droit he managed to
slip the little picture over and under the box before she saw it. It is
doubtful if she would have realized its significance, had she seen it.

"I've been thinking things over," she said. "It seems to me I'd better
not go back."

He had left the door carefully open. Men are always more conventional
than women.

"That would be foolish, wouldn't it, when you have done so well? And,
besides, since you are not guilty, Sidney--"

"I didn't do it!" she cried passionately. "I know I didn't. But I've
lost faith in myself. I can't keep on; that's all there is to it. All
last night, in the emergency ward, I felt it going. I clutched at it. I
kept saying to myself: 'You didn't do it, you didn't do it'; and all the
time something inside of me was saying, 'Not now, perhaps; but sometime
you may.'"

Poor K., who had reasoned all this out for himself and had come to the
same impasse!

"To go on like this, feeling that one has life and death in one's hand,
and then perhaps some day to make a mistake like that!" She looked up at
him forlornly. "I am just not brave enough, K."

"Wouldn't it be braver to keep on? Aren't you giving up very easily?"

Her world was in pieces about her, and she felt alone in a wide and
empty place. And, because her nerves were drawn taut until they were
ready to snap, Sidney turned on him shrewishly.

"I think you are all afraid I will come back to stay. Nobody really
wants me anywhere--in all the world! Not at the hospital, not here, not
anyplace. I am no use."

"When you say that nobody wants you," said K., not very steadily, "I--I
think you are making a mistake."

"Who?" she demanded. "Christine? Aunt Harriet? Katie? The only person
who ever really wanted me was my mother, and I went away and left her!"

She scanned his face closely, and, reading there something she did not
understand, she colored suddenly.

"I believe you mean Joe Drummond."

"No; I do not mean Joe Drummond."

If he had found any encouragement in her face, he would have gone on
recklessly; but her blank eyes warned him.

"If you mean Max Wilson," said Sidney, "you are entirely wrong. He's not
in love with me--not, that is, any more than he is in love with a
dozen girls. He likes to be with me--oh, I know that; but that doesn't
mean--anything else. Anyhow, after this disgrace--"

"There is no disgrace, child."

"He'll think me careless, at the least. And his ideals are so high, K."

"You say he