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 man like 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.
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.
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.