“But, good Heavens, Sidney, you do care for me, don't you?”
“I'm afraid I don't, Max; not enough.”
She tried to explain, rather pitifully. After one look at his face, she spoke to the window.
“I'm so wretched about it. I thought I cared. To me you were the best and greatest man that ever lived. I—when I said my prayers, I—But that doesn't matter. You were a sort of god to me. When the Lamb—that's one of the internes, you know—nicknamed you the 'Little Tin God,' I was angry. You could never be anything little to me, or do anything that wasn't big. Do you see?”
He groaned under his breath.
“No man could live up to that, Sidney.”
“No. I see that now. But that's the way I cared. Now I know that I didn't care for you, really, at all. I built up an idol and worshiped it. I always saw you through a sort of haze. You were operating, with everybody standing by, saying how wonderful it was. Or you were coming to the wards, and everything was excitement, getting ready for you. I blame myself terribly. But you see, don't you? It isn't that I think you are wicked. It's just that I never loved the real you, because I never knew you.”
When he remained silent, she made an attempt to justify herself.
“I'd known very few men,” she said. “I came into the hospital, and for a time life seemed very terrible. There were wickednesses I had never heard of, and somebody always paying for them. I was always asking, Why? Why? Then you would come in, and a lot of them you cured and sent out. You gave them their chance, don't you see? Until I knew about Carlotta, you always meant that to me. You were like K.—always helping.”
The room was very silent. In the nurses' parlor, a few feet down the corridor, the nurses were at prayers.