“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” read the Head, her voice calm with the quiet of twilight and the end of the day.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”
The nurses read the response a little slowly, as if they, too, were weary.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—”
The man in the chair stirred. He had come through the valley of the shadow, and for what? He was very bitter. He said to himself savagely that they would better have let him die. “You say you never loved me because you never knew me. I'm not a rotter, Sidney. Isn't it possible that the man you, cared about, who—who did his best by people and all that—is the real me?”
She gazed at him thoughtfully. He missed something out of her eyes, the sort of luminous, wistful look with which she had been wont to survey his greatness. Measured by this new glance, so clear, so appraising, he sank back into his chair.
“The man who did his best is quite real. You have always done the best in your work; you always will. But the other is a part of you too, Max. Even if I cared, I would not dare to run the risk.”
Under the window rang the sharp gong of a city patrol-wagon. It rumbled through the gates back to the courtyard, where its continued clamor summoned white-coated orderlies.
An operating-room case, probably. Sidney, chin lifted, listened carefully. If it was a case for her, the elevator would go up to the operating-room. With a renewed sense of loss, Max saw that already she had put him out of her mind. The call to service was to her a call to battle. Her sensitive nostrils quivered; her young figure stood erect, alert.
“It has gone up!”