d--the coat in London, the
trousers in Bath, on a motor tour. Cost something like twelve shillings.
Awfully cheap. They wear them for cricket."

That was a wrong move, of course. Sidney must hear about England; and
she marveled politely, in view of his poverty, about his being there.
Poor Le Moyne floundered in a sea of mendacity, rose to a truth here and
there, clutched at luncheon, and achieved safety at last.

"To think," said Sidney, "that you have really been across the ocean! I
never knew but one person who had been abroad. It is Dr. Max Wilson."

Back again to Dr. Max! Le Moyne, unpacking sandwiches from a basket, was
aroused by a sheer resentment to an indiscretion.

"You like this Wilson chap pretty well, don't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You talk about him rather a lot."

This was sheer recklessness, of course. He expected fury, annihilation.
He did not look up, but busied himself with the luncheon. When the
silence grew oppressive, he ventured to glance toward her. She was
leaning forward, her chin cupped in her palms, staring out over the
valley that stretched at their feet.

"Don't speak to me for a minute or two," she said. "I'm thinking over
what you have just said."

Manlike, having raised the issue, K. would have given much to evade it.
Not that he had owned himself in love with Sidney. Love was not for
him. But into his loneliness and despair the girl had came like a ray of
light. She typified that youth and hope that he had felt slipping away
from him. Through her clear eyes he was beginning to see a new world.
Lose her he must, and that he knew; but not this way.

Down through the valley ran a shallow river, making noisy pretensions to
both depth and fury. He remembered just such a river in the Tyrol, with
this same Wilson on a rock, holding the hand of a pretty Austrian girl,
while he snapped the shutter of a camera. He had that picture somewhere
now; but the girl was dead, and, of the three, Wilson was the only one
who had met life and vanquished it.

"I've known him all my life," Sidney said at last. "You're perfectly
right about one thing: I talk about him and I think about him. I'm being
candid, because what's the use of being friends if we're not frank?
I admire him--you'd have to see him in the hospital, with every one
deferring to him and all that, to understand. And when you think of
a manlike that, who holds life and death in his hands, of course you
rather thrill. I--I honest