o sworn to put Carlotta out of his
life. He knew that Sidney remembered, too; but she gave no sign.

"Perhaps that's true. You might go on caring for me. Sometimes I think
you would. But there would always be other women, Max. You're like that.
Perhaps you can't help it."

"If you loved me you could do anything with me." He was half sullen.

By the way her color leaped, he knew he had struck fire. All
his conjectures as to how Sidney would take the knowledge of his
entanglement with Carlotta had been founded on one major premise--that
she loved him. The mere suspicion made him gasp.

"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.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want," read the Head, her voice
calm with the quiet of twilight and the