"I'm not denying he's a very sick man," protested Hamilton.
"Is he——"
She could not pronounce the word.
"Nothing like that—believe me, nothing. He has the chances all with him."
And Susan tried to believe. "He will have a room?"
"He has a room. That's why I was so long. And I'm glad he has—for, to be perfectly honest, the attendance—not the treatment, but the attendance—is much better for private patients."
Susan was looking at the floor. Presently she drew a long breath, rose. "Well, I must be going," said she. And she went to the street, he accompanying her.
"If you're going back to the hotel," said he, "I'm walking that way."
"No, I've got to go this way," replied she, looking up Elm Street.
He saw she wished to be alone, and left her with the promise to see Burlingham again that afternoon and let her know at the hotel how he was getting on. He went east, she north. At the first corner she stopped, glanced back to make sure he was not following. From her bosom she drew four business cards. She had taken the papers from the pockets of Burlingham's clothes and from the drawer of the table in his room, to put them all together for safety; she had found these cards, the addresses of theatrical agents. As she looked at them, she remembered Burlingham's having said that Blynn—Maurice Blynn, at Vine and Ninth Streets—might give them something at one of the "over the Rhine" music halls, as a last resort. She noted the address, put away the cards and walked on, looking about for a policeman. Soon she came to a bridge over a muddy stream—a little river, she thought at first, then remembered that it must be the canal—the Rhine, as it was called, because the city's huge German population lived beyond it, keeping up the customs and even the language of the fatherland. She stood on the bridge, watching the repulsive waters from which arose the stench of sewage; watching canal boats dragged drearily by mules with harness-worn hides; followed with her melancholy eyes the course of the canal under bridge after bridge, through a lane of dirty, noisy factories pouring out from lofty chimneys immense clouds of black smoke. It ought to have been a bright summer day, but the sun shone palely through the dense clouds; a sticky, sooty moisture saturated the air, formed a skin of oily black ooze over everything exposed to it. A policeman, a big German, with stupid honest face, brutal yet kindly, came lounging along.