alone. They could not have voiced their reasons.
The supper-room was filled with their soft voices, the rustle of their skirts, the gleam of their stiff white caps.
When Carlotta came in, she greeted none of them. They did not like her, and she knew it.
Before her, instead of the tidy supper-table, she was seeing the medicine-tray as she had left it.
“I guess I’ve fixed her,” she said to herself.
Her very soul was sick with fear of what she had done.
CHAPTER XVIII
K. saw Sidney for only a moment on Christmas Day. This was when the gay little sleigh had stopped in front of the house.
Sidney had hurried radiantly in for a moment. Christine’s parlor was gay with firelight and noisy with chatter and with the clatter of her tea-cups.
K., lounging indolently in front of the fire, had turned to see Sidney in the doorway, and leaped to his feet.
“I can’t come in,” she cried. “I am only here for a moment. I am out sleigh-riding with Dr. Wilson. It’s perfectly delightful.”
“Ask him in for a cup of tea,” Christine called out. “Here’s Aunt Harriet and mother and even Palmer!”
Christine had aged during the last weeks, but she was putting up a brave front.
“I’ll ask him.”
Sidney ran to the front door and called: “Will you come in for a cup of tea?”
“Tea! Good Heavens, no. Hurry.”
As Sidney turned back into the house, she met Palmer. He had come out in the hall, and had closed the door into the parlor behind him. His arm was still in splints, and swung suspended in a gay silk sling.
The sound of laughter came through the door faintly.
“How is he to-day?” He meant Johnny, of course. The boy’s face was always with him.
“Better in some ways, but of course—”
“When are they going to operate?”
“When he is a little stronger. Why don’t you come into see him?”
“I can’t. That’s the truth. I can’t face the poor youngster.”
“He doesn’t seem to blame you; he says it’s all in the game.”
“Sidney, does Christine know that I was not alone that night?”
“If she guesses, it is not because of anything the boy has said. He has told nothing.”
Out of the firelight, away from the chatter and the laughter, Palmer’s face showed worn and haggard. He put his free hand on Sidney’s shoulder.
“I was thinking that perhaps if I went away—”
“That would be cowardly, wouldn’t it?”
“If Christine would only say something and get it over with! She doesn’t sulk; I think she’s really trying to be kind. But she hates me, Sidney. She turns pale every time I touch her hand.”
All the light had died out of Sidney’s face. Life was terrible, after all—overwhelming. One did wrong things, and other people suffered; or one was good, as her mother had been, and was left lonely, a widow, or like Aunt Harriet. Life was a sham, too. Things were so different from what they seemed to be: Christine beyond the door, pouring tea and laughing with her heart in ashes; Palmer beside her, faultlessly dressed and wretched. The only one she thought really contented was K. He seemed to move so calmly in his little orbit. He was always so steady, so balanced. If life held no heights for him, at least it held no depths.
So Sidney thought, in her ignorance!
“There’s only one thing, Palmer,” she said gravely. “Johnny Rosenfeld is going to have his chance. If anybody in the world can save him, Max Wilson can.”
The light of that speech was in her eyes when she went out to the sleigh again. K. followed her out and tucked the robes in carefully about her.
“Warm enough?”
“All right, thank you.”
“Don’t go too far. Is there any chance of having you home for supper?”
“I think not. I am to go on duty at six again.”
If there was a shadow in K.‘s eyes, she did not see it. He waved them off smilingly from the pavement, and went rather heavily back into the house.
“Just how many men are in love with you, Sidney?” asked Max, as Peggy started up the Street.
“No one that I know of, unless—”
“Exactly. Unless—”
