She choked.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He worries about his mother. If you could give her some money, it would
+help."
+
+"Money! Good Heavens--I owe everybody."
+
+"You owe him too, don't you? He'll never walk again."
+
+"I can't give them ten dollars. I don't see that I'm under any
+obligation, anyhow. I paid his board for two months in the hospital."
+
+When she did not acknowledge this generosity,--amounting to forty-eight
+dollars,--his irritation grew. Her silence was an accusation. Her manner
+galled him, into the bargain. She was too calm in his presence, too
+cold. Where she had once palpitated visibly under his warm gaze, she was
+now self-possessed and quiet. Where it had pleased his pride to think
+that he had given her up, he found that the shoe was on the other foot.
+
+At the entrance to a side street she stopped.
+
+"I turn off here."
+
+"May I come and see you sometime?"
+
+"No, please."
+
+"That's flat, is it?"
+
+"It is, Palmer."
+
+He swung around savagely and left her.
+
+The next day he drew the thousand dollars from the bank. A good many
+of his debts he wanted to pay in cash; there was no use putting checks
+through, with incriminating indorsements. Also, he liked the idea of
+carrying a roll of money around. The big fellows at the clubs always had
+a wad and peeled off bills like skin off an onion. He took a couple of
+drinks to celebrate his approaching immunity from debt.
+
+He played auction bridge that afternoon in a private room at one of the
+hotels with the three men he had lunched with. Luck seemed to be with
+him. He won eighty dollars, and thrust it loose in his trousers pocket.
+Money seemed to bring money! If he could carry the thousand around for a
+day or so, something pretty good might come of it.
+
+He had been drinking a little all afternoon. When the game was over, he
+bought drinks to celebrate his victory. The losers treated, too, to show
+they were no pikers. Palmer was in high spirits. He offered to put up
+the eighty and throw for it. The losers mentioned dinner and various
+engagements.
+
+Palmer did not want to go home. Christine would greet him with raised
+eyebrows. They would eat a stuffy Lorenz dinner, and in the evening
+Christine would sit in the lamplight and drive him mad with soft music.
+He wanted lights, noise, the smiles of women. Luck was with him, and he
+wanted to be happy.
+
+At nine o'clock that night he found Grace. She had moved to a cheap
+apartment which she shared with two other girls from the store. The
+others were out. It was his lucky day, surely.
+
+His drunkenness was of the mind, mostly. His muscles were well
+controlled. The lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth were
+slightly accentuated, his eyes open a trifle wider than usual. That
+and a slight paleness of the nostrils were the only evidences of his
+condition. But Grace knew the signs.
+
+"You can't come in."
+
+"Of course I'm coming in."
+
+She retreated before him, her eyes watchful. Men in his condition were
+apt to be as quick with a blow as with a caress. But, having gained his
+point, he was amiable.
+
+"Get your things on and come out. We can take in a roof-garden."
+
+"I've told you I'm not doing that sort of thing."
+
+He was ugly in a flash.
+
+"You've got somebody else on the string."
+
+"Honestly, no. There--there has never been anybody else, Palmer."
+
+He caught her suddenly and jerked her toward him.
+
+"You let me hear of anybody else, and I'll cut the guts out of him!"
+
+He held her for a second, his face black and fierce. Then, slowly and
+inevitably, he drew her into his arms. He was drunk, and she knew it.
+But, in the queer loyalty of her class, he was the only man she had
+cared for. She cared now. She took him for that moment, felt his hot
+kisses on her mouth, her throat, submitted while his rather brutal
+hands bruised her arms in fierce caresses. Then she put him from her
+resolutely.
+
+"Now you're going."
+
+"The hell I'm going!"
+
+But he was less steady than he had been. The heat of the little flat
+brought more blood to his head. He wavered as he stood just inside the
+door.
+
+"You must go back to your wife."
+
+"She doesn't want me. She's in love with a fellow at the house."
+
+"Palmer, hush!"
+
+"Lemme come in and sit down, won't you?"
+
+She let him pass her into the sitting-room. He dropped into a chair.
+
+"You've turned me down, and now Christine--she thinks I don't know. I'm
+no fool; I see a lot of things. I'm no good. I know that I've made her
+miserable. But I made a merry little hell for you too, and you don't
+kick about it."
+
+"You know that."
+
+She was watching him gravely. She had never seen him just like this.
+Nothing else, perhaps, could have shown her so well what a broken reed
+he was.
+
+"I got you in wrong. You were a good girl before I knew you. You're
+a good girl now. I'm not going to do you any harm, I swear it. I only
+wanted to take you out for a good time. I've got money. Look here!" He
+drew out the roll of bills and showed it to her. Her eyes opened wide.
+She had never known him to have much money.
+
+"Lots more where that comes from."
+
+A new look flashed into her eyes, not cupidity, but purpose.
+
+She was instantly cunning.
+
+"Aren't you going to give me some of that?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I--I want some clothes."
+
+The very drunk have the intuition sometimes of savages or brute beasts.
+
+"You lie."
+
+"I want it for Johnny Rosenfeld."
+
+He thrust it back into his pocket, but his hand retained its grasp of
+it.
+
+"That's it," he complained. "Don't lemme be happy for a minute! Throw it
+all up to me!"
+
+"You give me that for the Rosenfeld boy, and I'll go out with you."
+
+"If I give you all that, I won't have any money to go out with!"
+
+But his eyes were wavering. She could see victory.
+
+"Take off enough for the evening."
+
+But he drew himself up.
+
+"I'm no piker," he said largely. "Whole hog or nothing. Take it."
+
+He held it out to her, and from another pocket produced the eighty
+dollars, in crushed and wrinkled notes.
+
+"It's my lucky day," he said thickly. "Plenty more where this came from.
+Do anything for you. Give it to the little devil. I--" He yawned. "God,
+this place is hot!"
+
+His head dropped back on his chair; he propped his sagging legs on a
+stool. She knew him--knew that he would sleep almost all night.
+She would have to make up something to tell the other girls; but no
+matter--she could attend to that later.
+
+She had never had a thousand dollars in her hands before. It seemed
+smaller than that amount. Perhaps he had lied to her. She paused, in
+pinning on her hat, to count the bills. It was all there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+K. spent all of the evening of that day with Wilson. He was not to go
+for Joe until eleven o'clock. The injured man's vitality was standing
+him in good stead. He had asked for Sidney and she was at his bedside.
+Dr. Ed had gone.
+
+"I'm going, Max. The office is full, they tell me," he said, bending
+over the bed. "I'll come in later, and if they'll make me a shakedown,
+I'll stay with you to-night."
+
+The answer was faint, broken but distinct. "Get some sleep...I've been a
+poor stick...try to do better--" His roving eyes fell on the dog collar
+on the stand. He smiled, "Good old Bob!" he said, and put his hand over
+Dr. Ed's, as it lay on the bed.
+
+K. found Sidney in the room, not sitting, but standing by the window.
+The sick man was dozing. One shaded light burned in a far corner. She
+turned slowly and met his eyes. It seemed to K. that she looked at
+him as if she had never really seen him before, and he was right.
+Readjustments are always difficult.
+
+Sidney was trying to reconcile the K. she had known so well with this
+new K., no longer obscure, although still shabby, whose height had
+suddenly become presence, whose quiet was the quiet of infinite power.
+
+She was suddenly shy of him, as he stood looking down at her. He saw the
+gleam of her engagement ring on her finger. It seemed almost defiant. As
+though she had meant by wearing it to emphasize her belief in her lover.
+
+They did not speak beyond their greeting, until he had gone over the
+record. Then:--
+
+"We can't talk here. I want to talk to you, K."
+
+He led the way into the corridor. It was very dim. Far away was the
+night nurse's desk, with its lamp, its annunciator, its pile of records.
+The passage floor reflected the light on glistening boards.
+
+"I have been thinking until I am almost crazy, K. And now I know how it
+happened. It was Joe."
+
+"The principal thing is, not how it happened, but that he is going to
+get well, Sidney."
+
+She stood looking down, twisting her ring around her finger.
+
+"Is Joe in any danger?"
+
+"We are going to get him away to-night. He wants to go to Cuba. He'll
+get off safely, I think."
+
+"WE are going to get him away! YOU are, you mean. You shoulder all our
+troubles, K., as if they were your own."
+
+"I?" He was genuinely surprised. "Oh, I see. You mean--but my part in
+getting Joe off is practically nothing. As a matter of fact, Schwitter
+has put up the money. My total capital in the world, after paying the
+taxicab to-day, is seven dollars."
+
+"The taxicab?"
+
+"By Jove, I was forgetting! Best news you ever heard of! Tillie married
+and has a baby--all in twenty-four hours! Boy--they named it Le Moyne.
+Squalled like a maniac when the water went on its head. I--I took Mrs.
+McKee out in a hired machine. That's what happened to my capital." He
+grinned sheepishly. "She said she would have to go in her toque. I had
+awful qualms. I thought it was a wrapper."
+
+"You, of course," she said. "You find Max and save him--don't look like
+that! You did, didn't you? And you get Joe away, borrowing money to send
+him. And as if that isn't enough, when you ought to have been getting
+some sleep, you are out taking a friend to Tillie, and being godfather
+to the baby."
+
+He looked uncomfortable, almost guilty.
+
+"I had a day off. I--"
+
+"When I look back and remember how all these months I've been talking
+about service, and you said nothing at all, and all the time you were
+living what I preached--I'm so ashamed, K."
+
+He would not allow that. It distressed him. She saw that, and tried to
+smile.
+
+"When does Joe go?"
+
+"To-night. I'm to take him across the country to the railroad. I was
+wondering--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I'd better explain first what happened, and why it happened. Then if
+you are willing to send him a line, I think it would help. He saw a girl
+in white in the car and followed in his own machine. He thought it was
+you, of course. He didn't like the idea of your going to Schwitter's.
+Carlotta was taken ill. And Schwitter and--and Wilson took her upstairs
+to a room."
+
+"Do you believe that, K.?"
+
+"I do. He saw Max coming out and misunderstood. He fired at him then."
+
+"He did it for me. I feel very guilty, K., as if it all comes back to
+me. I'll write to him, of course. Poor Joe!"
+
+He watched her go down the hall toward the night nurse's desk. He would
+have given everything just then for the right to call her back, to take
+her in his arms and comfort her. She seemed so alone. He himself had
+gone through loneliness and heartache, and the shadow was still on him.
+He waited until he saw her sit down at the desk and take up a pen. Then
+he went back into the quiet room.
+
+He stood by the bedside, looking down. Wilson was breathing quietly: his
+color was coming up, as he rallied from the shock. In K.'s mind now was
+just one thought--to bring him through for Sidney, and then to go away.
+He might follow Joe to Cuba. There were chances there. He could do
+sanitation work, or he might try the Canal.
+
+The Street would go on working out its own salvation. He would have
+to think of something for the Rosenfelds. And he was worried about
+Christine. But there again, perhaps it would be better if he went away.
+Christine's story would have to work itself out. His hands were tied.
+
+He was glad in a way that Sidney had asked no questions about him, had
+accepted his new identity so calmly. It had been overshadowed by the
+night tragedy. It would have pleased him if she had shown more interest,
+of course. But he understood. It was enough, he told himself, that he
+had helped her, that she counted on him. But more and more he knew in
+his heart that it was not enough. "I'd better get away from here," he
+told himself savagely.
+
+And having taken the first step toward flight, as happens in such cases,
+he was suddenly panicky with fear, fear that he would get out of hand,
+and take her in his arms, whether or no; a temptation to run from
+temptation, to cut everything and go with Joe that night. But there
+his sense of humor saved him. That would be a sight for the gods, two
+defeated lovers flying together under the soft September moon.
+
+Some one entered the room. He thought it was Sidney and turned with the
+light in his eyes that was only for her. It was Carlotta.
+
+She was not in uniform. She wore a dark skirt and white waist and her
+high heels tapped as she crossed the room. She came directly to him.
+
+"He is better, isn't he?"
+
+"He is rallying. Of course it will be a day or two before we are quite
+sure."
+
+She stood looking down at Wilson's quiet figure.
+
+"I guess you know I've been crazy about him," she said quietly. "Well,
+that's all over. He never really cared for me. I played his game and
+I--lost. I've been expelled from the school."
+
+Quite suddenly she dropped on her knees beside the bed, and put her
+cheek close to the sleeping man's hand. When after a moment she rose,
+she was controlled again, calm, very white.
+
+"Will you tell him, Dr. Edwardes, when he is conscious, that I came in
+and said good-bye?"
+
+"I will, of course. Do you want to leave any other message?"
+
+She hesitated, as if the thought tempted her. Then she shrugged her
+shoulders.
+
+"What would be the use? He doesn't want any message from me."
+
+She turned toward the door. But K. could not let her go like that. Her
+face frightened him. It was too calm, too controlled. He followed her
+across the room.
+
+"What are your plans?"
+
+"I haven't any. I'm about through with my training, but I've lost my
+diploma."
+
+"I don't like to see you going away like this."
+
+She avoided his eyes, but his kindly tone did what neither the Head nor
+the Executive Committee had done that day. It shook her control.
+
+"What does it matter to you? You don't owe me anything."
+
+"Perhaps not. One way and another I've known you a long time."
+
+"You never knew anything very good."
+
+"I'll tell you where I live, and--"
+
+"I know where you live."
+
+"Will you come to see me there? We may be able to think of something."
+
+"What is there to think of? This story will follow me wherever I go!
+I've tried twice for a diploma and failed. What's the use?"
+
+But in the end he prevailed on her to promise not to leave the city
+until she had seen him again. It was not until she had gone, a straight
+figure with haunted eyes, that he reflected whimsically that once again
+he had defeated his own plans for flight.
+
+In the corridor outside the door Carlotta hesitated. Why not go back?
+Why not tell him? He was kind; he was going to do something for her.
+But the old instinct of self-preservation prevailed. She went on to her
+room.
+
+Sidney brought her letter to Joe back to K. She was flushed with the
+effort and with a new excitement.
+
+"This is the letter, K., and--I haven't been able to say what I wanted,
+exactly. You'll let him know, won't you, how I feel, and how I blame
+myself?"
+
+K. promised gravely.
+
+"And the most remarkable thing has happened. What a day this has been!
+Somebody has sent Johnny Rosenfeld a lot of money. The ward nurse wants
+you to come back."
+
+The ward had settled for the night. The well-ordered beds of the daytime
+were chaotic now, torn apart by tossing figures. The night was hot and
+an electric fan hummed in a far corner. Under its sporadic breezes, as
+it turned, the ward was trying to sleep.
+
+Johnny Rosenfeld was not asleep. An incredible thing had happened to
+him. A fortune lay under his pillow. He was sure it was there, for ever
+since it came his hot hand had clutched it.
+
+He was quite sure that somehow or other K. had had a hand in it. When he
+disclaimed it, the boy was bewildered.
+
+"It'll buy the old lady what she wants for the house, anyhow," he
+said. "But I hope nobody's took up a collection for me. I don't want no
+charity."
+
+"Maybe Mr. Howe sent it."
+
+"You can bet your last match he didn't."
+
+In some unknown way the news had reached the ward that Johnny's friend,
+Mr. Le Moyne, was a great surgeon. Johnny had rejected it scornfully.
+
+"He works in the gas office," he said, "I've seen him there. If he's a
+surgeon, what's he doing in the gas office. If he's a surgeon, what's he
+doing teaching me raffia-work? Why isn't he on his job?"
+
+But the story had seized on his imagination.
+
+"Say, Mr. Le Moyne."
+
+"Yes, Jack."
+
+He called him "Jack." The boy liked it. It savored of man to man. After
+all, he was a man, or almost. Hadn't he driven a car? Didn't he have a
+state license?
+
+"They've got a queer story about you here in the ward."
+
+"Not scandal, I trust, Jack!"
+
+"They say that you're a surgeon; that you operated on Dr. Wilson and
+saved his life. They say that you're the king pin where you came from."
+He eyed K. wistfully. "I know it's a damn lie, but if it's true--"
+
+"I used to be a surgeon. As a matter of fact I operated on Dr. Wilson
+to-day. I--I am rather apologetic, Jack, because I didn't explain to
+you sooner. For--various reasons--I gave up that--that line of business.
+To-day they rather forced my hand."
+
+"Don't you think you could do something for me, sir?"
+
+When K. did not reply at once, he launched into an explanation.
+
+"I've been lying here a good while. I didn't say much because I knew I'd
+have to take a chance. Either I'd pull through or I wouldn't, and the
+odds were--well, I didn't say much. The old lady's had a lot of trouble.
+But now, with THIS under my pillow for her, I've got a right to ask.
+I'll take a chance, if you will."
+
+"It's only a chance, Jack."
+
+"I know that. But lie here and watch these soaks off the street. Old, a
+lot of them, and gettin' well to go out and starve, and--My God! Mr. Le
+Moyne, they can walk, and I can't."
+
+K. drew a long breath. He had started, and now he must go on. Faith in
+himself or no faith, he must go on. Life, that had loosed its hold on
+him for a time, had found him again.
+
+"I'll go over you carefully to-morrow, Jack. I'll tell you your chances
+honestly."
+
+"I have a thousand dollars. Whatever you charge--"
+
+"I'll take it out of my board bill in the new house!"
+
+At four o'clock that morning K. got back from seeing Joe off. The trip
+had been without accident.
+
+Over Sidney's letter Joe had shed a shamefaced tear or two. And during
+the night ride, with K. pushing the car to the utmost, he had felt that
+the boy, in keeping his hand in his pocket, had kept it on the letter.
+When the road was smooth and stretched ahead, a gray-white line into the
+night, he tried to talk a little courage into the boy's sick heart.
+
+"You'll see new people, new life," he said. "In a month from now you'll
+wonder why you ever hung around the Street. I have a feeling that you're
+going to make good down there."
+
+And once, when the time for parting was very near,--"No matter what
+happens, keep on believing in yourself. I lost my faith in myself once.
+It was pretty close to hell."
+
+Joe's response showed his entire self-engrossment.
+
+"If he dies, I'm a murderer."
+
+"He's not going to die," said K. stoutly.
+
+At four o'clock in the morning he left the car at the garage and walked
+around to the little house. He had had no sleep for forty-five hours;
+his eyes were sunken in his head; the skin over his temples looked drawn
+and white. His clothes were wrinkled; the soft hat he habitually wore
+was white with the dust of the road.
+
+As he opened the hall door, Christine stirred in the room beyond. She
+came out fully dressed.
+
+"K., are you sick?"
+
+"Rather tired. Why in the world aren't you in bed?"
+
+"Palmer has just come home in a terrible rage. He says he's been robbed
+of a thousand dollars."
+
+"Where?"
+
+Christine shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"He doesn't know, or says he doesn't. I'm glad of it. He seems
+thoroughly frightened. It may be a lesson."
+
+In the dim hall light he realized that her face was strained and set.
+She looked on the verge of hysteria.
+
+"Poor little woman," he said. "I'm sorry, Christine."
+
+The tender words broke down the last barrier of her self-control.
+
+"Oh, K.! Take me away. Take me away! I can't stand it any longer."
+
+She held her arms out to him, and because he was very tired and lonely,
+and because more than anything else in the world just then he needed a
+woman's arms, he drew her to him and held her close, his cheek to her
+hair.
+
+"Poor girl!" he said. "Poor Christine! Surely there must be some
+happiness for us somewhere."
+
+But the next moment he let her go and stepped back.
+
+"I'm sorry." Characteristically he took the blame. "I shouldn't have
+done that--You know how it is with me."
+
+"Will it always be Sidney?"
+
+"I'm afraid it will always be Sidney."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Johnny Rosenfeld was dead. All of K.'s skill had not sufficed to save
+him. The operation had been a marvel, but the boy's long-sapped strength
+failed at the last.
+
+K., set of face, stayed with him to the end. The boy did not know he was
+going. He roused from the coma and smiled up at Le Moyne.
+
+"I've got a hunch that I can move my right foot," he said. "Look and
+see."
+
+K. lifted the light covering.
+
+"You're right, old man. It's moving."
+
+"Brake foot, clutch foot," said Johnny, and closed his eyes again.
+
+K. had forbidden the white screens, that outward symbol of death. Time
+enough for them later. So the ward had no suspicion, nor had the boy.
+
+The ward passed in review. It was Sunday, and from the chapel far below
+came the faint singing of a hymn. When Johnny spoke again he did not
+open his eyes.
+
+"You're some operator, Mr. Le Moyne. I'll put in a word for you whenever
+I get a chance."
+
+"Yes, put in a word for me," said K. huskily.
+
+He felt that Johnny would be a good mediator--that whatever he, K., had
+done of omission or commission, Johnny's voice before the Tribunal would
+count.
+
+The lame young violin-player came into the ward. She had cherished a
+secret and romantic affection for Max Wilson, and now he was in the
+hospital and ill. So she wore the sacrificial air of a young nun and
+played "The Holy City."
+
+Johnny was close on the edge of his long sleep by that time, and very
+comfortable.
+
+"Tell her nix on the sob stuff," he complained. "Ask her to play 'I'm
+twenty-one and she's eighteen.'"
+
+She was rather outraged, but on K.'s quick explanation she changed to
+the staccato air.
+
+"Ask her if she'll come a little nearer; I can't hear her."
+
+So she moved to the foot of the bed, and to the gay little tune Johnny
+began his long sleep. But first he asked K. a question: "Are you sure
+I'm going to walk, Mr. Le Moyne?"
+
+"I give you my solemn word," said K. huskily, "that you are going to be
+better than you have ever been in your life."
+
+It was K. who, seeing he would no longer notice, ordered the screens to
+be set around the bed, K. who drew the coverings smooth and folded the
+boy's hands over his breast.
+
+The violin-player stood by uncertainly.
+
+"How very young he is! Was it an accident?"
+
+"It was the result of a man's damnable folly," said K. grimly. "Somebody
+always pays."
+
+And so Johnny Rosenfeld paid.
+
+The immediate result of his death was that K., who had gained some of
+his faith in himself on seeing Wilson on the way to recovery, was beset
+by his old doubts. What right had he to arrogate to himself again powers
+of life and death? Over and over he told himself that there had been no
+carelessness here, that the boy would have died ultimately, that he
+had taken the only chance, that the boy himself had known the risk and
+begged for it.
+
+The old doubts came back.
+
+And now came a question that demanded immediate answer. Wilson would
+be out of commission for several months, probably. He was gaining, but
+slowly. And he wanted K. to take over his work.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded, half irritably. "The secret is out. Everybody
+knows who you are. You're not thinking about going back to that
+ridiculous gas office, are you?"
+
+"I had some thought of going to Cuba."
+
+"I'm damned if I understand you. You've done a marvelous thing; I lie
+here and listen to the staff singing your praises until I'm sick of your
+name! And now, because a boy who wouldn't have lived anyhow--"
+
+"That's not it," K. put in hastily. "I know all that. I guess I could do
+it and get away with it as well as the average. All that deters me--I've
+never told you, have I, why I gave up before?"
+
+Wilson was propped up in his bed. K. was walking restlessly about the
+room, as was his habit when troubled.
+
+"I've heard the gossip; that's all."
+
+"When you recognized me that night on the balcony, I told you I'd lost
+my faith in myself, and you said the whole affair had been gone over
+at the State Society. As a matter of fact, the Society knew of only two
+cases. There had been three."
+
+"Even at that--"
+
+"You know what I always felt about the profession, Max. We went into
+that more than once in Berlin. Either one's best or nothing. I had done
+pretty well. When I left Lorch and built my own hospital, I hadn't
+a doubt of myself. And because I was getting results I got a lot of
+advertising. Men began coming to the clinics. I found I was making
+enough out of the patients who could pay to add a few free wards. I want
+to tell you now, Wilson, that the opening of those free wards was the
+greatest self-indulgence I ever permitted myself. I'd seen so much
+careless attention given the poor--well, never mind that. It was almost
+three years ago that things began to go wrong. I lost a big case."
+
+"I know. All this doesn't influence me, Edwardes."
+
+"Wait a moment. We had a system in the operating-room as perfect as I
+could devise it. I never finished an operation without having my first
+assistant verify the clip and sponge count. But that first case died
+because a sponge had been left in the operating field. You know how
+those things go; you can't always see them, and one goes by the count,
+after reasonable caution. Then I lost another case in the same way--a
+free case.
+
+"As well as I could tell, the precautions had not been relaxed. I was
+doing from four to six cases a day. After the second one I almost went
+crazy. I made up my mind, if there was ever another, I'd give up and go
+away."
+
+"There was another?"
+
+"Not for several months. When the last case died, a free case again, I
+performed my own autopsy. I allowed only my first assistant in the room.
+He was almost as frenzied as I was. It was the same thing again. When I
+told him I was going away, he offered to take the blame himself, to
+say he had closed the incision. He tried to make me think he was
+responsible. I knew--better."
+
+"It's incredible."
+
+"Exactly; but it's true. The last patient was a laborer. He left a
+family. I've sent them money from time to time. I used to sit and think
+about the children he left, and what would become of them. The ironic
+part of it was that, for all that had happened, I was busier all the
+time. Men were sending me cases from all over the country. It was either
+stay and keep on working, with that chance, or--quit. I quit." "But if
+you had stayed, and taken extra precautions--"
+
+"We'd taken every precaution we knew."
+
+Neither of the men spoke for a time. K. stood, his tall figure outlined
+against the window. Far off, in the children's ward, children were
+laughing; from near by a very young baby wailed a thin cry of protest
+against life; a bell rang constantly. K.'s mind was busy with the
+past--with the day he decided to give up and go away, with the months of
+wandering and homelessness, with the night he had come upon the Street
+and had seen Sidney on the doorstep of the little house.
+
+"That's the worst, is it?" Max Wilson demanded at last.
+
+"That's enough."
+
+"It's extremely significant. You had an enemy somewhere--on your
+staff, probably. This profession of ours is a big one, but you know its
+jealousies. Let a man get his shoulders above the crowd, and the pack
+is after him." He laughed a little. "Mixed figure, but you know what I
+mean."
+
+K. shook his head. He had had that gift of the big man everywhere, in
+every profession, of securing the loyalty of his followers. He would
+have trusted every one of them with his life.
+
+"You're going to do it, of course."
+
+"Take up your work?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He stirred restlessly. To stay on, to be near Sidney, perhaps to stand
+by as Wilson's best man when he was married--it turned him cold. But he
+did not give a decided negative. The sick man was flushed and growing
+fretful; it would not do to irritate him.
+
+"Give me another day on it," he said at last. And so the matter stood.
+
+Max's injury had been productive of good, in one way. It had brought the
+two brothers closer together. In the mornings Max was restless until
+Dr. Ed arrived. When he came, he brought books in the shabby bag--his
+beloved Burns, although he needed no book for that, the "Pickwick
+Papers," Renan's "Lives of the Disciples." Very often Max world doze
+off; at the cessation of Dr. Ed's sonorous voice the sick man would stir
+fretfully and demand more. But because he listened to everything without
+discrimination, the older man came to the conclusion that it was the
+companionship that counted. It pleased him vastly. It reminded him of
+Max's boyhood, when he had read to Max at night. For once in the last
+dozen years, he needed him.
+
+"Go on, Ed. What in blazes makes you stop every five minutes?" Max
+protested, one day.
+
+Dr. Ed, who had only stopped to bite off the end of a stogie to hold in
+his cheek, picked up his book in a hurry, and eyed the invalid over it.
+
+"Stop bullying. I'll read when I'm ready. Have you any idea what I'm
+reading?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Well, I haven't. For ten minutes I've been reading across both pages!"
+
+Max laughed, and suddenly put out his hand. Demonstrations of affection
+were so rare with him that for a moment Dr. Ed was puzzled. Then, rather
+sheepishly, he took it.
+
+"When I get out," Max said, "we'll have to go out to the White Springs
+again and have supper."
+
+That was all; but Ed understood.
+
+Morning and evening, Sidney went to Max's room. In the morning she only
+smiled at him from the doorway. In the evening she went to him after
+prayers. She was allowed an hour with him then.
+
+The shooting had been a closed book between them. At first, when he
+began to recover, he tried to talk to her about it. But she refused to
+listen. She was very gentle with him, but very firm.
+
+"I know how it happened, Max," she said--"about Joe's mistake and all
+that. The rest can wait until you are much better."
+
+If there had been any change in her manner to him, he would not
+have submitted so easily, probably. But she was as tender as ever,
+unfailingly patient, prompt to come to him and slow to leave. After a
+time he began to dread reopening the subject. She seemed so effectually
+to have closed it. Carlotta was gone. And, after all, what good could he
+do his cause by pleading it? The fact was there, and Sidney knew it.
+
+On the day when K. had told Max his reason for giving up his work, Max
+was allowed out of bed for the first time. It was a great day. A box of
+red roses came that day from the girl who had refused him a year or more
+ago. He viewed them with a carelessness that was half assumed.
+
+The news had traveled to the Street that he was to get up that day.
+Early that morning the doorkeeper had opened the door to a gentleman
+who did not speak, but who handed in a bunch of early chrysanthemums and
+proceeded to write, on a pad he drew from his pocket:--
+
+"From Mrs. McKee's family and guests, with their congratulations on your
+recovery, and their hope that they will see you again soon. If their
+ends are clipped every day and they are placed in ammonia water, they
+will last indefinitely." Sidney spent her hour with Max that evening as
+usual. His big chair had been drawn close to a window, and she found him
+there, looking out. She kissed him. But this time, instead of letting
+her draw away, he put out his arms and caught her to him.
+
+"Are you glad?"
+
+"Very glad, indeed," she said soberly.
+
+"Then smile at me. You don't smile any more. You ought to smile; your
+mouth--"
+
+"I am almost always tired; that's all, Max."
+
+She eyed him bravely.
+
+"Aren't you going to let me make love to you at all? You get away beyond
+my reach."
+
+"I was looking for the paper to read to you."
+
+A sudden suspicion flamed in his eyes.
+
+"Sidney."
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"You don't like me to touch you any more. Come here where I can see
+you."
+
+The fear of agitating him brought her quickly. For a moment he was
+appeased.
+
+"That's more like it. How lovely you are, Sidney!" He lifted first one
+hand and then the other to his lips. "Are you ever going to forgive me?"
+
+"If you mean about Carlotta, I forgave that long ago."
+
+He was almost boyishly relieved. What a wonder she was! So lovely, and
+so sane. Many a woman would have held that over him for years--not that
+he had done anything really wrong on that nightmare excursion. But so
+many women are exigent about promises.
+
+"When are you going to marry me?"
+
+"We needn't discuss that to-night, Max."
+
+"I want you so very much. I don't want to wait, dear. Let me tell Ed
+that you will marry me soon. Then, when I go away, I'll take you with
+me."
+
+"Can't we talk things over when you are stronger?"
+
+Her tone caught his attention, and turned him a little white. He faced
+her to the window, so that the light fell full on her.
+
+"What things? What do you mean?"
+
+He had forced her hand. She had meant to wait; but, with his keen eyes
+on her, she could not dissemble.
+
+"I am going to make you very unhappy for a little while."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I've had a lot of time to think. If you had really wanted me, Max--"
+
+"My God, of course I want you!"
+
+"It isn't that I am angry. I am not even jealous. I was at first. It
+isn't that. It's hard to make you understand. I think you care for me--"
+
+"I love you! I swear I never loved any other woman as I love you."
+
+Suddenly he remembered that he had also sworn to put Carlotta out of his
+life. He knew that Sidney remembered, too; but she gave no sign.
+
+"Perhaps that's true. You might go on caring for me. Sometimes I think
+you would. But there would always be other women, Max. You're like that.
+Perhaps you can't help it."
+
+"If you loved me you could do anything with me." He was half sullen.
+
+By the way her color leaped, he knew he had struck fire. All
+his conjectures as to how Sidney would take the knowledge of his
+entanglement with Carlotta had been founded on one major premise--that
+she loved him. The mere suspicion made him gasp.
+
+"But, good Heavens, Sidney, you do care for me, don't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't, Max; not enough."
+
+She tried to explain, rather pitifully. After one look at his face, she
+spoke to the window.
+
+"I'm so wretched about it. I thought I cared. To me you were the best
+and greatest man that ever lived. I--when I said my prayers, I--But that
+doesn't matter. You were a sort of god to me. When the Lamb--that's one
+of the internes, you know--nicknamed you the 'Little Tin God,' I was
+angry. You could never be anything little to me, or do anything that
+wasn't big. Do you see?"
+
+He groaned under his breath.
+
+"No man could live up to that, Sidney."
+
+"No. I see that now. But that's the way I cared. Now I know that I
+didn't care for you, really, at all. I built up an idol and worshiped
+it. I always saw you through a sort of haze. You were operating, with
+everybody standing by, saying how wonderful it was. Or you were coming
+to the wards, and everything was excitement, getting ready for you. I
+blame myself terribly. But you see, don't you? It isn't that I think you
+are wicked. It's just that I never loved the real you, because I never
+knew you."
+
+When he remained silent, she made an attempt to justify herself.
+
+"I'd known very few men," she said. "I came into the hospital, and for
+a time life seemed very terrible. There were wickednesses I had never
+heard of, and somebody always paying for them. I was always asking, Why?
+Why? Then you would come in, and a lot of them you cured and sent out.
+You gave them their chance, don't you see? Until I knew about Carlotta,
+you always meant that to me. You were like K.--always helping."
+
+The room was very silent. In the nurses' parlor, a few feet down the
+corridor, the nurses were at prayers.
+
+"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want," read the Head, her voice
+calm with the quiet of twilight and the end of the day.
+
+"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the
+still waters."
+
+The nurses read the response a little slowly, as if they, too, were
+weary.
+
+"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death--"
+
+The man in the chair stirred. He had come through the valley of the
+shadow, and for what? He was very bitter. He said to himself savagely
+that they would better have let him die. "You say you never loved me
+because you never knew me. I'm not a rotter, Sidney. Isn't it possible
+that the man you, cared about, who--who did his best by people and all
+that--is the real me?"
+
+She gazed at him thoughtfully. He missed something out of her eyes, the
+sort of luminous, wistful look with which she had been wont to survey
+his greatness. Measured by this new glance, so clear, so appraising, he
+sank back into his chair.
+
+"The man who did his best is quite real. You have always done the best
+in your work; you always will. But the other is a part of you too, Max.
+Even if I cared, I would not dare to run the risk."
+
+Under the window rang the sharp gong of a city patrol-wagon. It rumbled
+through the gates back to the courtyard, where its continued clamor
+summoned white-coated orderlies.
+
+An operating-room case, probably. Sidney, chin lifted, listened
+carefully. If it was a case for her, the elevator would go up to the
+operating-room. With a renewed sense of loss, Max saw that already she
+had put him out of her mind. The call to service was to her a call to
+battle. Her sensitive nostrils quivered; her young figure stood erect,
+alert.
+
+"It has gone up!"
+
+She took a step toward the door, hesitated, came back, and put a light
+hand on his shoulder.
+
+"I'm sorry, dear Max."
+
+She had kissed him lightly on the cheek before he knew what she intended
+to do. So passionless was the little caress that, perhaps more than
+anything else, it typified the change in their relation.
+
+When the door closed behind her, he saw that she had left her ring
+on the arm of his chair. He picked it up. It was still warm from
+her finger. He held it to his lips with a quick gesture. In all his
+successful young life he had never before felt the bitterness of
+failure. The very warmth of the little ring hurt.
+
+Why hadn't they let him die? He didn't want to live--he wouldn't live.
+Nobody cared for him! He would--
+
+His eyes, lifted from the ring, fell on the red glow of the roses that
+had come that morning. Even in the half light, they glowed with fiery
+color.
+
+The ring was in his right hand. With the left he settled his collar and
+soft silk tie.
+
+K. saw Carlotta that evening for the last time. Katie brought word to
+him, where he was helping Harriet close her trunk,--she was on her way
+to Europe for the fall styles,--that he was wanted in the lower hall.
+
+"A lady!" she said, closing the door behind her by way of caution. "And
+a good thing for her she's not from the alley. The way those people beg
+off you is a sin and a shame, and it's not at home you're going to be to
+them from now on."
+
+So K. had put on his coat and, without so much as a glance in Harriet's
+mirror, had gone down the stairs. Carlotta was in the lower hall. She
+stood under the chandelier, and he saw at once the ravages that trouble
+had made in her. She was a dead white, and she looked ten years older
+than her age.
+
+"I came, you see, Dr. Edwardes."
+
+Now and then, when some one came to him for help, which was generally
+money, he used Christine's parlor, if she happened to be out. So now,
+finding the door ajar, and the room dark, he went in and turned on the
+light.
+
+"Come in here; we can talk better."
+
+She did not sit down at first; but, observing that her standing kept him
+on his feet, she sat finally. Evidently she found it hard to speak.
+
+"You were to come," K. encouraged her, "to see if we couldn't plan
+something for you. Now, I think I've got it."
+
+"If it's another hospital--and I don't want to stay here, in the city."
+
+"You like surgical work, don't you?"
+
+"I don't care for anything else."
+
+"Before we settle this, I'd better tell you what I'm thinking of.
+You know, of course, that I closed my hospital. I--a series of things
+happened, and I decided I was in the wrong business. That wouldn't be
+important, except for what it leads to. They are trying to persuade me
+to go back, and--I'm trying to persuade myself that I'm fit to go back.
+You see,"--his tone was determinedly cheerful, "my faith in myself has
+been pretty nearly gone. When one loses that, there isn't much left."
+
+"You had been very successful." She did not look up.
+
+"Well, I had and I hadn't. I'm not going to worry you about that. My
+offer is this: We'll just try to forget about--about Schwitter's and all
+the rest, and if I go back I'll take you on in the operating-room."
+
+"You sent me away once!"
+
+"Well, I can ask you to come back, can't I?" He smiled at her
+encouragingly.
+
+"Are you sure you understand about Max Wilson and myself?"
+
+"I understand."
+
+"Don't you think you are taking a risk?"
+
+"Every one makes mistakes now and then, and loving women have made
+mistakes since the world began. Most people live in glass houses, Miss
+Harrison. And don't make any mistake about this: people can always come
+back. No depth is too low. All they need is the willpower."
+
+He smiled down at her. She had come armed with confession. But the offer
+he made was too alluring. It meant reinstatement, another chance, when
+she had thought everything was over. After all, why should she damn
+herself? She would go back. She would work her finger-ends off for him.
+She would make it up to him in other ways. But she could not tell him
+and lose everything.
+
+"Come," he said. "Shall we go back and start over again?"
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Late September had come, with the Street, after its summer indolence
+taking up the burden of the year. At eight-thirty and at one the school
+bell called the children. Little girls in pig-tails, carrying freshly
+sharpened pencils, went primly toward the school, gathering, comet
+fashion, a tail of unwilling brothers as they went.
+
+An occasional football hurtled through the air. Le Moyne had promised
+the baseball club a football outfit, rumor said, but would not coach
+them himself this year. A story was going about that Mr. Le Moyne
+intended to go away.
+
+The Street had been furiously busy for a month. The cobblestones had
+gone, and from curb to curb stretched smooth asphalt. The fascination
+of writing on it with chalk still obsessed the children. Every few yards
+was a hop-scotch diagram. Generally speaking, too, the Street had put up
+new curtains, and even, here and there, had added a coat of paint.
+
+To this general excitement the strange case of Mr. Le Moyne had added
+its quota. One day he was in the gas office, making out statements that
+were absolutely ridiculous. (What with no baking all last month, and
+every Sunday spent in the country, nobody could have used that amount of
+gas. They could come and take their old meter out!) And the next there
+was the news that Mr. Le Moyne had been only taking a holiday in the
+gas office,--paying off old scores, the barytone at Mrs. McKee's
+hazarded!--and that he was really a very great surgeon and had saved Dr.
+Max Wilson.
+
+The Street, which was busy at the time deciding whether to leave the old
+sidewalks or to put down cement ones, had one evening of mad excitement
+over the matter,--of K., not the sidewalks,--and then had accepted the
+new situation.
+
+But over the news of K.'s approaching departure it mourned. What was
+the matter with things, anyhow? Here was Christine's marriage, which had
+promised so well,--awnings and palms and everything,--turning out badly.
+True, Palmer Howe was doing better, but he would break out again. And
+Johnny Rosenfeld was dead, so that his mother came on washing-days,
+and brought no cheery gossip; but bent over her tubs dry-eyed and
+silent--even the approaching move to a larger house failed to thrill
+her. There was Tillie, too. But one did not speak of her. She was
+married now, of course; but the Street did not tolerate such a reversal
+of the usual processes as Tillie had indulged in. It censured Mrs. McKee
+severely for having been, so to speak, and accessory after the fact.
+
+The Street made a resolve to keep K., if possible. If he had shown
+any "high and mightiness," as they called it, since the change in his
+estate, it would have let him go without protest. But when a man is the
+real thing,--so that the newspapers give a column to his having been
+in the city almost two years,--and still goes about in the same shabby
+clothes, with the same friendly greeting for every one, it demonstrates
+clearly, as the barytone put it, that "he's got no swelled head on him;
+that's sure."
+
+"Anybody can see by the way he drives that machine of Wilson's that he's
+been used to a car--likely a foreign one. All the swells have foreign
+cars." Still the barytone, who was almost as fond of conversation as
+of what he termed "vocal." "And another thing. Do you notice the way
+he takes Dr. Ed around? Has him at every consultation. The old boy's
+tickled to death."
+
+A little later, K., coming up the Street as he had that first day, heard
+the barytone singing:--
+
+      "Home is the hunter, home from the hill,
+       And the sailor, home from sea."
+
+Home! Why, this WAS home. The Street seemed to stretch out its arms to
+him. The ailanthus tree waved in the sunlight before the little house.
+Tree and house were old; September had touched them. Christine sat
+sewing on the balcony. A boy with a piece of chalk was writing something
+on the new cement under the tree. He stood back, head on one side, when
+he had finished, and inspected his work. K. caught him up from behind,
+and, swinging him around--
+
+"Hey!" he said severely. "Don't you know better than to write all over
+the street? What'll I do to you? Give you to a policeman?"
+
+"Aw, lemme down, Mr. K."
+
+"You tell the boys that if I find this street scrawled over any more,
+the picnic's off."
+
+"Aw, Mr. K.!"
+
+"I mean it. Go and spend some of that chalk energy of yours in school."
+
+He put the boy down. There was a certain tenderness in his hands, as in
+his voice, when he dealt with children. All his severity did not conceal
+it. "Get along with you, Bill. Last bell's rung."
+
+As the boy ran off, K.'s eye fell on what he had written on the cement.
+At a certain part of his career, the child of such a neighborhood as the
+Street "cancels" names. It is a part of his birthright. He does it as he
+whittles his school desk or tries to smoke the long dried fruit of the
+Indian cigar tree. So K. read in chalk an the smooth street:--
+
+     Max Wilson Marriage.      Sidney Page Love.
+
+[Note: the a, l, s, and n of "Max Wilson" are crossed through, as are
+the S, d, n, and a of "Sidney Page"]
+
+The childish scrawl stared up at him impudently, a sacred thing profaned
+by the day. K. stood and looked at it. The barytone was still singing;
+but now it was "I'm twenty-one, and she's eighteen." It was a cheerful
+air, as should be the air that had accompanied Johnny Rosenfeld to his
+long sleep. The light was gone from K.'s face again. After all, the
+Street meant for him not so much home as it meant Sidney. And now,
+before very long, that book of his life, like others, would have to be
+closed.
+
+He turned and went heavily into the little house.
+
+Christine called to him from her little balcony:--
+
+"I thought I heard your step outside. Have you time to come out?"
+
+K. went through the parlor and stood in the long window. His steady eyes
+looked down at her.
+
+"I see very little of you now," she complained. And, when he did not
+reply immediately: "Have you made any definite plans, K.?"
+
+"I shall do Max's work until he is able to take hold again. After
+that--"
+
+"You will go away?"
+
+"I think so. I am getting a good many letters, one way and another. I
+suppose, now I'm back in harness, I'll stay. My old place is closed. I'd
+go back there--they want me. But it seems so futile, Christine, to leave
+as I did, because I felt that I had no right to go on as things were;
+and now to crawl back on the strength of having had my hand forced, and
+to take up things again, not knowing that I've a bit more right to do it
+than when I left!"
+
+"I went to see Max yesterday. You know what he thinks about all that."
+
+He took an uneasy turn up and down the balcony.
+
+"But who?" he demanded. "Who would do such a thing? I tell you,
+Christine, it isn't possible."
+
+She did not pursue the subject. Her thoughts had flown ahead to the
+little house without K., to days without his steps on the stairs or the
+heavy creak of his big chair overhead as he dropped into it.
+
+But perhaps it would be better if he went. She had her own life to live.
+She had no expectation of happiness, but, somehow or other, she must
+build on the shaky foundation of her marriage a house of life, with
+resignation serving for content, perhaps with fear lurking always. That
+she knew. But with no active misery. Misery implied affection, and her
+love for Palmer was quite dead.
+
+"Sidney will be here this afternoon."
+
+"Good." His tone was non-committal.
+
+"Has it occurred to you, K., that Sidney is not very happy?"
+
+He stopped in front of her.
+
+"She's had a great anxiety."
+
+"She has no anxiety now. Max is doing well."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I'm not quite sure, but I think I know. She's lost faith in Max, and
+she's not like me. I--I knew about Palmer before I married him. I got a
+letter. It's all rather hideous--I needn't go into it. I was afraid to
+back out; it was just before my wedding. But Sidney has more character
+than I have. Max isn't what she thought he was, and I doubt whether
+she'll marry him."
+
+K. glanced toward the street where Sidney's name and Max's lay open to
+the sun and to the smiles of the Street. Christine might be right, but
+that did not alter things for him.
+
+Christine's thoughts went back inevitably to herself; to Palmer, who was
+doing better just now; to K., who was going away--went back with an ache
+to the night K. had taken her in his arms and then put her away. How
+wrong things were! What a mess life was!
+
+"When you go away," she said at last, "I want you to remember this. I'm
+going to do my best, K. You have taught me all I know. All my life I'll
+have to overlook things; I know that. But, in his way, Palmer cares for
+me. He will always come back, and perhaps sometime--"
+
+Her voice trailed off. Far ahead of her she saw the years stretching
+out, marked, not by days and months, but by Palmer's wanderings away,
+his remorseful returns.
+
+"Do a little more than forgetting," K. said. "Try to care for him,
+Christine. You did once. And that's your strongest weapon. It's always a
+woman's strongest weapon. And it wins in the end."
+
+"I shall try, K.," she answered obediently.
+
+But he turned away from the look in her eyes.
+
+Harriet was abroad. She had sent cards from Paris to her "trade." It was
+an innovation. The two or three people on the Street who received her
+engraved announcement that she was there, "buying new chic models
+for the autumn and winter--afternoon frocks, evening gowns, reception
+dresses, and wraps, from Poiret, Martial et Armand, and others," left
+the envelopes casually on the parlor table, as if communications from
+Paris were quite to be expected.
+
+So K. lunched alone, and ate little. After luncheon he fixed a broken
+ironing-stand for Katie, and in return she pressed a pair of trousers
+for him. He had it in mind to ask Sidney to go out with him in Max's
+car, and his most presentable suit was very shabby.
+
+"I'm thinking," said Katie, when she brought the pressed garments up
+over her arm and passed them in through a discreet crack in the door,
+"that these pants will stand more walking than sitting, Mr. K. They're
+getting mighty thin."
+
+"I'll take a duster along in case of accident," he promised her; "and
+to-morrow I'll order a suit, Katie."
+
+"I'll believe it when I see it," said Katie from the stairs. "Some fool
+of a woman from the alley will come in to-night and tell you she can't
+pay her rent, and she'll take your suit away in her pocket-book--as like
+as not to pay an installment on a piano. There's two new pianos in the
+alley since you came here."
+
+"I promise it, Katie."
+
+"Show it to me," said Katie laconically. "And don't go to picking up
+anything you drop!"
+
+Sidney came home at half-past two--came delicately flushed, as if she
+had hurried, and with a tremulous smile that caught Katie's eye at once.
+
+"Bless the child!" she said. "There's no need to ask how he is to-day.
+You're all one smile."
+
+The smile set just a trifle.
+
+"Katie, some one has written my name out on the street, in chalk. It's
+with Dr. Wilson's, and it looks so silly. Please go out and sweep it
+off."
+
+"I'm about crazy with their old chalk. I'll do it after a while."
+
+"Please do it now. I don't want anyone to see it. Is--is Mr. K.
+upstairs?"
+
+But when she learned that K. was upstairs, oddly enough, she did not go
+up at once. She stood in the lower hall and listened. Yes, he was
+there. She could hear him moving about. Her lips parted slightly as she
+listened.
+
+Christine, looking in from her balcony, saw her there, and, seeing
+something in her face that she had never suspected, put her hand to her
+throat.
+
+"Sidney!"
+
+"Oh--hello, Chris."
+
+"Won't you come and sit with me?"
+
+"I haven't much time--that is, I want to speak to K."
+
+"You can see him when he comes down."
+
+Sidney came slowly through the parlor. It occurred to her, all at once,
+that Christine must see a lot of K., especially now. No doubt he was
+in and out of the house often. And how pretty Christine was! She was
+unhappy, too. All that seemed to be necessary to win K.'s attention was
+to be unhappy enough. Well, surely, in that case--
+
+"How is Max?"
+
+"Still better."
+
+Sidney sat down on the edge of the railing; but she was careful,
+Christine saw, to face the staircase. There was silence on the balcony.
+Christine sewed; Sidney sat and swung her feet idly.
+
+"Dr. Ed says Max wants you to give up your training and marry him now."
+
+"I'm not going to marry him at all, Chris."
+
+Upstairs, K.'s door slammed. It was one of his failings that he always
+slammed doors. Harriet used to be quite disagreeable about it.
+
+Sidney slid from the railing.
+
+"There he is now."
+
+Perhaps, in all her frivolous, selfish life, Christine had never had a
+bigger moment than the one that followed. She could have said nothing,
+and, in the queer way that life goes, K. might have gone away from the
+Street as empty of heart as he had come to it.
+
+"Be very good to him, Sidney," she said unsteadily. "He cares so much."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+K. was being very dense. For so long had he considered Sidney as
+unattainable that now his masculine mind, a little weary with much
+wretchedness, refused to move from its old attitude.
+
+"It was glamour, that was all, K.," said Sidney bravely.
+
+"But, perhaps," said K., "it's just because of that miserable incident
+with Carlotta. That wasn't the right thing, of course, but Max has told
+me the story. It was really quite innocent. She fainted in the yard,
+and--"
+
+Sidney was exasperated.
+
+"Do you want me to marry him, K.?"
+
+K. looked straight ahead.
+
+"I want you to be happy, dear."
+
+They were on the terrace of the White Springs Hotel again. K. had
+ordered dinner, making a great to-do about getting the dishes they both
+liked. But now that it was there, they were not eating. K. had placed
+his chair so that his profile was turned toward her. He had worn the
+duster religiously until nightfall, and then had discarded it. It hung
+limp and dejected on the back of his chair. Past K.'s profile Sidney
+could see the magnolia tree shaped like a heart.
+
+"It seems to me," said Sidney suddenly, "that you are kind to every one
+but me, K."
+
+He fairly stammered his astonishment:--
+
+"Why, what on earth have I done?"
+
+"You are trying to make me marry Max, aren't you?"
+
+She was very properly ashamed of that, and, when he failed of reply out
+of sheer inability to think of one that would not say too much, she went
+hastily to something else:
+
+"It is hard for me to realize that you--that you lived a life of your
+own, a busy life, doing useful things, before you came to us. I wish you
+would tell me something about yourself. If we're to be friends when you
+go away,"--she had to stop there, for the lump in her throat--"I'll want
+to know how to think of you,--who your friends are,--all that."
+
+He made an effort. He was thinking, of course, that he would be
+visualizing her, in the hospital, in the little house on its side
+street, as she looked just then, her eyes like stars, her lips just
+parted, her hands folded before her on the table.
+
+"I shall be working," he said at last. "So will you."
+
+"Does that mean you won't have time to think of me?"
+
+"I'm afraid I'm stupider than usual to-night. You can think of me as
+never forgetting you or the Street, working or playing."
+
+Playing! Of course he would not work all the time. And he was going back
+to his old friends, to people who had always known him, to girls--
+
+He did his best then. He told her of the old family house, built by one
+of his forebears who had been a king's man until Washington had put the
+case for the colonies, and who had given himself and his oldest son then
+to the cause that he made his own. He told of old servants who had wept
+when he decided to close the house and go away. When she fell silent, he
+thought he was interesting her. He told her the family traditions that
+had been the fairy tales of his childhood. He described the library, the
+choice room of the house, full of family paintings in old gilt frames,
+and of his father's collection of books. Because it was home, he waxed
+warm over it at last, although it had rather hurt him at first to
+remember. It brought back the other things that he wanted to forget.
+
+But a terrible thing was happening to Sidney. Side by side with the
+wonders he described so casually, she was placing the little house. What
+an exile it must have been for him! How hopelessly middle-class they
+must have seemed! How idiotic of her to think, for one moment, that she
+could ever belong in this new-old life of his!
+
+What traditions had she? None, of course, save to be honest and good
+and to do her best for the people around her. Her mother's people, the
+Kennedys went back a long way, but they had always been poor. A library
+full of paintings and books! She remembered the lamp with the blue-silk
+shade, the figure of Eve that used to stand behind the minister's
+portrait, and the cherry bookcase with the Encyclopaedia in it and
+"Beacon Lights of History." When K., trying his best to interest her and
+to conceal his own heaviness of spirit, told her of his grandfather's
+old carriage, she sat back in the shadow.
+
+"Fearful old thing," said K.,--"regular cabriolet. I can remember yet
+the family rows over it. But the old gentleman liked it--used to have
+it repainted every year. Strangers in the city used to turn around and
+stare at it--thought it was advertising something!"
+
+"When I was a child," said Sidney quietly, "and a carriage drove up and
+stopped on the Street, I always knew some one had died!"
+
+There was a strained note in her voice. K., whose ear was attuned to
+every note in her voice, looked at her quickly. "My great-grandfather,"
+said Sidney in the same tone, "sold chickens at market. He didn't do it
+himself; but the fact's there, isn't it?"
+
+K. was puzzled.
+
+"What about it?" he said.
+
+But Sidney's agile mind had already traveled on. This K. she had never
+known, who had lived in a wonderful house, and all the rest of it--he
+must have known numbers of lovely women, his own sort of women, who had
+traveled and knew all kinds of things: girls like the daughters of the
+Executive Committee who came in from their country places in summer
+with great armfuls of flowers, and hurried off, after consulting their
+jeweled watches, to luncheon or tea or tennis.
+
+"Go on," said Sidney dully. "Tell me about the women you have known,
+your friends, the ones you liked and the ones who liked you."
+
+K. was rather apologetic.
+
+"I've always been so busy," he confessed. "I know a lot, but I don't
+think they would interest you. They don't do anything, you know--they
+travel around and have a good time. They're rather nice to look at, some
+of them. But when you've said that you've said it all."
+
+Nice to look at! Of course they would be, with nothing else to think of
+in all the world but of how they looked.
+
+Suddenly Sidney felt very tired. She wanted to go back to the hospital,
+and turn the key in the door of her little room, and lie with her face
+down on the bed.
+
+"Would you mind very much if I asked you to take me back?"
+
+He did mind. He had a depressed feeling that the evening had failed.
+And his depression grew as he brought the car around. He understood, he
+thought. She was grieving about Max. After all, a girl couldn't care as
+she had for a year and a half, and then give a man up because of another
+woman, without a wrench.
+
+"Do you really want to go home, Sidney, or were you tired of sitting
+there? In that case, we could drive around for an hour or two. I'll not
+talk if you'd like to be quiet." Being with K. had become an agony, now
+that she realized how wrong Christine had been, and that their worlds,
+hers and K.'s, had only touched for a time. Soon they would be separated
+by as wide a gulf as that which lay between the cherry bookcase--for
+instance,--and a book-lined library hung with family portraits. But she
+was not disposed to skimp as to agony. She would go through with it,
+every word a stab, if only she might sit beside K. a little longer,
+might feel the touch of his old gray coat against her arm. "I'd like to
+ride, if you don't mind."
+
+K. turned the automobile toward the country roads. He was remembering
+acutely that other ride after Joe in his small car, the trouble he
+had had to get a machine, the fear of he knew not what ahead, and his
+arrival at last at the road-house, to find Max lying at the head of the
+stairs and Carlotta on her knees beside him.
+
+"K." "Yes?"
+
+"Was there anybody you cared about,--any girl,--when you left home?"
+
+"I was not in love with anyone, if that's what you mean."
+
+"You knew Max before, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. You know that."
+
+"If you knew things about him that I should have known, why didn't you
+tell me?"
+
+"I couldn't do that, could I? Anyhow--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I thought everything would be all right. It seemed to me that the mere
+fact of your caring for him--" That was shaky ground; he got off it
+quickly. "Schwitter has closed up. Do you want to stop there?"
+
+"Not to-night, please."
+
+They were near the white house now. Schwitter's had closed up, indeed.
+The sign over the entrance was gone. The lanterns had been taken down,
+and in the dusk they could see Tillie rocking her baby on the porch. As
+if to cover the last traces of his late infamy, Schwitter himself was
+watering the worn places on the lawn with the garden can.
+
+The car went by. Above the low hum of the engine they could hear
+Tillie's voice, flat and unmusical, but filled with the harmonies of
+love as she sang to the child.
+
+When they had left the house far behind, K. was suddenly aware that
+Sidney was crying. She sat with her head turned away, using her
+handkerchief stealthily. He drew the car up beside the road, and in a
+masterful fashion turned her shoulders about until she faced him.
+
+"Now, tell me about it," he said.
+
+"It's just silliness. I'm--I'm a little bit lonely."
+
+"Lonely!"
+
+"Aunt Harriet's in Paris, and with Joe gone and everybody--"
+
+"Aunt Harriet!"
+
+He was properly dazed, for sure. If she had said she was lonely
+because the cherry bookcase was in Paris, he could not have been more
+bewildered. And Joe! "And with you going away and never coming back--"
+
+"I'll come back, of course. How's this? I'll promise to come back when
+you graduate, and send you flowers."
+
+"I think," said Sidney, "that I'll become an army nurse."
+
+"I hope you won't do that."
+
+"You won't know, K. You'll be back with your old friends. You'll have
+forgotten the Street and all of us."
+
+"Do you really think that?"
+
+"Girls who have been everywhere, and have lovely clothes, and who won't
+know a T bandage from a figure eight!"
+
+"There will never be anybody in the world like you to me, dear."
+
+His voice was husky.
+
+"You are saying that to comfort me."
+
+"To comfort you! I--who have wanted you so long that it hurts even to
+think about it! Ever since the night I came up the Street, and you were
+sitting there on the steps--oh, my dear, my dear, if you only cared a
+little!"
+
+Because he was afraid that he would get out of hand and take her in his
+arms,--which would be idiotic, since, of course, she did not care for
+him that way,--he gripped the steering-wheel. It gave him a curious
+appearance of making a pathetic appeal to the wind-shield.
+
+"I have been trying to make you say that all evening!" said Sidney. "I
+love you so much that--K., won't you take me in your arms?"
+
+Take her in his arms! He almost crushed her. He held her to him and
+muttered incoherencies until she gasped. It was as if he must make up
+for long arrears of hopelessness. He held her off a bit to look at her,
+as if to be sure it was she and no changeling, and as if he wanted her
+eyes to corroborate her lips. There was no lack of confession in her
+eyes; they showed him a new heaven and a new earth.
+
+"It was you always, K.," she confessed. "I just didn't realize it. But
+now, when you look back, don't you see it was?"
+
+He looked back over the months when she had seemed as unattainable as
+the stars, and he did not see it. He shook his head.
+
+"I never had even a hope."
+
+"Not when I came to you with everything? I brought you all my troubles,
+and you always helped."
+
+Her eyes filled. She bent down and kissed one of his hands. He was so
+happy that the foolish little caress made his heart hammer in his ears.
+
+"I think, K., that is how one can always tell when it is the right one,
+and will be the right one forever and ever. It is the person--one goes
+to in trouble."
+
+He had no words for that, only little caressing touches of her arm, her
+hand. Perhaps, without knowing it, he was formulating a sort of prayer
+that, since there must be troubles, she would, always come to him and he
+would always be able to help her.
+
+And Sidney, too, fell silent. She was recalling the day she became
+engaged to Max, and the lost feeling she had had. She did not feel the
+same at all now. She felt as if she had been wandering, and had come
+home to the arms that were about her. She would be married, and take the
+risk that all women took, with her eyes open. She would go through the
+valley of the shadow, as other women did; but K. would be with her.
+Nothing else mattered. Looking into his steady eyes, she knew that she
+was safe. She would never wither for him.
+
+Where before she had felt the clutch of inexorable destiny, the woman's
+fate, now she felt only his arms about her, her cheek on his shabby
+coat.
+
+"I shall love you all my life," she said shakily.
+
+His arms tightened about her.
+
+The little house was dark when they got back to it. The Street, which
+had heard that Mr. Le Moyne approved of night air, was raising its
+windows for the night and pinning cheesecloth bags over its curtains to
+keep them clean.
+
+In the second-story front room at Mrs. McKee's, the barytone slept
+heavily, and made divers unvocal sounds. He was hardening his throat,
+and so slept with a wet towel about it.
+
+Down on the doorstep, Mrs. McKee and Mr. Wagner sat and made love with
+the aid of a lighted match and the pencil-pad.
+
+The car drew up at the little house, and Sidney got out. Then it drove
+away, for K. must take it to the garage and walk back.
+
+Sidney sat on the doorstep and waited. How lovely it all was! How
+beautiful life was! If one did one's best by life, it did its best too.
+How steady K.'s eyes were! She saw the flicker of the match across the
+street, and knew what it meant. Once she would have thought that that
+was funny; now it seemed very touching to her.
+
+Katie had heard the car, and now she came heavily along the hall. "A
+woman left this for Mr. K.," she said. "If you think it's a begging
+letter, you'd better keep it until he's bought his new suit to-morrow.
+Almost any moment he's likely to bust out."
+
+But it was not a begging letter. K. read it in the hall, with Sidney's
+shining eyes on him. It began abruptly:--
+
+"I'm going to Africa with one of my cousins. She is a medical
+missionary. Perhaps I can work things out there. It is a bad station on
+the West Coast. I am not going because I feel any call to the work, but
+because I do not know what else to do.
+
+"You were kind to me the other day. I believe, if I had told you then,
+you would still have been kind. I tried to tell you, but I was so
+terribly afraid.
+
+"If I caused death, I did not mean to. You will think that no excuse,
+but it is true. In the hospital, when I changed the bottles on Miss
+Page's medicine-tray, I did not care much what happened. But it was
+different with you.
+
+"You dismissed me, you remember. I had been careless about a sponge
+count. I made up my mind to get back at you. It seemed hopeless--you
+were so secure. For two or three days I tried to think of some way to
+hurt you. I almost gave up. Then I found the way.
+
+"You remember the packets of gauze sponges we made and used in the
+operating-room? There were twelve to each package. When we counted them
+as we got them out, we counted by packages. On the night before I left,
+I went to the operating-room and added one sponge every here and there.
+Out of every dozen packets, perhaps, I fixed one that had thirteen. The
+next day I went away.
+
+"Then I was terrified. What if somebody died? I had meant to give you
+trouble, so you would have to do certain cases a second time. I swear
+that was all. I was so frightened that I went down sick over it. When
+I got better, I heard you had lost a case and the cause was being
+whispered about. I almost died of terror.
+
+"I tried to get back into the hospital one night. I went up the
+fire-escape, but the windows were locked. Then I left the city. I
+couldn't stand it. I was afraid to read a newspaper.
+
+"I am not going to sign this letter. You know who it is from. And I am
+not going to ask your forgiveness, or anything of that sort. I don't
+expect it. But one thing hurt me more than anything else, the other
+night. You said you'd lost your faith in yourself. This is to tell you
+that you need not. And you said something else--that any one can 'come
+back.' I wonder!"
+
+K. stood in the hall of the little house with the letter in his hand.
+Just beyond on the doorstep was Sidney, waiting for him. His arms were
+still warm from the touch of her. Beyond lay the Street, and beyond that
+lay the world and a man's work to do. Work, and faith to do it, a good
+woman's hand in the dark, a Providence that made things right in the
+end.
+
+"Are you coming, K.?"
+
+"Coming," he said. And, when he was beside her, his long figure folded
+to the short measure of the step, he stooped humbly and kissed the hem
+of her soft white dress.
+
+Across the Street, Mr. Wagner wrote something in the dark and then
+lighted a match.
+
+"So K. is in love with Sidney Page, after all!" he had written. "She
+is a sweet girl, and he is every inch a man. But, to my mind, a certain
+lady--"
+
+Mrs. McKee flushed and blew out the match.
+
+Late September now on the Street, with Joe gone and his mother eyeing
+the postman with pitiful eagerness; with Mrs. Rosenfeld moving heavily
+about the setting-up of the new furniture; and with Johnny driving
+heavenly cars, brake and clutch legs well and Strong. Late September,
+with Max recovering and settling his tie for any pretty nurse who
+happened along, but listening eagerly for Dr. Ed's square tread in the
+hall; with Tillie rocking her baby on the porch at Schwitter's, and
+Carlotta staring westward over rolling seas; with Christine taking up
+her burden and Grace laying hers down; with Joe's tragic young eyes
+growing quiet with the peace of the tropics.
+
+"The Lord is my shepherd," she reads. "I shall not want."..."Yea, though
+I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
+
+Sidney, on her knees in the little parlor, repeats the words with the
+others. K. has gone from the Street, and before long she will join him.
+With the vision of his steady eyes before her, she adds her own prayer
+to the others--that the touch of his arms about her may not make her
+forget the vow she has taken, of charity and its sister, service, of a
+cup of water to the thirsty, of open arms to a tired child.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of K, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
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