K. had postponed his leaving until fall. Sidney had been insistent, and Harriet had topped the argument in her businesslike way. “If you insist on being an idiot and adopting the Rosenfeld family,” she said, “wait until September. The season for boarders doesn't begin until fall.” So K. waited for “the season,” and ate his heart out for Sidney in the interval. Johnny Rosenfeld still lay in his ward, inert from the waist down. K. was his most frequent visitor. As a matter of fact, he was watching the boy closely, at Max Wilson's request. “Tell me when I'm to do it,” said Wilson, “and when the time comes, for God's sake, stand by me. Come to the operation. He's got so much confidence that I'll help him that I don't dare to fail.” So K. came on visiting days, and, by special dispensation, on Saturday afternoons. He was teaching the boy basket-making. Not that he knew anything about it himself; but, by means of a blind teacher, he kept just one lesson ahead. The ward was intensely interested. It found something absurd and rather touching in this tall, serious young man with the surprisingly deft fingers, tying raffia knots. The first basket went, by Johnny's request, to Sidney Page. “I want her to have it,” he said. “She got corns on her fingers from rubbing me when I came in first; and, besides--” “Yes?” said K. He was tying a most complicated knot, and could not look up. “I know something,” said Johnny. “I'm not going to get in wrong by talking, but I know something. You give her the basket.” K. looked up then, and surprised Johnny's secret in his face. “Ah!” he said. “If I'd squealed she'd have finished me for good. They've got me, you know. I'm not running in 2.40 these days.” “I'll not tell, or make it uncomfortable for you. What do you know?” Johnny looked around. The ward was in the somnolence of mid-afternoon. The nearest patient, a man in a wheel-chair, was snoring heavily. “It was the dark-eyed one that changed the medicine on me,” he said. “The one with the heels that were always tapping around, waking me up. She did it; I saw her.” After all, it was only what K. had suspected before. But a sense of impending danger to Sidney obsessed him. If Carlotta would do that, what would she do when she learned of the engagement? And he had known her before. He believed she was totally unscrupulous. The odd coincidence of their paths crossing again troubled him. Carlotta Harrison was well again, and back on duty. Luckily for Sidney, her three months' service in the operating-room kept them apart. For Carlotta was now not merely jealous. She found herself neglected, ignored. It ate her like a fever.