“Carlotta Harrison. And now that Miss Gregg has said she will accept me, it's really all over. The other nurses are wonderful--so kind and so helpful. I hope I shall look well in my cap.”
Carlotta Harrison was in Sidney's hospital! A thousand contingencies flashed through his mind. Sidney might grow to like her and bring her to the house. Sidney might insist on the thing she always spoke of--that he visit the hospital; and he would meet her, face to face. He could have depended on a man to keep his secret. This girl with her somber eyes and her threat to pay him out for what had happened to her--she meant danger of a sort that no man could fight.
“Soon,” said Sidney, through the warm darkness, “I shall have a cap, and be always forgetting it and putting my hat on over it--the new ones always do. One of the girls slept in hers the other night! They are tulle, you know, and quite stiff, and it was the most erratic-looking thing the next day!”
It was then that the door across the street closed. Sidney did not hear it, but K. bent forward. There was a part of his brain always automatically on watch.
“I shall get my operating-room training, too,” she went on. “That is the real romance of the hospital. A--a surgeon is a sort of hero in a hospital. You wouldn't think that, would you? There was a lot of excitement to-day. Even the probationers' table was talking about it. Dr. Max Wilson did the Edwardes operation.”
The figure across the Street was lighting a cigarette. Perhaps, after all--
“Something tremendously difficult--I don't know what. It's going into the medical journals. A Dr. Edwardes invented it, or whatever they call it. They took a picture of the operating-room for the article. The photographer had to put on operating clothes and wrap the camera in sterilized towels. It was the most thrilling thing, they say--”
Her voice died away as her eyes followed K.'s. Max, cigarette in hand, was coming across, under the ailanthus tree. He hesitated on the pavement, his eyes searching the shadowy balcony.
There was vibrant gladness in her tone. He came slowly toward them.
“My brother is not at home, so I came over. How select you are, with your balcony!”
K. had risen and pushed back his chair. His mind was working quickly. Here in the darkness he could hold the situation for a moment. If he could get Sidney into the house, the rest would not matter. Luckily, the balcony was very dark.