K. spent all of the evening of that day with Wilson.
He was not to go for Joe until eleven o’clock.
The injured man’s vitality was standing him
in good stead. He had asked for Sidney and she
was at his bedside. Dr. Ed had gone.
“I’m going, Max. The office is full,
they tell me,” he said, bending over the bed.
“I’ll come in later, and if they’ll
make me a shakedown, I’ll stay with you to-night.”
The answer was faint, broken but distinct. “Get
some sleep...I’ve been a poor stick...try to
do better—” His roving eyes fell
on the dog collar on the stand. He smiled, “Good
old Bob!” he said, and put his hand over Dr.
Ed’s, as it lay on the bed.
K. found Sidney in the room, not sitting, but standing
by the window. The sick man was dozing.
One shaded light burned in a far corner. She
turned slowly and met his eyes. It seemed to
K. that she looked at him as if she had never really
seen him before, and he was right. Readjustments
are always difficult.
Sidney was trying to reconcile the K. she had known
so well with this new K., no longer obscure, although
still shabby, whose height had suddenly become presence,
whose quiet was the quiet of infinite power.
She was suddenly shy of him, as he stood looking down
at her. He saw the gleam of her engagement ring
on her finger. It seemed almost defiant.
As though she had meant by wearing it to emphasize
her belief in her lover.
They did not speak beyond their greeting, until he
had gone over the record. Then:—
“We can’t talk here. I want to talk
to you, K.”
He led the way into the corridor. It was very
dim. Far away was the night nurse’s desk,
with its lamp, its annunciator, its pile of records.
The passage floor reflected the light on glistening
boards.
“I have been thinking until I am almost crazy,
K. And now I know how it happened. It was Joe.”
“The principal thing is, not how it happened,
but that he is going to get well, Sidney.”
She stood looking down, twisting her ring around her
finger.
“Is Joe in any danger?”
“We are going to get him away to-night.
He wants to go to Cuba. He’ll get off
safely, I think.”
“We are going to get him away! You
are, you mean. You shoulder all our troubles,
K., as if they were your own.”
“I?” He was genuinely surprised.
“Oh, I see. You mean—but my
part in getting Joe off is practically nothing.
As a matter of fact, Schwitter has put up the money.
My total capital in the world, after paying the taxicab
to-day, is seven dollars.”
“The taxicab?”
“By Jove, I was forgetting! Best news
you ever heard of! Tillie married and has a
baby—all in twenty-four hours! Boy—they
named it Le Moyne. Squalled like a maniac when
the water went on its head. I—I took
Mrs. McKee out in a hired machine. That’s
what happened to my capital.” He grinned
sheepishly. “She said she would have to
go in her toque. I had awful qualms. I
thought it was a wrapper.”
