The wonder in Wilson’s voice was giving way
to irritation.
“But—when you had everything!
Why, good Heavens, man, I did your operation to-day,
and I’ve been blowing about it ever since.”
“I had everything for a while. Then I
lost the essential. When that happened I gave
up. All a man in our profession has is a certain
method, knowledge—call it what you like,—and
faith in himself. I lost my self-confidence;
that’s all. Certain things happened; kept
on happening. So I gave it up. That’s
all. It’s not dramatic. For about
a year I was damned sorry for myself. I’ve
stopped whining now.”
“If every surgeon gave up because he lost cases—I’ve
just told you I did your operation to-day. There
was just a chance for the man, and I took my courage
in my hands and tried it. The poor devil’s
dead.”
K. rose rather wearily and emptied his pipe over the
balcony rail.
“That’s not the same. That’s
the chance he and you took. What happened to
me was—different.”
Pipe in hand, he stood staring out at the ailanthus
tree with its crown of stars. Instead of the
Street with its quiet houses, he saw the men he had
known and worked with and taught, his friends who spoke
his language, who had loved him, many of them, gathered
about a bronze tablet set in a wall of the old college;
he saw their earnest faces and grave eyes. He
heard—
He heard the soft rustle of Sidney’s dress as
she came into the little room behind them.
A few days after Wilson’s recognition of K.,
two most exciting things happened to Sidney.
One was that Christine asked her to be maid of honor
at her wedding. The other was more wonderful.
She was accepted, and given her cap.
Because she could not get home that night, and because
the little house had no telephone, she wrote the news
to her mother and sent a note to Le Moyne:
Dear K.,—I am accepted, and it
is on my head at this minute. I am as conscious
of it as if it were a halo, and as if I had done something
to deserve it, instead of just hoping that someday
I shall. I am writing this on the bureau, so
that when I lift my eyes I may see It. I am afraid
just now I am thinking more of the cap than of what
it means. It is becoming!
Very soon I shall slip down and show it to the ward.
I have promised. I shall go to the door when
the night nurse is busy somewhere, and turn all around
and let them see it, without saying a word. They
love a little excitement like that.
You have been very good to me, dear K. It is you
who have made possible this happiness of mine to-night.
I am promising myself to be very good, and not so
vain, and to love my enemies—, although
I have none now. Miss Harrison has just congratulated
me most kindly, and I am sure poor Joe has both forgiven
and forgotten.
