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 tonight. 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.
Off to my first lecture!
SIDNEY.
K. found the note on the hall table when he got home that night, and carried it upstairs to read. Whatever faint hope he might have had that her youth would prevent her acceptance he knew now was over. With the letter in his hand, he sat by his table and looked ahead into the empty years. Not quite empty, of course. She would be coming home.
But more and more the life of the hospital would engross her. He surmised, too, very shrewdly, that, had he ever had a hope that she might come to care for him, his very presence in the little house militated against him. There was none of the illusion of separation; he was always there, like Katie. When she opened the door, she called “Mother” from the hall. If Anna did not answer, she called him, in much the same voice.
He had built a wall of philosophy that had withstood even Wilson’s recognition and protest. But enduring philosophy comes only with time; and he was young. Now and then all his defenses crumbled before a passion that, when he dared to face it, shook him by its very strength. And that day all his stoicism went down before Sidney’s letter. Its very frankness and affection hurt—not that he did not want her affection; but he craved so much more. He threw himself face down on the bed, with the paper crushed in his hand.
Sidney’s letter was not the only one he received that day. When, in response to Katie’s summons, he rose heavily and prepared for dinner, he found an unopened envelope on the table. It was from Max Wilson:—
DEAR LE MOYNE,—I have been going around in a sort of haze all day. The fact that I only heard your voice and scarcely saw you last night has made the whole thing even more unreal.
I have a feeling of delicacy about trying to see you again so soon. I’m bound to respect your seclusion. But there are some things that have got to be discussed.
You said last night that things were “different” with you. I know about that. You’d had one or two unlucky accidents. Do you know any man in our profession who has not? And, for fear you think I do not know what I am talking about, the thing was threshed out at the State Society when the question of the tablet came up. Old Barnes got up and said: “Gentlemen, all of us live more or less in glass houses. Let him who is without guilt among us throw the first stone!” By George! You should have heard them!
I didn’t sleep last night. I took my little car and drove around the country roads, and the farther I went the more outrageous your position became. I’m not going to write any rot about the world needing men like you, although it’s true enough. But our profession does. You working in a gas office, while old O’Hara bungles and hacks, and I struggle along on what I learned from you!
It takes courage to step down from the pinnacle you stood on. So it’s not cowardice that has set you down here. It’s wrong conception. And I’ve thought of two things. The first, and best, is for you to go back. No one has taken your place, because no one could do the work. But if that’s out of the question,—and only you know that, for only you know the facts,—the next best thing is this, and in all humility I make the suggestion.
Take the State exams under your present name, and when you’ve got your certificate, come in with me. This isn’t magnanimity. I’ll be getting a damn sight more than I give.
Think it over, old man.
M.W.
It is a curious fact that a man who is absolutely untrustworthy about women is often the soul of honor to other men. The younger Wilson, taking his pleasures lightly and not too discriminatingly, was making an offer that meant his ultimate eclipse, and doing it cheerfully, with his eyes open.
K. was moved. It was like Max to make such an offer, like him to make it as if he were asking a favor and not conferring one. But the offer left him untempted. He had weighed himself in the balance, and found himself wanting. No tablet on the college wall could change that. And when, late that night, Wilson found him on the balcony and added appeal to argument, the situation remained unchanged. He realized its hopelessness when K. lapsed into whimsical humor.
“I’m not absolutely useless where I am, you know, Max,” he said. “I’ve raised three tomato plants and a family of kittens this summer, helped to plan a trousseau, assisted in selecting wallpaper for the room just inside,—did you notice it?—and developed a boy pitcher with a ball that twists around the bat like a Colles fracture around a splint!”
“If you’re going to be humorous—”
“My dear fellow,” said K. quietly, “if I had no sense of humor, I should go upstairs tonight, turn on the gas, and make a stertorous entrance into eternity. By the way, that’s something I forgot!”
“Eternity?” “No. Among my other activities, I wired the parlor for electric light. The bride-to-be expects some electroliers as wedding gifts, and—”
Wilson rose and flung his cigarette into the grass.
“I wish to God I understood you!” he said irritably.
K. rose with him, and all the suppressed feeling of the interview was crowded into his last few words.
