A week later she made the same frantic excursion, but with a different result. Sidney was not in sight, or Wilson. But standing on the wooden doorstep of the little house was Le Moyne. The ailanthus trees were bare at that time, throwing gaunt arms upward to the November sky. The street-lamp, which in the summer left the doorstep in the shadow, now shone through the branches and threw into strong relief Le Moyne's tall figure and set face. Carlotta saw him too late to retreat. But he did not see her. She went on, startled, her busy brain scheming anew. Another element had entered into her plotting. It was the first time she had known that K. lived in the Page house. It gave her a sense of uncertainty and deadly fear. She made her first friendly overture of many days to Sidney the following day. They met in the locker-room in the basement where the street clothing for the ward patients was kept. Here, rolled in bundles and ticketed, side by side lay the heterogeneous garments in which the patients had met accident or illness. Rags and tidiness, filth and cleanliness, lay almost touching. Far away on the other side of the white-washed basement, men were unloading gleaming cans of milk. Floods of sunlight came down the cellar-way, touching their white coats and turning the cans to silver. Everywhere was the religion of the hospital, which is order. Sidney, harking back from recent slights to the staircase conversation of her night duty, smiled at Carlotta cheerfully. “A miracle is happening,” she said. “Grace Irving is going out to-day. When one remembers how ill she was and how we thought she could not live, it's rather a triumph, isn't it?” “Are those her clothes?” Sidney examined with some dismay the elaborate negligee garments in her hand. “She can't go out in those; I shall have to lend her something.” A little of the light died out of her face. “She's had a hard fight, and she has won,” she said. “But when I think of what she's probably going back to--” Carlotta shrugged her shoulders. “It's all in the day's work,” she observed indifferently. “You can take them up into the kitchen and give them steady work paring potatoes, or put them in the laundry ironing. In the end it's the same thing. They all go back.” She drew a package from the locker and looked at it ruefully. “Well, what do you know about this? Here's a woman who came in in a nightgown and pair of slippers. And now she wants to go out in half an hour!” She turned, on her way out of the locker-room, and shot a quick glance at Sidney. “I happened to be on your street the other night,” she said. “You live across the street from Wilsons', don't you?” “Yes.” “I thought so; I had heard you speak of the house. Your--your brother was standing on the steps.” Sidney laughed. “I have no brother. That's a roomer, a Mr. Le Moyne. It isn't really right to call him a roomer; he's one of the family now.” “Le Moyne!”