"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.