"I dare say. I shall also be seeing twenty or thirty other doctors, and a
hundred or so men patients, not to mention visitors. Joe, you're not
rational."
"No," he said heavily, "I'm not. If it's got to be someone, Sidney, I'd
rather have it the roomer upstairs than Wilson. There's a lot of talk about
Wilson."
"It isn't necessary to malign my friends." He rose.
"I thought perhaps, since you are going away, you would let me keep
Reginald. He'd be something to remember you by."
"One would think I was about to die! I set Reginald free that day in the
country. I'm sorry, Joe. You'll come to see me now and then, won't you?"
"If I do, do you think you may change your mind?"
"I'm afraid not."
"I've got to fight this out alone, and the less I see of you the better."
But his next words belied his intention. "And Wilson had better lookout.
I'll be watching. If I see him playing any of his tricks around you--well,
he'd better look out!"
That, as it turned out, was Joe's farewell. He had reached the
breaking-point. He gave her a long look, blinked, and walked rapidly out
to the Street. Some of the dignity of his retreat was lost by the fact
that the cat followed him, close at his heels.
Sidney was hurt, greatly troubled. If this was love, she did not want
it--this strange compound of suspicion and despair, injured pride
and threats. Lovers in fiction were of two classes--the accepted ones, who
loved and trusted, and the rejected ones, who took themselves away in
despair, but at least took themselves away. The thought of a future with
Joe always around a corner, watching her, obsessed her. She felt
aggrieved, insulted. She even shed a tear or two, very surreptitiously;
and then, being human and much upset, and the cat startling her by its
sudden return and selfish advances, she shooed it off the veranda and set
an imaginary dog after it. Whereupon, feeling somewhat better, she went in
and locked the balcony window and proceeded upstairs.
Le Moyne's light was still going. The rest of the household slept. She
paused outside the door.
"Are you sleepy?"--very softly.
There was a movement inside, the sound of a book put down. Then: "No,
indeed."
"I may not see you in the morning. I leave to-morrow."
"Just a minute."
From the sounds, she judged that he was putting on his shabby gray coat.
The next moment he had opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.