K. disposed of his long legs on the steps. He was trying to fit his own ideas of luxury to a garden hose and a city street.
"I"m afraid you"re working too hard."
"I? I do a minimum of labor for a minimum of wage.
"But you work at night, don"t you?"
K. was natively honest. He hesitated. Then:
"No, Miss Page."
"But You go out every evening!" Suddenly the truth burst on her.
"Oh, dear!" she said. "I do believe--why, how silly of you!"
K. was most uncomfortable.
"Really, I like it," he protested. "I hang over a desk all day, and in the evening I want to walk. I ramble around the park and see lovers on benches--it"s rather thrilling. They sit on the same benches evening after evening. I know a lot of them by sight, and if they"re not there I wonder if they have quarreled, or if they have finally got married and ended the romance. You can see how exciting it is."
Quite suddenly Sidney laughed.
"How very nice you are!" she said--"and how absurd! Why should their getting married end the romance? And don"t you know that, if you insist on walking the streets and parks at night because Joe Drummond is here, I shall have to tell him not to come?"
This did not follow, to K."s mind. They had rather a heated argument over it, and became much better acquainted.
"If I were engaged to him," Sidney ended, her cheeks very pink, "I--I might understand. But, as I am not--"
"Ah!" said K., a trifle unsteadily. "So you are not?"
Only a week--and love was one of the things she had had to give up, with others. Not, of course, that he was in love with Sidney then. But he had been desperately lonely, and, for all her practical clearheadedness, she was softly and appealingly feminine. By way of keeping his head, he talked suddenly and earnestly of Mrs. McKee, and food, and Tillie, and of Mr. Wagner and the pencil pad.
"It"s like a game," he said. "We disagree on everything, especially Mexico. If you ever tried to spell those Mexican names--"
"Why did you think I was engaged?" she insisted.
Now, in K."s walk of life--that walk of life where there are no toothpicks, and no one would have believed that twenty-one meals could have been secured for five dollars with a ticket punch thrown in--young girls did not receive the attention of one young man to the exclusion of others unless they were engaged. But he could hardly say that.
"Oh, I don"t know. Those things get in the air. I am quite certain, for instance, that Reginald suspects it."
"It"s Johnny Rosenfeld," said Sidney, with decision. "It"s horrible, the way things get about. Because Joe sent me a box of roses--As a matter of fact, I"m not engaged, or going to be, Mr. Le Moyne. I"m going into a hospital to be a nurse."
Le Moyne said nothing. For just a moment he closed his eyes. A man is in a rather a bad way when, every time he closes his eyes, he sees the same thing, especially if it is rather terrible. When it gets to a point where he lies awake at night and reads, for fear of closing them--
"You"re too young, aren"t you?"
"Dr. Ed--one of the Wilsons across the Street--is going to help me about that. His brother Max is a big surgeon there. I expect you"ve heard of him. We"re very proud of him in the Street."
Lucky for K. Le Moyne that the moon no longer shone on the low gray doorstep, that Sidney"s mind had traveled far away to shining floors and rows of white beds. "Life--in the raw," Dr. Ed had said that other afternoon. Closer to her than the hospital was life in the raw that night.
So, even here, on this quiet street in this distant city, there was to be no peace. Max Wilson just across the way! It--it was ironic. Was there no place where a man could lose himself? He would have to move on again, of course.
But that, it seemed, was just what he could not do. For:
"I want to ask you to do something, and I hope you"ll be quite frank,"
said Sidney.
"Anything that I can do--"
"It"s this. If you are comfortable, and--and like the room and all that, I wish you"d stay." She hurried on: "If I could feel that mother had a dependable person like you in the house, it would all be easier."
Dependable! That stung.
"But--forgive my asking; I"m really interested--can your mother manage?
You"ll get practically no money during your training."
"I"ve thought of that. A friend of mine, Christine Lorenz, is going to be married. Her people are wealthy, but she"ll have nothing but what Palmer makes. She"d like to have the parlor and the sitting room behind. They wouldn"t interfere with you at all," she added hastily.
"Christine"s father would build a little balcony at the side for them, a sort of porch, and they"d sit there in the evenings."
Behind Sidney"s carefully practical tone the man read appeal. Never before had he realized how narrow the girl"s world had been. The Street, with but one dimension, bounded it! In her perplexity, she was appealing to him who was practically a stranger.
And he knew then that he must do the thing she asked. He, who had fled so long, could roam no more. Here on the Street, with its menace just across, he must live, that she might work. In his world, men had worked that women might live in certain places, certain ways. This girl was going out to earn her living, and he would stay to make it possible. But no hint of all this was in his voice.
"I shall stay, of course," he said gravely. "I--this is the nearest thing to home that I"ve known for a long time. I want you to know that."
So they moved their puppets about, Anna and Harriet, Christine and her husband-to-be, Dr. Ed, even Tillie and the Rosenfelds; shifted and placed them, and, planning, obeyed inevitable law.
"Christine shall come, then," said Sidney forsooth, "and we will throw out a balcony."
So they planned, calmly ignorant that poor Christine"s story and Tillie"s and Johnny Rosenfeld"s and all the others" were already written among the things that are, and the things that shall be hereafter.
"You are very good to me," said Sidney.
When she rose, K. Le Moyne sprang to his feet.
Anna had noticed that he always rose when she entered his room,--with fresh towels on Katie"s day out, for instance,--and she liked him for it. Years ago, the men she had known had shown this courtesy to their women; but the Street regarded such things as affectation.
"I wonder if you would do me another favor? I"m afraid you"ll take to avoiding me, if I keep on."
"I don"t think you need fear that."
"This stupid story about Joe Drummond--I"m not saying I"ll never marry him, but I"m certainly not engaged. Now and then, when you are taking your evening walks, if you would ask me to walk with you--"
K. looked rather dazed.
"I can"t imagine anything pleasanter; but I wish you"d explain just how--"
Sidney smiled at him. As he stood on the lowest step, their eyes were almost level.