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?"