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Show (lay Tvns liot rnid his trotter soft nnd the other "meulers" irritable with tlie heat, he ale little or no luncheon. Before Be-fore he -went out into the sun, he read the note again. To his jealous eyes came a vision of that excursion to the hospital. Sidney, all vibrant eagerness, eager-ness, luminous of eye, quick of bosom ; and Wilson, sardonically smiling, amused and interested in spite of himself, him-self, lie drew a long breath, and thrust the note into his pocket. As he went down the Street, Wilson's Wil-son's car came around the corner. Le Moyue moved quietly into the shadow of the church and watched the car go by. CHAPTER V. "And so," K. Le Jloyne, "you liked It all? It didn't startle you?" "Well, in one way, of -course you see, I didn't know it was quite like that : all order and peace and quiet, and white beds and whispers, on top you know what I mean and the misery there just the same. Have you ever gone through a hospital?" K. Le Moyne was stretched out on the grass, his arms under his head. For this excursion to the end of the street car line he had donned a pair of white flannel trousers and a belted ISorfolk coat. Sidney had been divided di-vided between pride in his appearance and fear that the Street would deem him overdressed. At her question he closed his eyes, shutting out the peaceful arch of leaves and the bit of blue heaven overhead. over-head. He did not reply at once. "Good gracious, I believe he's asleep !" said Sidney. But he opened his eyes and smiled at her. "I've been around hospitals a little. I suppose now there is no question about your going?" "The superintendent said I was young, but that any protegee of Doctor Doc-tor Wilson's would certainly be given a chance." . "It is hard work, night and day." "Do you think I am afraid of work?" "And Joe?" Sidney colored vigorously and sat erect. "He Is very silly. He's taken all sorts of idiotic notions In his head. I haven't promised to marry him." "But he thinks you mean to. If you have quite made up your mind not to, better tell him, don't you think? What what are these idiotic notions?" Sidney considered. "For one thing, he's jealous of you !" "I see. Of course that is silly, although al-though your attitude toward his suspicion sus-picion is hardly flattering to me!" He smiled up at her. "I told him that I had asked you to bring me here today. He was furious. And that wasn't all." "No?" "He said I was flirting desperately with Doctor Wilson. You see, the day we went through the hospital, it was hot, and we went to Henderson's for soda water. And, Of course, Joe was there. It was really dramatic." K. Le Moyne was daily gaining the ability to see things from the angle of the Street. A month ago he could have seen no situation in two people, a man and lifted her bodily up Its slippery sides. He had prodigious strength, In spite of his leanness. "Well !" said Sidney, when they were both on the rock, carefully balanced. "Are you cold?" "Not a bit. But horribly unhappy. I must look a sight." Then, remembering her manners, as the Street had it, she said primly : "Thank you for saving me." "There wasn't any danger, really, unless unless the river had risen." And then, suddenly, he burst into delighted de-lighted laughter, the lirst, perhaps, for months. He shook with it, struggled at the sight of her injured face to restrain re-strain it, achieved finally a degree of sobriety by fixing his eyes on the river bank. "Wnen youtiave quite finished," said Sidney severely, "perhaps you will take me to the hotel. I dare say I shall have to be washed and ironed." He drew her cautiously to her feet. Her wet skirts clung to her; her shoes were sodden and heavy. She clung to him frantically, her eyes ou the river below. With the touch of her hands the man's mirth died. He held her very carefully, very tenderly, as one holds something infinitely precious. CHAPTER VI. Operations were over for the afternoon. after-noon. The last case had been wheeled out of the elevator. The pit of the operating op-erating room was in disorder towels everywhere, tables of instruments, steaming sterilizers. Orderlies were goiug about, carrying out linens, emptying empty-ing pans. At a table two nurses were cleaning instruments and putting them away in their glass cases. Irrigators were being emptied, sponges recounted and checked oil on written lists. In the midst of the confusion, Wilson stood giving last orders to the interne at his elbow. As he talked he scoured his hands and arms with a small brush ; bits of lather flew off on to the tiled floor. His speech was incisive, vigorous. At the hospital they said his nerves were iron ; there was no letdown let-down after the day's work. The internes in-ternes worshiped and feared him. He was just, but without mercy. To be able to work like that, so certainly, with so sure a touch, and to look like a Greek god ! Wilson's only rival, a gynecologist named O'Hara, got results, re-sults, too; but he sweated and swore through his operations, was not too careful as to asepsis, and looked like a gorilla. The day had been a hard one. The operating-room nurses were fagged. Two or three probationers had been sent to help clean up, and a senior nurse. Wilson's eyes caught the nurse's eyes as she passed him. "Here, too, Miss Harrison !" he said gayly. "Have they set you on my trail?" With the eyes of the room on her, the girl answered primly: "I'm to be in your office in the mornings, morn-ings, Doctor Wilson, and anywhere 1 am needed in the afternoons." "And your vacation?" "I shall take it when Miss Simpson comes back." Although he went on at once with his conversation with the interne, he still heard the click of her heels about the room. He had not lost the fact that she had flushed when he spoke to her. The mischief that was latent in him came to the surface. When he had rinsed his hands, he followed her, carrying car-rying the towel to where she stood talking to the superintendent of the training school. "Thanks very much, Miss Gregg," he said. "Everything went off nicely." He was in a magnanimous mood. He smiled at Miss Gregg, who was elderly and gray, but visibly his creature. "The sponge list, doctor." He glanced over it, noting accurately accurate-ly sponges prepared, used, turned in. But he missed no gesture of the girl who stood beside Miss Gregg. "All right." He returned the list. "That was a mighty pretty probationer I brought you yesterday." Two small frowning lines appeared between Miss Harrison's dark brows. He caught them, caught her somber eyes too, and was amused and rather stimulated. "She is very young." "Prefer' 'em young," said Doctor Max. "Willing to learn at that age. You'll have to watch her, though. You'll have all the internes buzzing around, neglecting business." Miss Gregg rather fluttered. She was divided between her disapproval of internes at all times and of young probationers generally, and her allegiance alle-giance to the brilliant surgeon whose word was rapidly becoming law In the hospital. When an emergeucy of the cleaning-up called her awny, doubt still in her eyes, Wilson was left alone with Miss Harrison. r a , If your daughter were in Sid- 1 s ney's position now, would you i I fear Dr. Max Wilson's influence 2 ? over her, or would you be glad i j she had such a friend in the hos- s pital? t (TO EE CONTINUED.) " ' . . ii 66 JY 99 j T STTTTTIT i- IB X " ak X Br I ' ' Mary Roberts Rinehart tCopyrib'Ut, by ilcClure Publications, Inc.) ? The Pages that is, Sidney; ? ? her mother and her Aunt Har- j riet take K. LeMoyne, a strange i young man, as a roomer because J i they need the money. The addi- J; J tion to the family is mutually f i satisfactory and presently Sid- !; J ney, who is eighteen, finds her- i', i self one evening telling LeMoyne ', i that she doesn't believe she will s s marry Joe Drummond, her child- s I hood sweetheart, after all. In- X stead, she decides to become a ;' trained nurse now that Aunt i Harriet has opened a dressmak- J; ? ing shop downtown so she goes ' I to ask Dr. Max Wilson, old fam- J; ily acquaintance, to get her into ; 1 the hospital. And this K. Le- ! Moyne, he's lovely and polite and !; 1 all, but there's something dread- i 2 fully mysterious about him. ! 2 Suddenly a whole new phase of i life opens upon Sidney. Just ! CHAPTER IV. Continued. Men, like jewels, require a setting. A clerk on a high stool, poring over a ledger, is not unimpressive, or a cook over her stove. But place the cook on the stool, poring over the ledger ! Doctor Doc-tor Max, who had lived all his life on the edge of Sidney's horizon, now, by the simple changing of her point of view, loomed large and magnificent. Perhaps he knew it. Certainly he stood very erect. Certainly, too, there was considerable manner in the way in which he asked Miss Harrison to go out and close the door behind her. Sidney's heart, considering what was happening to it, behaved very well. "For goodness' sake, Sidney," said Doctor Max, "here you are a young lady and I've never noticed it !" This, or course, was not what he had intended to say, being staff and all that. But Sidney, visibly palpitant, was very pretty, much prettier than the Harrison girl, beating a tattoo with her heels in the next room. Doctor Max, belonging to the class of man who settles his tie every time he sees an attractive woman, .thrust his hands Into the pockets of his long white coat and surveyed her quizzically. quizzi-cally. "Did Doctor Ed tell you?" "Sit down. He said something about the hospital. How's your mother and Aunt Harriet?" s "Very well that is, mother's never quite well." She was sitting forward on her chair, her wide young eyes on him. "Is that is your nurse from the hospital here?" "Yes. But she's not my nurse. She's a substitute." "The uniform is so pretty." Poor Sidney ! with all the things she had meant to say about a life of service, and that, although she was young, she was terribly in earnest. "It takes a lot of plugging before one gets the uniform. Look here, Sidney ; if you are going to the hospital because be-cause of the uniform, and with any idea of soothing fevered brows and all that nonsense " She interrupted him, deeply flushed. Indeed, no. She wanted to work. She was young and strong, and surely a pair of willing hands that was absurd about the uniform. She had no silly ideas. There was so much to do in the world, and she wanted to help. Some people could give money, but she couldn't. She could only offer service. And, partly through earnestness and partly through excitement, she ended in a sort of nervous sob, and, going to the window, stood with her back to him. He followed her, and, because they were old neighbors, she did not resent It when he put his hand on her shoulder. "I don't know of course, if you feel like that about it," he said, "we'll see what can be done. It's hard work, and a good many times it seems futile. They die, you know, in spite of all we can do. And there are many things that are worse than death " His voice trailed off. When he had started out in nis profession, he had had some such ideal of service as this girl beside him. He sighed a little as he turned away. "I'll speak to the superintendent about you," he said. 'Terhaps you'd like me to show you around a little." "When? Today?" He had meant in a month, or a year. It was quite a minute before he replied re-plied : "Yes, today, if you say. I'm operating operat-ing at four. How about three o'clock?" "Then we'll say at three," she said calmly, and took an orderly and unflur-ried unflur-ried departure. She sent K. a note at noon, with word to Tillie at Mrs. McKee's to put it under un-der his plate : Dear Mr. Le Movne I am so excited I can hardly write. Doctor Wilson, the sur- famlly. But, I warn you, if I ever hear of Christine's husband getting an apostle apos-tle spoon " She smiled up at him. "You are looking very grand today. But you have grass strains on your white trousers. trou-sers. Perhaps Katie can take them out." Quite suddenly . K. felt that she thought him too old for such frivolity of dress. It put him on his mettle. "How old do you think I am, Miss Sidney?" "Not over forty, I'm sure." "I'm almost thirty. It is middle age, of course, but it is not senility." Clearly the subject of his years did not interest her vitally, for she harked back to the grass stains. "I'm afraid you're not saving, as you promised. Those are new clothes, aren't they?" "No, indeed. Bought years ago in England the coat in London, the trousers in Bath, on a motor tour. Cost something like twelve shillings. Awfully Awful-ly cheap. They wear them for cricket." That was a wrong move, of course. Sidney must hear about England ; and she marveled politely, in view of his poverty, about his being there. Poor Le Moyne floundered in a sea of mendacity, men-dacity, rose to a truth here and there, clutched at luncheon, and achieved safety at last. . "To think," said Sidney, "that you have really been across the ocean ! I never knew but one person who had been abroad. It Is Dr. Max Wilson." Back again to Doctor Max ! Le Moyne, unpacking sandwiches from a basket, was aroused by a sheer resentment resent-ment to indiscretion. ' "You like this Wilson chap pretty well, don't you?" "What do you mean?" "You talk about him rather a lot." This was sheer recklessness, of course. He expected fury, annihilation. He did not look up, but busied himself him-self with the luncheon. When the silence si-lence grew oppressive, he ventured to glance toward her. She was leaning forward, her chin cupped in her palms, staring out over the valley that stretched at their feet. "Don't speak to me for a minute or two," she said. "I'm thinking over what you have just said." Down through the valley ran a shallow shal-low river, making noisy pretensions to both depth and fury. He remembered just such a river In the Tyrol, with this same Wilson on a rock, holding the hand of a pretty Austrian girl, while he snapped the shutter of a camera. He had that picture somewhere now ; but the girl was dead, and, of the three, Wilson was the only one who had met life and vanquished It. "I've known him all my life," Sidney Sid-ney said at last. "You're perfectly right about one thing: I talk about him and I think about him. I'm being candid, because what's the use of being be-ing friends if we're not frank? I admire ad-mire him you'd have to see him in the hospital, with everyone deferring to him and all that, to understand. And when you think of a man like that, who holds life and death in his hands, of course you rather thrill. I I honestly hon-estly believe that's all there is to it." "If that's the whole thing, that's hardly a mad passion." He tried to smile; succeeded faintly. "Well, of course, there's this, too. I know he'll never look at me. I'll be one of forty nurses ; indeed, for three months I'll be only a probationer. He'll probably never even remember I'm in the hospital at all." "I see. Then, if you thought he was in love with you, things would be different?" dif-ferent?" "If I thought Dr. Max Wilson was in love with me," said Sidney solemnly, "I'd go out of my head with joy." To hide the shock with which he realized that she was, unknown to herself, her-self, already in the throes of a romantic roman-tic attachment for Wilson, K. suggested suggest-ed a descent to the river. She accepted accept-ed eagerly, and he helped her down. That was another memory that outlasted out-lasted the day her small warm hand in his; the time she slipped and he caught her; the pain in her eyes at one of his thoughtless remarks. "I'm going to be pretty lonely," he said, when she had paused in the descent de-scent and was taking a stone out of her low shoe. "I shall hate to come home at night." And then, seeing her wince : "I've been whining all day. For heaven's sake, don't look like that. If there's one sort of man I detest more than another, it's a man who is sorry for himself. Do you suppose your mother would object if we stayed out here at the hotel for supper? I've ordered or-dered a moon, orange-yellow and extra size." "I should hate to have anything ordered or-dered and wasted." "Then we'll stay." "It's fearfully extravagant." "I'll be thrifty as to moons while you are in the hospital." So it was settled. And, as it happened, hap-pened, Sidney had to stay, anyhow. For, having perched herself out in the river on a sugar-loaf rock, she slid, slowly but with a dreadful inevitability, inevitabil-ity, into the water. K. happened to be looking in another direction. So it occurred oc-curred that at one moment Sidney sat on a rock, fluffy white from head to feet, entrancingly pretty, and knowing it, and the next she was standing neck deep in water, much too startled to scream, and trying to be dignified under un-der the rather trying circumstances. K. had not looked around. The splash had been a gentle one. "If you will be good enough," said Sidney, with her chin well up, "to give me your hand or a pole or something because if the river rises an inch I shall drown." "I Haven't Promised to Marry Him." and a girl, drinking soda water together, to-gether, even with a boy lover on the next stool. Now he could view things through Joe's tragic eyes. And there was more than that. All day he had noticed how Inevitable the conversation conversa-tion turned to the young surgeon. Sidney's active young brain, turned inward for the first time in her life, was still on herself. "Mother Is plaintively resigned and Aunt Harriet has been a trump. She's going to keep her room. It's really up to you." "To me?" "To your staying on. Mother trusts you absolutely. I hope you noticed that you got one of the apostle spoons with the custard she sent up to you the other night. And she didn't object to this trip today. Of course, as she said herself, it isn't as if you were young, or at all wild." In spite of himself, K. was rather startled. He felt old enough, God knew, but he had always thought of it as an age of the spirit. He rose to his feet and threw back his fine shoulders. |