“I want you to be happy, dear.”
They were on the terrace of the White Springs Hotel again. K. had ordered dinner, making a great to-do about getting the dishes they both liked. But now that it was there, they were not eating. K. had placed his chair so that his profile was turned toward her. He had worn the duster religiously until nightfall, and then had discarded it. It hung limp and dejected on the back of his chair. Past K.'s profile Sidney could see the magnolia tree shaped like a heart.
“It seems to me,” said Sidney suddenly, “that you are kind to every one but me, K.”
He fairly stammered his astonishment:—
“Why, what on earth have I done?”
“You are trying to make me marry Max, aren't you?”
She was very properly ashamed of that, and, when he failed of reply out of sheer inability to think of one that would not say too much, she went hastily to something else:
“It is hard for me to realize that you—that you lived a life of your own, a busy life, doing useful things, before you came to us. I wish you would tell me something about yourself. If we're to be friends when you go away,”—she had to stop there, for the lump in her throat—“I'll want to know how to think of you,—who your friends are,—all that.”
He made an effort. He was thinking, of course, that he would be visualizing her, in the hospital, in the little house on its side street, as she looked just then, her eyes like stars, her lips just parted, her hands folded before her on the table.
“I shall be working,” he said at last. “So will you.”