K Part 68

"She has no anxiety now. Max is doing well."

"Then what is it?"

"I'm not quite sure, but I think I know. She's lost faith in Max, and she's not like me. I--I knew about Palmer before I married him. I got a letter. It's all rather hideous--I needn't go into it. I was afraid to back out; it was just before my wedding. But Sidney has more character than I have. Max isn't what she thought he was, and I doubt whether she'll marry him."

K. glanced toward the street where Sidney's name and Max's lay open to the sun and to the smiles of the Street. Christine might be right, but that did not alter things for him.

Christine's thoughts went back inevitably to herself; to Palmer, who was doing better just now; to K., who was going away--went back with an ache to the night K. had taken her in his arms and then put her away. How wrong things were! What a mess life was!

"When you go away," she said at last, "I want you to remember this. I'm going to do my best, K. You have taught me all I know. All my life I'll have to overlook things; I know that. But, in his way, Palmer cares for me. He will always come back, and perhaps sometime--"

Her voice trailed off. Far ahead of her she saw the years stretching out, marked, not by days and months, but by Palmer's wanderings away, his remorseful returns.

"Do a little more than forgetting," K. said. "Try to care for him, Christine. You did once. And that's your strongest weapon. It's always a woman's strongest weapon. And it wins in the end."

"I shall try, K.," she answered obediently.

But he turned away from the look in her eyes.

Harriet was abroad. She had sent cards from Paris to her "trade." It was an innovation. The two or three people on the Street who received her engraved announcement that she was there, "buying new chic models for the autumn and winter--afternoon frocks, evening gowns, reception dresses, and wraps, from Poiret, Martial et Armand, and others," left the envelopes casually on the parlor table, as if communications from Paris were quite to be expected.

So K. lunched alone, and ate little. After luncheon he fixed a broken ironing-stand for Katie, and in return she pressed a pair of trousers for him. He had it in mind to ask Sidney to go out with him in Max's car, and his most presentable suit was very shabby.

"I'm thinking," said Katie, when she brought the pressed garments up over her arm and pa.s.sed them in through a discreet crack in the door, "that these pants will stand more walking than sitting, Mr. K. They're getting mighty thin."

"I'll take a duster along in case of accident," he promised her; "and to-morrow I'll order a suit, Katie."

"I'll believe it when I see it," said Katie from the stairs. "Some fool of a woman from the alley will come in to-night and tell you she can't pay her rent, and she'll take your suit away in her pocket-book--as like as not to pay an installment on a piano. There's two new pianos in the alley since you came here."

"I promise it, Katie."

"Show it to me," said Katie laconically. "And don't go to picking up anything you drop!"

Sidney came home at half-past two--came delicately flushed, as if she had hurried, and with a tremulous smile that caught Katie's eye at once.

"Bless the child!" she said. "There's no need to ask how he is to-day.

You're all one smile."

The smile set just a trifle.

"Katie, some one has written my name out on the street, in chalk. It's with Dr. Wilson's, and it looks so silly. Please go out and sweep it off."

"I'm about crazy with their old chalk. I'll do it after a while."

"Please do it now. I don't want anyone to see it. Is--is Mr. K.

upstairs?"

But when she learned that K. was upstairs, oddly enough, she did not go up at once. She stood in the lower hall and listened. Yes, he was there. She could hear him moving about. Her lips parted slightly as she listened.

Christine, looking in from her balcony, saw her there, and, seeing something in her face that she had never suspected, put her hand to her throat.

"Sidney!"

"Oh--h.e.l.lo, Chris."

"Won't you come and sit with me?"

"I haven't much time--that is, I want to speak to K."

"You can see him when he comes down."

Sidney came slowly through the parlor. It occurred to her, all at once, that Christine must see a lot of K., especially now. No doubt he was in and out of the house often. And how pretty Christine was! She was unhappy, too. All that seemed to be necessary to win K.'s attention was to be unhappy enough. Well, surely, in that case--

"How is Max?"

"Still better."

Sidney sat down on the edge of the railing; but she was careful, Christine saw, to face the staircase. There was silence on the balcony.

Christine sewed; Sidney sat and swung her feet idly.

"Dr. Ed says Max wants you to give up your training and marry him now."

"I'm not going to marry him at all, Chris."

Upstairs, K.'s door slammed. It was one of his failings that he always slammed doors. Harriet used to be quite disagreeable about it.

Sidney slid from the railing.

"There he is now."

Perhaps, in all her frivolous, selfish life, Christine had never had a bigger moment than the one that followed. She could have said nothing, and, in the queer way that life goes, K. might have gone away from the Street as empty of heart as he had come to it.

"Be very good to him, Sidney," she said unsteadily. "He cares so much."

CHAPTER x.x.x

K. was being very dense. For so long had he considered Sidney as unattainable that now his masculine mind, a little weary with much wretchedness, refused to move from its old att.i.tude.

"It was glamour, that was all, K.," said Sidney bravely.

"But, perhaps," said K., "it's just because of that miserable incident with Carlotta. That wasn't the right thing, of course, but Max has told me the story. It was really quite innocent. She fainted in the yard, and--"

Sidney was exasperated.