"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."