He turned and took a quick survey of the room. The picture was against the collar-box. But he took the risk and held the door wide.
Sidney came in and sat down by the fire. By being adroit he managed to slip the little picture over and under the box before she saw it. It is doubtful if she would have realized its significance, had she seen it.
“I've been thinking things over,” she said. “It seems to me I'd better not go back.”
He had left the door carefully open. Men are always more conventional than women.
“That would be foolish, wouldn't it, when you have done so well? And, besides, since you are not guilty, Sidney--”
“I didn't do it!” she cried passionately. “I know I didn't. But I've lost faith in myself. I can't keep on; that's all there is to it. All last night, in the emergency ward, I felt it going. I clutched at it. I kept saying to myself: 'You didn't do it, you didn't do it'; and all the time something inside of me was saying, 'Not now, perhaps; but sometime you may.'”
Poor K., who had reasoned all this out for himself and had come to the same impasse!
“To go on like this, feeling that one has life and death in one's hand, and then perhaps some day to make a mistake like that!” She looked up at him forlornly. “I am just not brave enough, K.”
“Wouldn't it be braver to keep on? Aren't you giving up very easily?”
Her world was in pieces about her, and she felt alone in a wide and empty place. And, because her nerves were drawn taut until they were ready to snap, Sidney turned on him shrewishly.
“I think you are all afraid I will come back to stay. Nobody really wants me anywhere--in all the world! Not at the hospital, not here, not anyplace. I am no use.”
“When you say that nobody wants you,” said K., not very steadily, “I--I think you are making a mistake.”
“Who?” she demanded. “Christine? Aunt Harriet? Katie? The only person who ever really wanted me was my mother, and I went away and left her!”
She scanned his face closely, and, reading there something she did not understand, she colored suddenly.
If he had found any encouragement in her face, he would have gone on recklessly; but her blank eyes warned him.
“If you mean Max Wilson,” said Sidney, “you are entirely wrong. He's not in love with me--not, that is, any more than he is in love with a dozen girls. He likes to be with me--oh, I know that; but that doesn't mean--anything else. Anyhow, after this disgrace--”