At three o'clock one morning Sidney roused from a light sleep to hear a
rapping on her door.
"Is that you, Aunt Harriet?" she called.
"It's Christine. May I come in?"
Sidney unlocked her door. Christine slipped into the room. She carried a
candle, and before she spoke she looked at Sidney's watch on the bedside
table.
"I hoped my clock was wrong," she said. "I am sorry to waken you, Sidney,
but I don't know what to do."
"Are you ill?"
"No. Palmer has not come home."
"What time is it?"
"After three o'clock."
Sidney had lighted the gas and was throwing on her dressing-gown.
"When he went out did he say--"
"He said nothing. We had been quarreling. Sidney, I am going home in the
morning."
"You don't mean that, do you?"
"Don't I look as if I mean it? How much of this sort of thing is a woman
supposed to endure?"
"Perhaps he has been delayed. These things always seem terrible in the
middle of the night, but by morning--"
Christine whirled on her.
"This isn't the first time. You remember the letter I got on my wedding
day?"
"Yes."
"He's gone back to her."
"Christine! Oh, I am sure you're wrong. He's devoted to you. I don't
believe it!"
"Believe it or not," said Christine doggedly, "that's exactly what has
happened. I got something out of that little rat of a Rosenfeld boy, and
the rest I know because I know Palmer. He's out with her to-night."
The hospital had taught Sidney one thing: that it took many people to make
a world, and that out of these some were inevitably vicious. But vice had
remained for her a clear abstraction. There were such people, and because
one was in the world for service one cared for them. Even the Saviour had
been kind to the woman of the streets.
But here abruptly Sidney found the great injustice of the world--that
because of this vice the good suffer more than the wicked. Her young
spirit rose in hot rebellion.
"It isn't fair!" she cried. "It makes me hate all the men in the world.
Palmer cares for you, and yet he can do a thing like this!"
Christine was pacing nervously up and down the room. Mere companionship
had soothed her. She was now, on the surface at least, less excited than
Sidney.