"I'm just eating my heart out for you, and that's the truth. And it isn't
only that. Everywhere I go, people say, 'There's the fellow Sidney Page
turned down when she went to the hospital.' I've got so I keep off the
Street as much as I can."
Sidney was half alarmed, half irritated. This wild, excited boy was not
the doggedly faithful youth she had always known. It seemed to her that he
was hardly sane--that underneath his quiet manner and carefully repressed
voice there lurked something irrational, something she could not cope with.
She looked up at him helplessly.
"But what do you want me to do? You--you almost frighten me. If you'd only
sit down--"
"I want you to come home. I'm not asking anything else now. I just want
you to come back, so that things will be the way they used to be. Now that
they have turned you out--"
"They've done nothing of the sort. I've told you that."
"You're going back?"
"Absolutely."
"Because you love the hospital, or because you love somebody connected with
the hospital?"
Sidney was thoroughly angry by this time, angry and reckless. She had come
through so much that every nerve was crying in passionate protest.
"If it will make you understand things any better," she cried, "I am going
back for both reasons!"
She was sorry the next moment. But her words seemed, surprisingly enough,
to steady him. For the first time, he sat down.
"Then, as far as I am concerned, it's all over, is it?"
"Yes, Joe. I told you that long ago."
He seemed hardly to be listening. His thoughts had ranged far ahead.
Suddenly:-"You think Christine has her hands full with Palmer, don't you? Well, if
you take Max Wilson, you're going to have more trouble than Christine ever
dreamed of. I can tell you some things about him now that will make you
think twice."
But Sidney had reached her limit. She went over and flung open the door.
"Every word that you say shows me how right I am in not marrying you, Joe,"
she said. "Real men do not say those things about each other under any
circumstances. You're behaving like a bad boy. I don't want you to come
back until you have grown up."
He was very white, but he picked up his hat and went to the door.
"I guess I AM crazy," he said. "I've been wanting to go away, but mother
raises such a fuss--I'll not annoy you any more."