His voice was not entirely steady, but his eyes smiled into hers. “Am I--are we going to lose you soon?” “I shall finish my training. I made that a condition.” Then, in a burst of confidence:-- “I know so little, K., and he knows so much! I am going to read and study, so that he can talk to me about his work. That's what marriage ought to be, a sort of partnership. Don't you think so?” K. nodded. His mind refused to go forward to the unthinkable future. Instead, he was looking back--back to those days when he had hoped sometime to have a wife to talk to about his work, that beloved work that was no longer his. And, finding it agonizing, as indeed all thought was that summer night, he dwelt for a moment on that evening, a year before, when in the same June moonlight, he had come up the Street and had seen Sidney where she was now, with the tree shadows playing over her. Even that first evening he had been jealous. It had been Joe then. Now it was another and older man, daring, intelligent, unscrupulous. And this time he had lost her absolutely, lost her without a struggle to keep her. His only struggle had been with himself, to remember that he had nothing to offer but failure. “Do you know,” said Sidney suddenly, “that it is almost a year since that night you came up the Street, and I was here on the steps?” “That's a fact, isn't it!” He managed to get some surprise into his voice. “How Joe objected to your coming! Poor Joe!” “Do you ever see him?” “Hardly ever now. I think he hates me.” “Why?” “Because--well, you know, K. Why do men always hate a woman who just happens not to love them?” “I don't believe they do. It would be much better for them if they could. As a matter of fact, there are poor devils who go through life trying to do that very thing, and failing.” Sidney's eyes were on the tall house across. It was Dr. Ed's evening office hour, and through the open window she could see a line of people waiting their turn. They sat immobile, inert, doggedly patient, until the opening of the back office door promoted them all one chair toward the consulting-room. “I shall be just across the Street,” she said at last. “Nearer than I am at the hospital.” “You will be much farther away. You will be married.” “But we will still be friends, K.?” Her voice was anxious, a little puzzled. She was often puzzled with him. “Of course.” But, after another silence, he astounded her. She had fallen into the way of thinking of him as always belonging to the house, even, in a sense, belonging to her. And now-- “Shall you mind very much if I tell you that I am thinking of going away?” “K.!” “My dear child, you do not need a roomer here any more. I have always received infinitely more than I have paid for, even in the small services I have been able to render. Your Aunt Harriet is prosperous. You are away, and some day you are going to be married. Don't you see--I am not needed?” “That does not mean you are not wanted.”