It was late when they got home. Sidney was sitting on the low step,
waiting for them.
Wilson had come across at seven, impatient because he must see a case that
evening, and promising an early return. In the little hall he had drawn
her to him and kissed her, this time not on the lips, but on the forehead
and on each of her white eyelids.
"Little wife-to-be!" he had said, and was rather ashamed of his own
emotion. From across the Street, as he got into his car, he had waved his
hand to her.
Christine went to her room, and, with a long breath of content, K. folded
up his long length on the step below Sidney.
"Well, dear ministering angel," he said, "how goes the world?"
"Things have been happening, K."
He sat erect and looked at her. Perhaps because she had a woman's instinct
for making the most of a piece of news, perhaps--more likely,
indeed--because she divined that the announcement would not be entirely
agreeable, she delayed it, played with it.
"I have gone into the operating-room."
"Fine!"
"The costume is ugly. I look hideous in it."
"Doubtless."
He smiled up at her. There was relief in his eyes, and still a question.
"Is that all the news?"
"There is something else, K."
It was a moment before he spoke. He sat looking ahead, his face set.
Apparently he did not wish to hear her say it; for when, after a moment, he
spoke, it was to forestall her, after all.
"I think I know what it is, Sidney."
"You expected it, didn't you?"
"I--it's not an entire surprise."
"Aren't you going to wish me happiness?"
"If my wishing could bring anything good to you, you would have everything
in the world."
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.