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 passionately. "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
impasse!
"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. Nobody really wants
me anywhere--in all the world! Not at the hospital, not here, not
anyplace. I am no use."
"When you say that nobody 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.