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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of K, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+#17 in our series by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: K
+
+Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9931]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 1, 2003]
+[Date last updated: January 2, 2006]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE 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
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK K ***
+
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