"I--I know that. I am asking you something else, Max."

"I have never been in love with her."

His voice was sulky. He had drawn the car close to a bank, and they were sitting in the shade, on the gra.s.s. It was the Sunday afternoon after Sidney's experience in the operating-room.

"You took her out, Max, didn't you?"

"A few times, yes. She seemed to have no friends. I was sorry for her."

"That was all?"

"Absolutely. Good Heavens, you've put me through a catechism in the last ten minutes!"

"If my father were living, or even mother, I--one of them would have done this for me, Max. I'm sorry I had to. I've been very wretched for several days."

It was the first encouragement she had given him. There was no coquetry about her aloofness. It was only that her faith in him had had a shock and was slow of reviving.

"You are very, very lovely, Sidney. I wonder if you have any idea what you mean to me?"

"You meant a great deal to me, too," she said frankly, "until a few days ago. I thought you were the greatest man I had ever known, and the best.

And then--I think I'd better tell you what I overheard. I didn't try to hear. It just happened that way."

He listened doggedly to her account of the hospital gossip, doggedly and with a sinking sense of fear, not of the talk, but of Carlotta herself.

Usually one might count on the woman's silence, her instinct for self-protection. But Carlotta was different. d.a.m.n the girl, anyhow! She had known from the start that the affair was a temporary one; he had never pretended anything else.

There was silence for a moment after Sidney finished. Then:

"You are not a child any longer, Sidney. You have learned a great deal in this last year. One of the things you know is that almost every man has small affairs, many of them sometimes, before he finds the woman he wants to marry. When he finds her, the others are all off--there's nothing to them. It's the real thing then, instead of the sham."

"Palmer was very much in love with Christine, and yet--"

"Palmer is a cad."

"I don't want you to think I'm making terms. I'm not. But if this thing went on, and I found out afterward that you--that there was anyone else, it would kill me."

"Then you care, after all!"

There was something boyish in his triumph, in the very gesture with which he held out his arms, like a child who has escaped a whipping. He stood up and, catching her hands, drew her to her feet. "You love me, dear."

"I'm afraid I do, Max."

"Then I'm yours, and only yours, if you want me," he said, and took her in his arms.

He was riotously happy, must hold her off for the joy of drawing her to him again, must pull off her gloves and kiss her soft bare palms.

"I love you, love you!" he cried, and bent down to bury his face in the warm hollow of her neck.

Sidney glowed under his caresses--was rather startled at his pa.s.sion, a little ashamed.

"Tell me you love me a little bit. Say it."

"I love you," said Sidney, and flushed scarlet.

But even in his arms, with the warm sunlight on his radiant face, with his lips to her ear, whispering the divine absurdities of pa.s.sion, in the back of her obstinate little head was the thought that, while she had given him her first embrace, he had held other women in his arms. It made her pa.s.sive, prevented her complete surrender.

And after a time he resented it. "You are only letting me love you," he complained. "I don't believe you care, after all."

He freed her, took a step back from her.

"I am afraid I am jealous," she said simply. "I keep thinking of--of Carlotta."

"Will it help any if I swear that that is off absolutely?"

"Don't be absurd. It is enough to have you say so."

But he insisted on swearing, standing with one hand upraised, his eyes on her. The Sunday landscape was very still, save for the hum of busy insect life. A mile or so away, at the foot of two hills, lay a white farmhouse with its barn and outbuildings. In a small room in the barn a woman sat; and because it was Sunday, and she could not sew, she read her Bible.

"--and that after this there will be only one woman for me," finished Max, and dropped his hand. He bent over and kissed Sidney on the lips.

At the white farmhouse, a little man stood in the doorway and surveyed the road with eyes shaded by a shirt-sleeved arm. Behind him, in a darkened room, a barkeeper was wiping the bar with a clean cloth.

"I guess I'll go and get my coat on, Bill," said the little man heavily.

"They're starting to come now. I see a machine about a mile down the road."

Sidney broke the news of her engagement to K. herself, the evening of the same day. The little house was quiet when she got out of the car at the door. Harriet was asleep on the couch at the foot of her bed, and Christine's rooms were empty. She found Katie on the back porch, mountains of Sunday newspapers piled around her.

"I'd about give you up," said Katie. "I was thinking, rather than see your ice-cream that's left from dinner melt and go to waste, I'd take it around to the Rosenfelds."

"Please take it to them. I'd really rather they had it."

She stood in front of Katie, drawing off her gloves.

"Aunt Harriet's asleep. Is--is Mr. Le Moyne around?"

"You're gettin' prettier every day, Miss Sidney. Is that the blue suit Miss Harriet said she made for you? It's right stylish. I'd like to see the back."

Sidney obediently turned, and Katie admired.

"When I think how things have turned out!" she reflected. "You in a hospital, doing G.o.d knows what for all sorts of people, and Miss Harriet making a suit like that and asking a hundred dollars for it, and that tony that a person doesn't dare to speak to her when she's in the dining-room. And your poor ma...well, it's all in a lifetime! No; Mr.

K.'s not here. He and Mrs. Howe are gallivanting around together."

"Katie!"

"Well, that's what I call it. I'm not blind. Don't I hear her dressing up about four o'clock every afternoon, and, when she's all ready, sittin' in the parlor with the door open, and a book on her knee, as if she'd been reading all afternoon? If he doesn't stop, she's at the foot of the stairs, calling up to him. 'K.,' she says, 'K., I'm waiting to ask you something!' or, 'K., wouldn't you like a cup of tea?' She's always feedin' him tea and cake, so that when he comes to table he won't eat honest victuals."

Sidney had paused with one glove half off. Katie's tone carried conviction. Was life making another of its queer errors, and were Christine and K. in love with each other? K. had always been HER friend, HER confidant. To give him up to Christine--she shook herself impatiently. What had come over her? Why not be glad that he had some sort of companionship?

She went upstairs to the room that had been her mother's, and took off her hat. She wanted to be alone, to realize what had happened to her. She did not belong to herself any more. It gave her an odd, lost feeling. She was going to be married--not very soon, but ultimately. A year ago her half promise to Joe had gratified her sense of romance. She was loved, and she had thrilled to it.