He rose. The talk was ended. He looked again at his watch, and said:
"It does not seem worth while to wait longer. Evidently your model has been kept away to-day. Let us hope that no ill has befallen her and that she will be here to-morrow. If she is here, we shall go on with the portrait. If she should not be here, I shall have another model ready, and we shall take up another study until she returns. Bring fresh canvases."
He left the room. They lingered; looking again at their canvases, understanding their own work as they had not hitherto and more strongly than ever drawn toward their model whom that day they missed. Slowly and with disappointment and with many conjectures as to why she had not come, they separated.
V
It was Sunday. All round St. Luke's Hospital quiet reigned. The day was very still up there on the heights under the blue curtain of the sky.
When he had been hurled against the curb on the dark street, had been rolled over and tossed there and left there with no outcry, no movement, as limp and senseless as a mangled weed, the careless crowd which somewhere in the city every day gathers about such scenes quickly gathered about him. In this throng was the physician whose car stood near by; and he, used to sights of suffering but touched by that tragedy of unconscious child and half-crazed mother, had hurried them in his own car to St. Luke's—to St. Luke's, which is always open, always ready, and always free to those who lack means.
Just before they stopped at the entrance she had pleaded in the doctor's ear for a luxury.
"To the private ward," he said to those who lifted the lad to the stretcher, speaking as though in response to her entreaty.