MARY ROBERTS RINEHART K THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF "Ma" Cran thus, lay the world that was some day to lie to he* hand. Not ambition called her, but life. The boy was different. Where her future lay visu- alized before her, heroic deeds, great ambitions : wide charity, he planned years with her, selfish, con^ tented years. As different as smug, satisfied sum- mer from visionary, palpitating spring, he was fcr her but she was for all the world. By shifting his position his lips came close to hei bare young arm. It tempted him. "Don't read that nonsense," he said, his eyes or* the arm. "And I'll never outgrow my foolish ness about you, Sidney." Then, because he could not help it, he bent ovej and kissed her arm. She was just eighteen, and Joe's devotion was very pleasant. She thrilled to the touch of his lips oij. her flesh; but she drew her arm away. " Please I don't like that sort of thing/ 1 "Why not?" His voice was husky. " It isn't right. Besides, the neighbors are always ooking out of the windows." The drop from her high standard of right and v^rong to the neighbors' curiosity appealed suddenly to her sense of humor. She threw back her head and laughed. He joined her, after an uncomfortable moment. But he was very much in earnest. He sat 'oent forward, turning his new straw hat in his hands " I guess you know how I feel. Some of the fellows 7 K have crushes on girls and get over them. I'm not like that. Since the first day I saw you I Ve never looked at another girl. Books can say what they like: there are people like that, and I'm one of There was a touch of dogged pathos in his voice. He was that sort, and Sidney knew it. Fidelity and 'tenderness those would be hers if she married tiim. He would always be there when she wanted him, looking at her with loving eyes, a trifle wistful sometimes because of his lack of those very qualities he so admired in her her wit, her resourcefulness, her humor. But he would be there, not strong, per- haps, but always loyal. "I thought, perhaps," said Joe, growing red and white, and talking to the hat, "that some day, when we 're older, you you might be willing to marry me, Sid. I 'd be awfully good to you." It hurt her to say no. Indeed, she could not bring herself to say it. In all her short life she had never willfully inflicted a wound. And because she was young, and did not realize that there is a short cru- elty, like the surgeon's, that is mercy in the end, she temporized. "There is such a lot of time before we need think of such things ! Can't we just go on the way we are? " " I 'm not very happy the way we are." "Why, Joe!" "Well, I'm not" doggedly. "You're pretty and attractive. When I see a fellow staring at you, 8 K and I 'd like to smash his face for him, I have n't the right." "And a precious good thing for you that you have n't!" cried Sidney, rather shocked. There was silence for a moment between them, Sidney, to tell the truth, was obsessed by a vision of Joe, young and hot-eyed, being haled to the police station by virtue of his betrothal responsibilities. The boy was vacillating between relief at having spoken and a heaviness of spirit that came from Sidney's lack of enthusiastic response. "Well, what do you think about it?" "If you are asking me to give you permission to waylay and assault every man who dares to look at me" 41 1 guess this is all a joke to you." She leaned over and put a tender hand on his arm. " I don't want to hurt you; but, Joe, I don't want to be engaged yet. I don't want to think about marrying. There's such a lot to do in the world first. There's such a lot to see and be." "Where?" he demanded bitterly. "Here on this Street? Do you want more time to pull bastings for your mother? Or to slave for your Aunt Harriet? Or to run up and down stairs, carrying towels to roomers? Marry me and let me take care of you." Once again her dangerous sense of humor threat- ened her. He looked so boyish, sitting there with the moonlight on his bright hair, so inadequate to carry out his magnificent offer. Two or three of the star 9 blossoms from the tree had fallen on his head. She lifted them carefully away. "Let me take care of myself for a while. I've never lived my own life. You know what I mean. I 'm not unhappy ; but I want to do something. And some day I shall, not anything big; I know I can't do that, but something useful. Then, after years and years, if you still want me, I '11 come back to you." "How soon?" "How can I know that now? But it will be a long time." He drew a long breath and got up. All the joy had gone out of the summer night for him, poor lad- He glanced down the Street, where Palmer Howe had gone home happily with Sidney's friend Christine. Palmer would always know how he stood with Christine. She would never talk about doing things, or being things. Either she would marry Palmer or she would not. But Sidney was not like that. A fel- low did not even caress her easily. When he had only kissed her arm He trembled a little at the memory. " I shall always want you," he said. " Only you will never come back." It had not occurred to either of them that this coming back, so tragically considered, was depend- ent on an entirely problematical going away. Noth- ing, that early summer night, seemed more unlikeiy than that Sidney would ever be free to live her own Uie. The Street, stretching away to the north and to- 10 the south in two lines of houses that seemed to meet in the distance, hemmed her in. She had been born in the little brick house, and, as she was of it, so it was of her. Her hands had smoothed and painted the pine floors; her hands had put up the twine on which the morning-glories in the yard covered the fences; had, indeed, with what agonies of slacking lime and adding blueing, whitewashed the fence it- self! "She's capable," Aunt Harriet had grumblingly admitted, watching from her sewing-machine Sid- ney's strong young arms at this humble spring task. "She's wonderful!" her mother had said, as she bent over her hand work. She was not strong enough to run the sewing-machine. So Joe Drummond stood on the pavement and saw his dream of taking Sidney in his arms fade into an indefinite futurity. " I 'm not going to give you up," he said doggedly. *'When you come back, I'll be waiting." The shock being over, and things only postponed, he dramatized his grief a trifle, thrust his hands savagely into his pockets, and scowled down the Street. In the line of his vision, his quick eye caught a tiny moving shadow, lost it, found it again. "Great Scott! There goes Reginald!" he cried, and ran after the shadow. "Watch for the McKees' cat!" Sidney was running by that time ; they were gain- ing. Their quarry, a four-inch chipmunk, hesitated, ii K gave a protesting squeak, and was caught in Sidney's hand. "You wretch!" she cried. "You miserable little beast with cats everywhere, and not a nut for miles!" "That reminds me," Joe put a hand into his pocket, "I brought some chestnuts for him, and forgot them. Here." Reginald's escape had rather knocked the tragedy out of the evening. True, Sidney would not marry him for years, but she had practically promised to sometime. And when one is twenty-one, and it is a summer uight, and life stretches eternities ahead, what are a lew years more or less? Sidney was holding the tiny squirrel in warm, pro- tecting hands. She smiled up at the boy. "Good-night, Joe." "Good-night. I say, Sidney, it's more than half an engagement. Won't you kiss me good-night?" She hesitated, flushed and palpitating. Kisses were rare in the staid little household to which she belonged. "I I think not." " Please ! I'm not very happy, and it will be some- thing to remember." Perhaps, after all, Sidney's first kiss would have gone without her heart, which was a thing she had determined would never happen, gone out of sheer pity. But a tall figure loomed out of the shadows and approached with quick strides. 12 <: The roomer!" cried Sidney, and backed away. "Damn the roomer!" Poor Joe, with the summer evening quite spoiled, with no caress to remember, and with a potential rival, who possessed both the years and the inches he lacked, coming up the Street! The roomer advanced steadily. When he reached the doorstep, Sidney was demurely seated and quite alone. The roomer, who had walked fast, stopped and took off his hat. He looked very warm. He carried a suit-case, which was as it should be. The men of the Street always carried their own luggage, except the younger Wilson across the way. His tastes were known to be luxurious. "Hot, is ri't it?" Sidney inquired, after a formal greeting. She indicated the place on the step just vacated by Joe. "You'd better cool off out here. The house is like an oven. I think I should have warned you of that before you took the room. These little houses with low roofs are fearfully hot." The new roomer hesitated. The steps were very low, and he was tall. Besides, he did not care to es- tablish any relations with the people in the house* Long evenings in which to read, quiet nights in which to sleep and forget these were the things he had come for. But Sidney had moved over and was smiling up at him. He folded up awkwardly on the low step. He seemed much too big for the house. Sidney had a panicky thought of the little room upstairs. 13 K. *' I don't mind heat. I I suppose I don't think about it," said the roomer, rather surprised at him- self. Reginald, having finished his chestnut, squeaked for another. The roomer started. "Just Reginald my ground-squirrel." Sidney was skinning a nut with her strong white teeth. "That's another thing I should have told you. I 'IB afraid you'll be sorry you took the room." The roomer smiled in the shadow. " I 'm beginning to think that you are sorry." She was all anxiety to reassure him : " It's because of Reginald. He lives under my - under your bureau. He's really not troublesome; but he 's building a nest under the bureau, and if you don't know about him, it's rather unsettling to see a paper pattern from the sewing-room, or a piece of cloth, moving across the floor." Mr. Le Moyne thought it might be very interest- ing. "Although, if there's nest-building going on f is n't it er possible that Reginald is a lady ground-squirrel? " Sidney was rather distressed, and, seeing this, he hastened to add that, for all he knew, all ground- squirrels built nests, regardless of sex. As a mat- ter of fact, it developed that he knew nothing what- ever of ground-squirrels. Sidney was relieved. She chatted gayly of the tiny creature of his rescue in the woods from a crowd of little boys, of his restora- tion to health and spirits, and of her expectation, when he was quite strong, of taking him to the woods and freeing him. Le Moyne, listening attentively, began to be in- terested. His quick mind had grasped the fact that it was the girl's bedroom he had taken. Other things he had gathered that afternoon from the humming of a sewing-machine, from Sidney's businesslike way of renting the little room, from the glimpse of a woman in a sunny window, bent over a needle. Gen- teel poverty was what it meant, and more the constant drain of disheartened, middle-aged wo- luen on the youth and courage of the girl beside him. K. Le Moyne, who was living his own tragedy those days, what with poverty and other things, sat on the doorstep while Sidney talked, and swore a quiet oath to be no further weight on the girl's buoyant spirit. And, since determining on a virtue is halfway to gaining it, hi< voice lost its perfunctory note. He had no intention of letting the Street en> croach on him. He had built up a wall between himself and the rest of the world, and he would not scale it. But he held no grudge against it. Let others get what they could out of living. Sidney, suddenly practical, broke in on hi? thoughts: "Where are you going to get your meals?" "I had n't thought about it. I can stop in some- where on my way downtown. I work in the gas office I don't believe I told you. It's rather hap* hazard not the gas office, but the eating. How ever, it's convenient." "It's very bad for you," said Sidney, with deci- sion. " It leads to slovenly habits, such as going with- out when you 're in a hurry, and that sort ot thing. The only thing is to have some one expecting you at a certain time." " It sounds like marriage." He was lazily amused. " It sounds like Mrs. McKee's boarding-house at the corner. Twenty-one meals for five dollars, and a ticket to punch. Tillie, the dining-room girl, punches for every meal you get. If you miss any meals, your ticket is good until it is punched. But Mrs. McKee does n't like it if you miss." "Mrs. McKee for me," said Le Moyne. "I dare say, if I know that er Tillie is waiting with the punch, I'll be fairly regular to my meals." It was growing late. The Street, which mistrusted night air, even on a hot summer evening, was closing its windows. Reginald, having eaten his fill, had cuddled in the warm hollow of Sidney's lap, and slept. By shifting his position, the man was able to see the girl's face. Very lovely it was, he thought. Very pure, almost radiant and young. From the middle age of his almost thirty years, she was a child. There had been a boy in the shadows when he came up the Street. Of course there would be a boy a nice, clear-eyed chap Sidney was looking at the moon. With that dream- er's part of her that she had inherited from her dead 16 K - g and gone father, she was quietly worshiping the night. But her busy brain was working, too, the practical brain that she had got from her mother's side. "What about your washing?" she inquired un^ expectedly. K. Le Moyne, who had built a wall between him- self and the world, had already married her to the youth of the shadows, and was feeling an odd sense of loss. "Washing?" "I suppose you've been sending things to the laundry, and what do you do about your stock' ings?" "Buy cheap ones and throw 'em away when they're worn out." There seemed to be no reserve? with this surprising young person. "And buttons?" "Use safety-pins. When they're closed one can button over them as well as " " I think," said Sidney, " that it is quite time some one took a little care of you. If you will give Katie, our maid, twenty-five cents a week, she'll do your washing and not tear your things to ribbons. And I'll mend them." Sheer stupefaction was K. Le Moyne's. After a moment : "You're really rather wonderful, Miss Page. Here am I, lodged, fed, washed, ironed, and mended for seven dollars and seventy-five cents a week!" 17 "I hope," said Sidney severely, "that you'll put what you save in the bank." He was still somewhat dazed when he went up the narrow staircase to his swept and garnished room. Never, in all of a life that had been active, until recently, had he been so conscious of friendliness and kindly interest. He expanded under it. Some of the tired lines left his face. Under the gas chande- lier, he straightened and threw out his arms. Then he reached down into his coat pocket and drew out a wide-awake and suspicious Reginald. "Good-night, Reggie!" he said. "Good-night, old top!" He hardly recognized his own voice. It was quite cheerful, although the little room was hot, and although, when he stood, he had a perilous feel- ing that the ceiling was close above. He deposited Reginald carefully on the floor in front of the bureau, and the squirrel, after eyeing him, retreated to it? nest. It was late when K. Le Moyne retired to bed. Wrapped in a paper and securely tied for the morn- ing's disposal, was considerable masculine under- clothing, ragged and buttonless. Not for worlds would he have had Sidney discover his threadbare inner condition. "New underwear for yours to-morrow, K. Le Moyne," he said to himself, as he unknotted his cravat. "New underwear, and something besides K. for a first name." He pondered over that for a time, taking off his 18 shoes slowly and thinking hard. "Kenneth, King Kerr " None of them appealed to him. And,, after all, what did it matter? The old heaviness came over him. He dropped a shoe, and Reginald, who had gained enough courage to emerge and sit upright on the fender, fell over backward. Sidney did not sleep much that night. She lay awake, gazing into the scented darkness, her arms under her head. Love had come into her lite at last, A man only Joe, of course, but it was not the boy himself, but what he stood for, that thrilled her - had asked her to be his wife. In her little back room, with the sweetness of the tree blossoms stealing through the open window, Sidney faced the great mystery of life and love, and flung out warm young arms. Joe would be thinking of her now, as she thought of him. Or would he have gone to sleep, secure in her half promise? Did he really love her? The desire to be loved ! There was coming to Sid- ney a time when love would mean, not receiving, but giving the divine fire instead of the pale flame of youth. At last she slept. A night breeze came through the windows and spread coolness through the little house. The ailan= thus tree waved in the moonlight and sent sprawling shadows over the wall of K, Le Moyne's bedroom, In the yard the leaves of the morning-glory vines quivered as if under the touch of a friendly hand.. T9 K. Le Moyne slept diagonally in his bed, being very long. In sleep the lines were smoothed out of his face. He looked like a tired, overgrown boy. And while he slept the ground-squirrel ravaged the pockets of his shabby coat. CHAPTER II SIDNEY could not remember when her Aunt Har- riet had not sat at the table. It was one of her earli- est disillusionments to learn that Aunt Harriet lived with them, not because she wished to, but be- cause Sidney's father had borrowed her small patrimony and she was "boarding it out." Eighteen years she had "boarded it out." Sidney had been born and grown to girlhood ; the dreamer father had gone to his grave, with valuable patents lost for lack of money to renew them gone with his faith in himself destroyed, but with his faith in the world undiminished : for he left his wife and daughter without a dollar of life insurance. Harriet Kennedy had voiced her own view of the matter, the day after the funeral, to one of the neighbors : "He left no insurance. Why should he bother? He left me." To the little widow, her sister, she had been no less bitter, and more explicit. "It looks to me, Anna," she said, "as if by bor- rowing everything I had George had bought me, body and soul, for the rest of my natural life. I '11 stay now until Sidney is able to take hold. Then I 'm going to live my own life. It will be a little late, but the Kennedys live a long time." 21 The day of Harriet's leaving had seemed far awa>- to Anna Page. Sidney was still her baby, a pretty, rather leggy girl, in her first year at the High School, prone to saunter home with three or four knicker- bockered boys in her train, reading "The Duchess" stealthily, and begging for longer dresses. She had given up her dolls, but she still made clothes for them out of scraps from Harriet's sewing-room. In the parlance of the Street, Harriet "sewed" - and sewed well. She had taken Anna into business with her, but the burden of the partnership had always been on Harriet. To give her credit, she had not complained. She was past forty by that time, and her youth had slipped by in that back room with its dingy wall- paper covered with paper patterns. On the day after the arrival of the roomer, Harriet Kennedy came down to breakfast a little late. Katie, the general housework girl, had tied a small white apron over her generous gingham one, and was serv- ing breakfast. From the kitchen came the clump of an iron, and cheerful singing. Sidney was ironing napkins. Mrs. Page, who had taken advantage of Harriet's tardiness to read the obituary column in the morning paper, dropped it. But Harriet did not sit down. It was her custom to jerk her chair out and drop into it, as if she grudged every hour spent on food. Sidney, not hearing the jerk, paused with her iron in air. "Sidney." 22 "Yes, Aunt Harriet." "Will you come in, please?" Katie took the iron from her. "You go. She's all dressed up, and she does n't want any coffee." So Sidney went in. It was to her that Harriet made her speech : "Sidney, when your father died, I promised to look after both you and your mother until you were able to take care of yourself. That was five years ago. Of course, even before that I had helped to support you." "If you would only have your coffee, Harriet!" Mrs. Page sat with her hand on the handle of the old silver-plated coffee-pot. Harriet ignored her. "You are a young woman now. You have health and energy, and you have youth, which I have n't. I 'm past forty. In the next twenty years, at the out- side, I VP got not only to support myself, but to save something to keep me after that, if I live. I '11 prob- ably live to be ninety. I don't want to live forever, but I Ve always played in hard luck." Sidney returned her gaze steadily. "I see. Well, Aunt Harriet, you're quite right, You've been a saint to us, but if you want to gc away - "Harriet!" wailed Mrs. Page, "you're not think' ing" "Please, mother." Harriet's eyes softened as she looked at the girl 23 "We can manage," said Sidney quietly. "Well miss you, but it's time we learned to depend on our- selves." After that, in a torrent, came Harriet's declaration of independence. And, mixed in with its pathetic jumble of recriminations, hostility to her sister's dead husband, and resentment for her lost years, came poor Harriet's hopes and ambitions, the tragic plea of a woman who must substitute for the optim- ism and energy of youth the grim determination of middle age. " I can do good work," she finished. " I 'm full of ideas, if I could get a chance to work them out. But there 's no chance here. There is n't a woman on the Street who knows real clothes when she sees them. They don't even know how to wear their corsets. They send me bundles of hideous stuff, with needles and shields and imitation silk for lining, and when I turn out something worth while out of the mess, they think the dress is queer!" Mrs. Page could not get back of Harriet's revolt to its cause. To her, Harriet was not an artist plead- mg for her art ; she was a sister and a bread-winner deserting her trust. "I'm sure," she said stiffly, "we paid you back every cent we borrowed. If you stayed here after George died, it was because you offered to." Her chin worked. She fumbled for the handker- chief at her belt. But Sidney went around the tabie and flung a young arm over her aunt's shoulders. 24 "Why did n't you say all that a year ago ? We've been selfish, but we're not as bad as you think. And if any one in this world is entitled to success, you are. Of course we'll manage." Harriet's iron repression almost gave way. She covered her emotion with details : "Mrs. Lorenz is going to let me make Christine some things, and if hey're all right I may make her trousseau." "Trousseau for Christine!" "She's not engaged, but her mother says it's only a matter of a short time. I'm going to take two rooms in the business part of town, and put a couch in the back room to sleep on." Sidney's mind flew to Christine and her bright future, to a trousseau bought with the Lorenz money, to Christine settled down, a married woman, with Palmer Howe. She came back with an effort. Harriet had two triangular red spots in her sallow cheeks. "I can get a few good models that's the only way to start. And if you care to do hand work for me, Anna, I'll send it to you, and pay you the regu- lar rates. There is n't the call for it there used to be, but just a touch gives dash." All of Mrs. Page's grievances had worked their way to the surface. Sidney and Harriet had made her world, such as it was, and her world was in re- volt. She flung out her hands. "I suppose I must do something. With you leav- 25 ing, and Sidney renting her room and sleeping on a folding-bed in the sewing-room, everything seems upside down. I never thought I should live to see strange men running in and out of this house and carrying latch-keys." This in reference to Le Moyne, whose tall figure had made a hurried exit some time before. Nothing could have symbolized Harriet's revoU more thoroughly than her going upstairs after a hurried breakfast, and putting on her hat and coat. She had heard of rooms, she said, and there was nothing urgent in the work-room. Her eyes were brighter already as she went out. Sidney, kissing her in the hall and wishing her luck, realized sud- denly what a burden she and her mother must have been for the last few years. She threw her head up proudly. They would never be a burden again never, as long as she had strength and health ! By evening Mrs. Page had worked herself into a state bordering on hysteria. Harriet was out most of the day. She came in at three o'clock, and Katie gave her a cup of tea. At the news of her sister's condition, she merely shrugged her shoulders. "She'll not die, Katie," she said calmly. "But see that Miss Sidney eats something, and if she is worried tell her I said to get Dr. Ed." Very significant of Harriet's altered outlook was this casual summoning of the Street's family doctor. She was already dealing in larger figures. A sort of recklessness had come over her since the morning. 26 Already she was learning that peace of mind is es- sential to successful endeavor. Somewhere Harriet had read a quotation from a Persian poet; she could not remember it, but its sense had stayed with hers "What though we spill a few grains of corn, or drops of oil from the cruse? These be the price of peace." So Harriet, having spilled oil from her cruse in the shape of Dr. Ed, departed blithely. The recklessness of pure adventure was in her blood. She had taken rooms at a rental that she determinedly put out of her mind, and she was on her way to buy furniture. No pirate, fitting out a ship for the highways of the sea, ever experienced more guilty and delightful ex- citement. The afternoon dragged away. Dr. Ed was out "on a case" and might not be in until evening. Sidney sat in the darkened room and waved a fan over her mother's rigid form. At half after five, Johnny Rosenfeld from the alley, who worked for a florist after school, brought a box of roses to Sidney, and departed grinning impishly. He knew Joe, had seen him in the store. Soon the alley knew that Sidney had received a dozen Killar* ney roses at three dollars and a half, and was prol> ably engaged to Joe Drummond. "Dr. Ed," said Sidney, as ho followed her down the stairs, "can you spare the time to talk to me a little while?" K, Perhaps the elder Wilson had a quick vision of the crowded office waiting across the Street; but his reply was prompt : "Any amount of time." Sidney led the way into the small parlor, where Joe's roses, refused by the petulant invalid up- stairs, bloomed alone." "First of all," said Sidney, "did you mean what you said upstairs ?" Dr. Ed thought quickly. "Of course; but what?" "You said I was a born nurse." The Street was very fond of Dr. Ed. It did not always approve of him. It said which was per- fectly true that he had sacrificed himself to his brother's career : that, for the sake of that brilliant young surgeon, Dr. Ed had done without wife and children ; that to send him abroad he had saved and skimped ; that he still went shabby and drove the old buggy, while Max drove about in an automobile Harriet, Christine and her husband-to-be, Dr. Ed, even Tillie and the Rosenfelds; shifted and placed them, and, planning, obeyed inevitable law. "Christine shall come, then," said Sidney for- sooth, "and we will throw out a balcony." So they planned, calmly ignorant that poor Chris- tine's story and Tillie's and Johnny Rosenfeld's and all the others' were already written among the things that are, and the things that shall be hereafter. "You are very good to me," said Sidney. When she rose, K. Le Moyne sprang to his feet. Anna had noticed that he always rose when she entered his room, with fresh towels on Katie's day out, for instance, and she liked him for it. Years ago, the men she had known had shown this courtesy to their women; but the Street regarded such things as affectation. " I wonder if you would do me another favor? I 'm afraid you'll take to avoiding me, if I keep on." "I don't think you need fear that." "This stupid story about Joe Drummond I'm not saying I '11 never marry him, but I 'm certainly not engaged. Now and then, when you are taking your evening walks, if you would ask me to walk with you " K. looked rather dazed. "I can't imagine anything pleasanter; but I wish you 'd explain just how " Sidney smiled at him. As he stood on the lowest step, their eyes were almost level. 4-3 " If I walk with you, they '11 know I 'm not engaged to Joe," she said, with engaging directness. The house was quiet. He waited in the lower hall until she had reached the top of the staircase. For some curious reason, in the time to come, that was the way Sidney always remembered K. Le Moyne standing in the little hall, one hand upstretched to shut off the gas overhead, and his eyes on hers above. "Good-night," said K. Le Moyne. And all the things he had put out of his life were in his voice. CHAPTER IV ON the morning after Sidney had invited K. Le Moyne to take her to walk, Max Wilson came down to breakfast rather late. Dr. Ed had breakfasted an hour before, and had already attended, with much profanity on the part of the patient, to a boil on the back of Mr. Rosenfeld's neck. " Better change your laundry," cheerfully advised Dr. Ed, cutting a strip of adhesive plaster. "Your neck's irritated from your white collars." Rosenfeld eyed him suspiciously, but, possessing a sense of humor also, he grinned. "It ain't my everyday things that bother me," he replied. "It's my blankety-blank dress suit. But if a man wants to be tony " "Tony" was not of the Street, but of its environs. Harriet was "tony" because she walked with her elbows in and her head up. Dr. Max was "tony" because he breakfasted late, and had a man come once a week and take away his clothes to be pressed. He was "tony," too, because he had brought back from Europe narrow-shouldered English-cut clothes, when the Street was still padding its shoulders. Even K.. would have been classed with these others, for the stick that he carried on his walks, for the fact that his shabby gray coat was as unmistakably 45 foreign in cut as Dr. Max's, had the neighborhood so much as known him by sight. But K., so far, had remained in humble obscurity, and, outside of Mrs. McKee's, was known only as the Pages' roomer. Mr. Rosenfeld buttoned up the blue flannel shirt which, with a pair of Dr. Ed's cast-off trousers, was his only wear, and fished in his pocket. "How much, Doc?" "Two dollars," said Dr. Ed briskly. "Holy cats! For one jab of a knife! My old woman works a day and a half for two dollars." "I guess it's worth tw6 dollars to you to be able to sleep on your back." He was imperturbably straightening his small glass table. He knew Rosen- feld. "If you don't like my price, I'll lend you the knife the next time, and you can let your wife attend to you." Rosenfeld drew out a silver dollar, and followed it reluctantly with a limp and dejected dollar bill. "There are times," he said, "when, if you'd put me and the missus and a knife in the same room, you would n't have much left but the knife." Dr. Ed waited until he had made his stiff-necked exit. Then he took the two dollars, and, putting the money into an envelope, indorsed it in his illegible hand. He heard his brother's step on the stairs, and Dr. Ed made haste to put away the last vestiges of his little operation. Ed's lapses from surgical cleanliness were a sore trial to the younger man, fresh from the clinics of 46 K Europe. In his downtown office, to which he would presently make his leisurely progress, he wore a white coat, and sterilized things of which Dr. Ed did not even know the names. So, as he came down the stairs, Dr. Ed, who had wiped his tiny knife with a bit of cotton, he hated sterilizing it ; it spoiled the edge, thrust it hastily into his pocket. He had cut boils without boiling anything for a good many years, and no trouble. But he was wise with the wisdom of the serpent and the general practitioner, and there was no use rais- ing a discussion. Max's morning mood was always a cheerful one, Now and then the way of the transgressor is dis- gustingly pleasant. Max, who sat up until all hours of the night, drinking beer or whiskey-and-soda, and playing bridge, wakened to a clean tongue and a tendency to have a cigarette between shoes, so to speak. Ed, whose wildest dissipation had perhaps been to bring into the world one of the neighbor- hood's babies, wakened customarily to the dark hour of his aay, when he dubbed himself failure and loathed the Street with a deadly loathing. So now Max brought his handsome self down the staircase and paused at the office door. "At it already," he said. "Or have you been te bed?" "It's after nine," protested Ed mildly. "If I don't start early, I never get through." Max yawned. 47 " Better come with me," he said. " If things go on as they Ve been doing, I '11 have to have an assistant. I'd rather have you than anybody, of course." He put his lithe surgeon's hand on his brother's shoulder. "Where would I be if it had n't been for you? AH the fellows know what you've done." In spite of himself, Ed winced. It was one thing to work hard that there might be one success instead of two half successes. It was a different thing to ad- vertise one's mediocrity to the world. His sphere of the Street and the neighborhood was his own. To give it all up and become his younger brother's as- sistant even if it meant, as it would, better hours and more money would be to submerge his iden- tity. He could not bring himself to it. "I guess I'll stay where I am," he said. "They know me around here, and I know them. By the way* will you leave this envelope at Mrs. McKee's? Mag- gie Rosenfeld is ironing there to-day. It's for her.' 5 Max took the envelope absently. " You '11 go on here to the end of your days, work- ing for a pittance," he objected. ' Inside of ten years there '11 be no general practitioners; then where will you be?" " I '11 manage somehow," said his brother placidly. '' I guess there will always be a few that can pay my prices better than what you specialists ask," Max laughed with genuine amusement. "I dare say, if this is the way you let them pay your prices." .48 He held out the envelope, and the older mat -.oiored. Very proud of Dr. Max was his brother, unselfishly proud, of his skill, of his handsome person, of his easy good manners; very humble, too, of his own knowledge and experience. If he ever suspected any lack of finer fiber in Max, he put the thought away. Probably he was too rigid himself. Max was young, a hard worker. He had a right to play hard. He prepared his black bag for the day's calls - stethoscope, thermometer, eye-cup, bandages, case of small vials, a lump of absorbent cotton in a not over-fresh towel; in the bottom, a heterogeneous col- lection of instruments, a roll of adhesive plaster, a bottle or two of sugar-of-milk tablets for the chil- dren, a dog collar that had belonged to a dead collie, and had got in the bag in some curious fashion and there remained. He prepared the bag a little nervously, while Max ate. He felt that modern methods and the best usage might not have approved of the bag. On his way out he paused at the dining-room door. "Are you going to the hospital?" "Operating at four wish you could come in.** "I'm afraid not, Max. I've promised Sidney Page to speak about her to you. She wants to enter the training-school." "Too young," said Max briefly. "Why, she can't be over sixteen." .49 K. "She's eighteen." "Well, even eighteen. Do you think any girl oi that age is responsible enough to have life and death put in her hands? Besides, although I have n't noticed her lately, she used to be a pretty little thing. There is no use filling up the wards with a lot of ornaments; it keeps the internes all stewed up." "Since when," asked Dr. Ed mildly, "have you found good looks in a girl a handicap?" In the end they compromised. Max would see Sidney at his office. It would be better than having her run across the Street would put things on the right footing. For, if he did have her admitted, she would have to learn at once that he was no longer "Dr. Max"; that, as a matter of fact, he was now staff, and entitled to much dignity, to speech with- out contradiction 'or argument, to clean towels, and a deferential interne at his elbow. Having given his promise, Max promptly forgot about it. The Street did not interest him. Christine and Sidney had been children when he went to Vienna, and since his return he had hardly noticed them. Society, always kind to single men of good appearance and easy good manners, had taken him up. He wore dinner or evening clothes five nights out of seven, and was supposed by his conservative old neighbors to be going the pace. The rumor had been fed by Mrs. Rosenfeld, who, starting out for her day's washing at six o'clock one morning, had 50 found Dr. Max's car, lamps lighted and engine go- ing, drawn up before the house door, with its owner asleep at the wheel. The story traveled the length of the Street that day. "Him," said Mrs. Rosenfeld, who was occasion- ally flowery, "sittin' up as straight as this wash- board, and his silk hat shinin' in the sun; but, ex- ceptin' the car, which was workin' hard and gettin' nowhere, the whole outfit in the arms of Morpheus." Mrs. Lorenz, whose day it was to have Mrs. Ro- senfeld, and who was unfamiliar with mythology, gasped at the last word. "Mercy!" she said. "Do you mean to say he's got that awful drug habit!" Down the clean steps went Dr. Max that morning, a big man, almost as tall as K. Le Moyne, eager of life, strong and a bit reckless, not fine, perhaps, but not evil. He had the same zest of living as Sidney, but with this difference the girl stood ready to give herself to life: he knew that life would come to him. All-dominating male was Dr. Max, that morn- ing, as he drew on his gloves before stepping into his car. It was after nine o'clock. K. Le Moyne had been an hour at his desk. The McKee napkins lay ironed in orderly piles. Nevertheless, Dr. Max was suffering under a sense of defeat as he rode downtown. The night be- fore, he had proposed to a girl and had been rejected. He was not in love with the girl, she would have 5* K. been a suitable wife, and a surgeon ought to be married ; it gives people confidence, but his pride was hurt. He recalled the exact words of the rejec- tion. "You're too good-looking, Max," she had said, J 'and that's the truth. Now that operations are as popular as fancy dancing, and much less bother, half the women I know are crazy about their sur- geons. I 'm too fond of my peace of mind." " But, good Heavens! have n't you any confidence in me?" he nad demanded. "None whatever, Max dear." She had looked at him with level, understanding eyes. He put the disagreeable recollection out of his mind as he parked his car and made his way to his office. Here would be people who believed in him, from the middle-aged nurse in her prim uniform to the row of patients sitting stiffly around the walls of the waiting-room. Dr. Max, pausing in the hall outside the door of his private office, drew a long breath. This was the real thing work and plenty of it, a chance to show the other men what he could do, a battle to win ! No humanitarian was he, but a fighter: each day he came to his office with the same ba*-ti* lust. The office nurse had her back to him. When she turned, he faced an agreeable surprise. Instead of Miss Simpson, he faced a young and attractive girl faintly familiar. 52- 41 We tried to get you by telephone," she explained: "T am from the hospital. Miss Simpson's father died this morning, and she knew you would have to have some one. I was just starting for my vacation, so they sent me." "Rather a poor substitute for a vacation," he commented. She was a very pretty girl. He had seen her before in the hospital, but he had never really noticed how attractive she was. Rather stunning she was, he thought. The combination of yellow hair and dark eyes was unusual. He remembered, just in time, to express regret at Miss Simpson's bereavement. "I am Miss Harrison," explained the substitute, and held out his long white coat. The ceremony, purely perfunctory with Miss Simpson on duty, proved interesting, Miss Harrison, in spite of her high heels, being small and the young surgeon tall. When he was finally in the coat, she was rather flushed and palpitating. "But I knew your name, of course," lied Dr. Max. "And I 'm sorry about the vacation." After that came work. Miss Harrison was nimble and alert, but the surgeon worked quickly and with few words, was impatient when she could not find the things he called for, even broke into restrained profanity now and then. She went a little pale over her mistakes, but preserved her dignity and her wits. Now and then he found her dark eyes fixed on him, with something inscrutable but pleasing in their 53 K depths. The situation was rather piquant. Con- sciously he was thinking only of what he was doing. Subconsciously his busy ego was finding solace after fast night's rebuff. Once, during the cleaning up between cases, he dropped to a personality. He was drying his hands, while she placed freshly sterilized instruments on a glass table. ."You are almost a foreign type, Miss Harrison. Last year, in a London ballet, I saw a blonde Spanish girl who looked like you." "My mother was a Spaniard." She did not look up. Where Miss Simpson was in the habit of clump- ing through the morning in flat, heavy shoes, Miss Harrison's small heels beat a busy tattoo on the tiled floor. With the rustling of her starched dress, the sound was essentially feminine, almost insistent. When he had time to notice it, it amused him that he did not find it annoying. Once, as she passed him a bistoury, he deliberately placed his fine hand over her fingers and smiled into her eyes. It was play for him ; it lightened the day's work. Sidney was in the waiting-room. There had been no tedium in the morning's waiting. Like all im- aginative people, she had the gift of dramatizing herself. She was seeing herself in white from head to foot, like this efficient young woman who came no\v and then to the waiting-room door; she was healing 54 Uie sick and closing tired eyes ; she was even imagin- ing herself proposed to by an aged widower with grown children and quantities of money, one of her patients. She sat very demurely in the waiting-room with a magazine in her lap, and told her aged patient that she admired and respected him, but that she had given herself to the suffering poor. " Everything in the world that you want," begged the elderly gentleman. "You should see the world, child, and I will see it again through your eyes. To Paris first for clothes and the opera, and then " "But I do not love you," Sidney replied, mentally but steadily. " In all the world I love only one man. He is " She hesitated here. It certainly was not Joe, or K. Le Moyne of the gas office. It seemed to her sud- denly very sad that there was no one she loved. So many people went into hospitals because they had been disappointed in love. "Dr. Wilson will see you now." She followed Miss Harrison into the consulting- room. Dr. Max not the gloved and hatted Dr. Max of the Street, but a new person, one she had never known stood in his white office, tall, dark- eyed, dark-haired, competent, holding out his long, immaculate surgeon's hand and smiling down at her. Men, like jewels, require a setting. A clerk on a foigh stool, poring over a ledger, is not unimpressive. 55 or a cook over her stove. But place the cook on the stool, poring over the ledger! Dr. Max, who had lived all his life on the edge of Sidney's horizon, now, by the simple changing of her point of view, loomed !arge and magnificent. Perhaps he knew it. Cer- tainly he stood very erect. Certainly, too, there was considerable manner in the way in which he asked Miss Harrison to go out and close the door behind her. Sidney's heart, considering what was happening to it, behaved very well. "For goodness' sake, Sidney," said Dr. Max, "here you are a young lady and I've never noticed it!" This, of course, was not what he had intended to say, being staff and all that. But Sidney, visibly palpitant, was very pretty, much prettier than the Harrison girl, beating a tattoo with her heels in the next room. Dr. Max, belonging to the class of man who settles his tie every time he sees an attractive woman, thrust his hands into the pockets of his long white coat and surveyed her quizzically. "Did Dr. Ed tell you?" "Sit down. He said something about the hospital. How's your mother and Aunt Harriet?" "Very well that is, mother's never quite well." She was sitting forward on her chair, her wide young eyes on him. " Is that is your nurse from the hos- pital here?" 56 K "Yes. But she's not my nurse. She's a substik tute." "The uniform is so pretty." Poor Sidney! with all the things she had meant to say about a life of service, and that, although she was young, she was terribly in earnest. "It takes a lot of plugging before one gets the uniform. Look here, Sidney; if you are going to the hospital because of the uniform, and with any idea of soothing fevered brows and all that nonsense She interrupted him, deeply flushed. Indeed, no. She wanted to work. She was young and strong, and surely a pair of willing hands that was absurd about the uniform. She had no silly ideas. There was so much to do in the world, and she wanted to help. Some people could give money, but she could n't. She could only offer service. And. partly through earnestness and partly through excitement, she ended in a sort of nervous sob, and, going to the window, stood with her back to him. He followed her, and, because they were old neighbors, she did not resent it when he put his hand on her shoulder. "I don't know of course, if you feel like that about it," he said, "we'll see what can be done. It's hard work, and a good many times it seems futile. They die, you know, in spite of all we can do. And there are many things that are worse than death " His voice trailed off. When he had started out in his profession, he had had some such ideal of service 57 as this girl beside him. For just a moment, as he stood there close to her, he saw things again with the eyes of his young faith: to relieve pain, to straighten the crooked, to hurt that he might heal, not to show the other men what he could do, that had been his early creed. He sighed a little as he turned away. "I'll speak to the superintendent about you," he said. " Perhaps you'd like me to show you around a little." "When? To-day?" He had meant in a month, or a year. It was quite a minute before he replied : "Yes, to-day, if you say. I'm operating at four. How about three o'clock?" She held out both hands, and he took them, smil- ing. "You are the kindest person I ever met." "And perhaps you'd better not say you are applying until we find out if there is a vacancy/' "May I tell one person?" "Mother?" "No. We we have a roomer now. He is very much interested. I should like to tell him." He dropped her hands and looked at her in mock severity. "Much interested! Is he in love with you?" "Mercy, no!" " I don't believe it. I 'm jealous. You know, I '-' always been more than half in love with you myself!" 58 Play for him the same victorious instinct that had made him touch Miss Harrison's fingers as she gave him the instrument. And Sidney knew how it was meant ; she smiled into his eyes and drew down her veil briskly. "Then we'll say at three," she said calmly, and took an orderly and unflurried departure. But the little seed of tenderness had taken root. Sidney, passing in the last week or two from girlhood to womanhood, outgrowing Joe, had she only known it, as she had outgrown the Street, had come that day into her first contact with a man of the world. True, there was K. Le Moyne. But K. was now of the Street, of that small world of one dimension that she was leaving behind her. She sent him a note at noon, with word to Tillie at Mrs. McKee's to put it under his plate: DEAR MR. LE MOYNE, I am so excited I can hardly write. Dr. Wilson, the surgeon, is going to take me through the hospital this afternoon. Wish me luck. SIDNEY PAGE. K. read it, and, perhaps because the day was hot and his butter soft and the other " mealers " irritable with the heat, he ate little or no luncheon. Before he went out into the sun, he read the note again. To his jealous eyes came a vision of that excursion to the hospital. Sidney, all vibrant eagerness, lumi 59 nous of eye, quick of bosom ; and Wilson, sardoni- cally smiling, amused and interested in spite of himself. He drew a long breath, and thrust the note in his pocket. The little house across the way sat square in the sun. The shades of his windows had been lowered against the heat. K. Le Moyne made an impulsive movement toward it, and checked himself. As he went down the Street, Wilson's car came around the corner. Le Moyne moved quietly into the shadow of the church and watched the car go by CHAPTER V SIDNEY and K. Le Moyne sat under a tree and talked. In Sidney's lap lay a small pasteboard boXf punched with many holes. It was the day of releas- ing Reginald, but she had not yet been able to bring herself to the point of separation. Now and then a furry nose protruded from one of the apertures and sniffed the welcome scent of pine and buttonball, red