K - Page 146/227

She checked herself abruptly and took the paper from his hand.

"I'll go to see Tillie, of course," she consented. "It is like you to have

found her."

She sat down. Although she picked up the book that she had been reading

with the evident intention of discussing it, her thoughts were still on

Tillie, on Palmer, on herself. After a moment:-"Has it ever occurred to you how terribly mixed up things are? Take this

Street, for instance. Can you think of anybody on it that--that things

have gone entirely right with?"

"It's a little world of its own, of course," said K., "and it has plenty of

contact points with life. But wherever one finds people, many or few, one

finds all the elements that make up life--joy and sorrow, birth and death,

and even tragedy. That's rather trite, isn't it?"

Christine was still pursuing her thoughts.

"Men are different," she said. "To a certain extent they make their own

fates. But when you think of the women on the Street,--Tillie, Harriet

Kennedy, Sidney Page, myself, even Mrs. Rosenfeld back in the

alley,--somebody else moulds things for us, and all we can do is to sit

back and suffer. I am beginning to think the world is a terrible place, K.

Why do people so often marry the wrong people? Why can't a man care for

one woman and only one all his life? Why--why is it all so complicated?"

"There are men who care for only one woman all their lives."

"You're that sort, aren't you?"

"I don't want to put myself on any pinnacle. If I cared enough for a woman

to marry her, I'd hope to--But we are being very tragic, Christine."

"I feel tragic. There's going to be another mistake, K., unless you stop

it."

He tried to leaven the conversation with a little fun.

"If you're going to ask me to interfere between Mrs. McKee and the

deaf-and-dumb book and insurance agent, I shall do nothing of the sort.

She can both speak and hear enough for both of them."

"I mean Sidney and Max Wilson. He's mad about her, K.; and, because she's

the sort she is, he'll probably be mad about her all his life, even if he

marries her. But he'll not be true to her; I know the type now."

K. leaned back with a flicker of pain in his eyes.

"What can I do about it?"