"Ah!"

"I have not seen you since you left St. John's."

"No; I--I rested for a few months."

"I suppose they do not know that you were--that you have had any previous hospital experience."

"No. Are you going to tell them?"

"I shall not tell them, of course."

And thus, by simple mutual consent, it was arranged that each should respect the other's confidence.

Carlotta staggered to her room. There had been a time, just before dawn, when she had had one of those swift revelations that sometimes come at the end of a long night. She had seen herself as she was. The boy was very low, hardly breathing. Her past stretched behind her, a series of small revenges and pa.s.sionate outbursts, swift yieldings, slow remorse.

She dared not look ahead. She would have given every hope she had in the world, just then, for Sidney's stainless past.

She hated herself with that deadliest loathing that comes of complete self-revelation.

And she carried to her room the knowledge that the night's struggle had been in vain--that, although Johnny Rosenfeld would live, she had gained nothing by what he had suffered. The whole night had shown her the hopelessness of any stratagem to win Wilson from his new allegiance. She had surprised him in the hallway, watching Sidney's slender figure as she made her way up the stairs to her room. Never, in all his past overtures to her, had she seen that look in his eyes.

CHAPTER XIX

To Harriet Kennedy, Sidney's sentence of thirty days' suspension came as a blow. K. broke the news to her that evening before the time for Sidney's arrival.

The little household was sharing in Harriet's prosperity. Katie had a helper now, a little Austrian girl named Mimi. And Harriet had established on the Street the innovation of after-dinner coffee. It was over the after-dinner coffee that K. made his announcement.

"What do you mean by saying she is coming home for thirty days? Is the child ill?"

"Not ill, although she is not quite well. The fact is, Harriet,"--for it was "Harriet" and "K." by this time,--"there has been a sort of semi-accident up at the hospital. It hasn't resulted seriously, but--"

Harriet put down the apostle-spoon in her hand and stared across at him.

"Then she has been suspended? What did she do? I don't believe she did anything!"

"There was a mistake about the medicine, and she was blamed; that's all."

"She'd better come home and stay home," said Harriet shortly. "I hope it doesn't get in the papers. This dressmaking business is a funny sort of thing. One word against you or any of your family, and the crowd's off somewhere else."

"There's nothing against Sidney," K. reminded her. "Nothing in the world. I saw the superintendent myself this afternoon. It seems it's a mere matter of discipline. Somebody made a mistake, and they cannot let such a thing go by. But he believes, as I do, that it was not Sidney."

However Harriet had hardened herself against the girl's arrival, all she had meant to say fled when she saw Sidney's circled eyes and pathetic mouth.

"You child!" she said. "You poor little girl!" And took her corseted bosom.

For the time at least, Sidney's world had gone to pieces about her. All her brave vaunt of service faded before her disgrace.

When Christine would have seen her, she kept her door locked and asked for just that one evening alone. But after Harriet had retired, and Mimi, the Austrian, had crept out to the corner to mail a letter back to Gratz, Sidney unbolted her door and listened in the little upper hall.

Harriet, her head in a towel, her face carefully cold-creamed, had gone to bed; but K.'s light, as usual, was shining over the transom. Sidney tiptoed to the door.

"K.!"

Almost immediately he opened the door.

"May I come in and talk to you?"

He turned and took a quick survey of the room. The picture was against the collar-box. But he took the risk and held the door wide.

Sidney came in and sat down by the fire. By being adroit he managed to slip the little picture over and under the box before she saw it. It is doubtful if she would have realized its significance, had she seen it.

"I've been thinking things over," she said. "It seems to me I'd better not go back."

He had left the door carefully open. Men are always more conventional than women.

"That would be foolish, wouldn't it, when you have done so well? And, besides, since you are not guilty, Sidney--"

"I didn't do it!" she cried pa.s.sionately. "I know I didn't. But I've lost faith in myself. I can't keep on; that's all there is to it. All last night, in the emergency ward, I felt it going. I clutched at it. I kept saying to myself: 'You didn't do it, you didn't do it'; and all the time something inside of me was saying, 'Not now, perhaps; but sometime you may.'"

Poor K., who had reasoned all this out for himself and had come to the same impa.s.se!

"To go on like this, feeling that one has life and death in one's hand, and then perhaps some day to make a mistake like that!" She looked up at him forlornly. "I am just not brave enough, K."

"Wouldn't it be braver to keep on? Aren't you giving up very easily?"

Her world was in pieces about her, and she felt alone in a wide and empty place. And, because her nerves were drawn taut until they were ready to snap, Sidney turned on him shrewishly.

"I think you are all afraid I will come back to stay. n.o.body really wants me anywhere--in all the world! Not at the hospital, not here, not anyplace. I am no use."

"When you say that n.o.body wants you," said K., not very steadily, "I--I think you are making a mistake."

"Who?" she demanded. "Christine? Aunt Harriet? Katie? The only person who ever really wanted me was my mother, and I went away and left her!"

She scanned his face closely, and, reading there something she did not understand, she colored suddenly.

"I believe you mean Joe Drummond."

"No; I do not mean Joe Drummond."

If he had found any encouragement in her face, he would have gone on recklessly; but her blank eyes warned him.

"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."