"I am going to the operating-room."
"Not to the operating-room. Somewhere near."
His steady voice controlled her hysteria. But she resented it. She was not
herself, of course, what with strain and weariness.
"I shall ask Dr. Edwardes."
He was puzzled for a moment. Then he understood. After all, it was as
well. Whether she knew him as Le Moyne or as Edwardes mattered very
little, after all. The thing that really mattered was that he must try to
save Wilson for her. If he failed--It ran through his mind that if he
failed she might hate him the rest of her life--not for himself, but for
his failure; that, whichever way things went, he must lose.
"Dr. Edwardes says you are to stay away from the operation, but to remain
near. He--he promises to call you if--things go wrong."
She had to be content with that.
Nothing about that night was real to Sidney. She sat in the
anaesthetizing-room, and after a time she knew that she was not alone.
There was somebody else. She realized dully that Carlotta was there, too,
pacing up and down the little room. She was never sure, for instance,
whether she imagined it, or whether Carlotta really stopped before her and
surveyed her with burning eyes.
"So you thought he was going to marry you!" said Carlotta--or the dream.
"Well, you see he isn't."
Sidney tried to answer, and failed--or that was the way the dream went.
"If you had enough character, I'd think you did it. How do I know you
didn't follow us, and shoot him as he left the room?"
It must have been reality, after all; for Sidney's numbed mind grasped the
essential fact here, and held on to it. He had been out with Carlotta. He
had promised--sworn that this should not happen. It had happened. It
surprised her. It seemed as if nothing more could hurt her.
In the movement to and from the operating room, the door stood open for a
moment. A tall figure--how much it looked like K.!--straightened and held
out something in its hand.
"The bullet!" said Carlotta in a whisper.
Then more waiting, a stir of movement in the room beyond the closed door.
Carlotta was standing, her face buried in her hands, against the door.
Sidney suddenly felt sorry for her. She cared a great deal. It must be
tragic to care like that! She herself was not caring much; she was too
numb.
Beyond, across the courtyard, was the stable. Before the day of the motor
ambulances, horses had waited there for their summons, eager as fire
horses, heads lifted to the gong. When Sidney saw the outline of the
stable roof, she knew that it was dawn. The city still slept, but the
torturing night was over. And in the gray dawn the staff, looking gray
too, and elderly and weary, came out through the closed door and took their
hushed way toward the elevator. They were talking among themselves.
Sidney, straining her ears, gathered that they had seen a miracle, and that
the wonder was still on them.