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."