“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 likes to be with you. What about you?” Sidney had been sitting in a low chair by the fire. She rose with a sudden passionate movement. In the informality of the household, she had visited K. in her dressing-gown and slippers; and now she stood before him, a tragic young figure, clutching the folds of her gown across her breast. “I worship him, K.,” she said tragically. “When I see him coming, I want to get down and let him walk on me. I know his step in the hall. I know the very way he rings for the elevator. When I see him in the operating-room, cool and calm while every one else is flustered and excited, he--he looks like a god.”