“I want you so very much. I don't want to wait, dear. Let me tell Ed that you will marry me soon. Then, when I go away, I'll take you with me.”
“Can't we talk things over when you are stronger?”
Her tone caught his attention, and turned him a little white. He faced her to the window, so that the light fell full on her.
He had forced her hand. She had meant to wait; but, with his keen eyes on her, she could not dissemble.
“I am going to make you very unhappy for a little while.”
“I've had a lot of time to think. If you had really wanted me, Max--”
“It isn't that I am angry. I am not even jealous. I was at first. It isn't that. It's hard to make you understand. I think you care for me--”
“I love you! I swear I never loved any other woman as I love you.”
Suddenly he remembered that he had also sworn to put Carlotta out of his life. He knew that Sidney remembered, too; but she gave no sign.
“Perhaps that's true. You might go on caring for me. Sometimes I think you would. But there would always be other women, Max. You're like that. Perhaps you can't help it.”
“If you loved me you could do anything with me.” He was half sullen.
By the way her color leaped, he knew he had struck fire. All his conjectures as to how Sidney would take the knowledge of his entanglement with Carlotta had been founded on one major premise--that she loved him. The mere suspicion made him gasp.
“But, good Heavens, Sidney, you do care for me, don't you?”
She tried to explain, rather pitifully. After one look at his face, she spoke to the window.
“I'm so wretched about it. I thought I cared. To me you were the best and greatest man that ever lived. I--when I said my prayers, I--But that doesn't matter. You were a sort of god to me. When the Lamb--that's one of the internes, you know--nicknamed you the 'Little Tin God,' I was angry. You could never be anything little to me, or do anything that wasn't big. Do you see?”
“No. I see that now. But that's the way I cared. Now I know that I didn't care for you, really, at all. I built up an idol and worshiped it. I always saw you through a sort of haze. You were operating, with everybody standing by, saying how wonderful it was. Or you were coming to the wards, and everything was excitement, getting ready for you. I blame myself terribly. But you see, don't you? It isn't that I think you are wicked. It's just that I never loved the real you, because I never knew you.”