She looked about her for a minute. Then she went to a small door and drew a key from beneath her apron and inserted it in the lock.
No one in the hospital knew what was behind the small door. It was popularly supposed to hold Aunt Jane's private supplies—dangerous remedies for emergencies, perhaps. No one knew.
She opened the door slowly and stepped in, closing it gently behind her; the key still dangled from the lock. There was no light in the little room—except for the moonlight shining through a small window and lighting up the bareness of the place; it shone on a single chair by the window. There was nothing else in the room. Aunt Jane went across to it and sat down.... She was not crying now. She folded her hands in her lap and sat very quiet, and the moonlight filtered in through the window and touched the muslin cap and the white figure, and passed silently across it and fell on the floor, making a luminous path in the blackness.... And Aunt Jane did not stir.
Often when she was sought for in the hospital and could not be found, high or low, Aunt Jane was sitting by the window of this tiny room, gathering up the tangled fibres of pain and discord and holding them steady.... She knew all the stars that moved across the window—at every hour of the night, and every night of the year. It was not a new experience for her to sit very quiet, while the stars travelled across.... But to-night she was not reaching out to stars and drawing them down into the pain of the world to heal it.
She was looking into a very queer, disturbed heart—that seemed breaking up in little bits. Curious things bubbled up and startled her as she gazed at them.... No one had loved her for twenty years!— Why should any one love—an old woman like her?... Why should she want to be loved? Her thought was full of gentle scorn for all old women that wanted to be loved—and for Aunt Jane!... She would have to get a new day-book, or tear out the page! What would Mrs. Samuel Hotchkiss, chairman of the Woman's Board of Directors, say to that page if she happened to come on it!... It was a disgraceful page! Aunt Jane was a disgrace! And something in her heart ached so with the happiness and the misery of it, that Aunt Jane's lips fell to quivering.... Any woman that had as much as she had to be thankful for, ought to be ashamed!... And what was Herman Medfield? Just a man! But it wasn't Herman Medfield—it was all the repressed heartache of years.... "Women are not fit to live alone!" She had said it many times. But she had not thought of Aunt Jane when she said it. She was superior to such things—with her hospital and her patients and Dr. Carmon— Her thought stopped suddenly—and flashed on.... She had always thought she depended on the Lord—and here was this great lonely ache in her heart.
It didn't seem to make any difference how ashamed she was!
Her handkerchief brushed fiercely at her eyes.
There was a sound in the outer office. Aunt Jane sat up— Some one looking for her! The hand felt again for its handkerchief and she turned her head to listen.... The steps crossed the office and a bright line of light ran along under the door. Aunt Jane's eye rested on it. She brushed the traces of crying from her face and reached up to her cap. Then she leaned forward to the door—she could reach it from her chair in the little room without getting up; and she turned the handle softly, opening it a crack.
There was no sound in the office.