“My brother is not at home, so I came over. How select you are, with your balcony!”
“Can you see the step?”
“Coming, with bells on.”
K. had risen and pushed back his chair. His mind was working quickly. Here in the darkness he could hold the situation for a moment. If he could get Sidney into the house, the rest would not matter. Luckily, the balcony was very dark.
“Is any one ill?”
“Mother is not well. This is Mr. Le Moyne, and he knows who you are very well, indeed.”
The two men shook hands.
“I’ve heard a lot of Mr. Le Moyne. Didn’t the Street beat the Linburgs the other day? And I believe the Rosenfelds are in receipt of sixty-five cents a day and considerable peace and quiet through you, Mr. Le Moyne. You’re the most popular man on the Street.”
“I’ve always heard that about YOU. Sidney, if Dr. Wilson is here to see your mother—”
“Going,” said Sidney. “And Dr. Wilson is a very great person, K., so be polite to him.”
Max had roused at the sound of Le Moyne’s voice, not to suspicion, of course, but to memory. Without any apparent reason, he was back in Berlin, tramping the country roads, and beside him—
“Wonderful night!”
“Great,” he replied. “The mind’s a curious thing, isn’t it. In the instant since Miss Page went through that window I’ve been to Berlin and back! Will you have a cigarette?”
“Thanks; I have my pipe here.”
K. struck a match with his steady hands. Now that the thing had come, he was glad to face it. In the flare, his quiet profile glowed against the night. Then he flung the match over the rail.
“Perhaps my voice took you back to Berlin.”
Max stared; then he rose. Blackness had descended on them again, except for the dull glow of K.‘s old pipe.
“For God’s sake!”
“Sh! The neighbors next door have a bad habit of sitting just inside the curtains.”
“But—you!”
“Sit down. Sidney will be back in a moment. I’ll talk to you, if you’ll sit still. Can you hear me plainly?”
After a moment—“Yes.”
“I’ve been here—in the city, I mean—for a year. Name’s Le Moyne. Don’t forget it—Le Moyne. I’ve got a position in the gas office, clerical. I get fifteen dollars a week. I have reason to think I’m going to be moved up. That will be twenty, maybe twenty-two.”
Wilson stirred, but he found no adequate words. Only a part of what K. said got to him. For a moment he was back in a famous clinic, and this man across from him—it was not believable!
“It’s not hard work, and it’s safe. If I make a mistake there’s no life hanging on it. Once I made a blunder, a month or two ago. It was a big one. It cost me three dollars out of my own pocket. But—that’s all it cost.”
Wilson’s voice showed that he was more than incredulous; he was profoundly moved.
“We thought you were dead. There were all sorts of stories. When a year went by—the Titanic had gone down, and nobody knew but what you were on it—we gave up. I—in June we put up a tablet for you at the college. I went down for the—for the services.”
“Let it stay,” said K. quietly. “I’m dead as far as the college goes, anyhow. I’ll never go back. I’m Le Moyne now. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t be sorry for me. I’m more contented than I’ve been for a long time.”
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.
CHAPTER XIII
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
