“Then I was terrified. What if somebody died? I had meant to give you trouble, so you would have to do certain cases a second time. I swear that was all. I was so frightened that I went down sick over it. When I got better, I heard you had lost a case and the cause was being whispered about. I almost died of terror.
“I tried to get back into the hospital one night. I went up the fire-escape, but the windows were locked. Then I left the city. I couldn’t stand it. I was afraid to read a newspaper.
“I am not going to sign this letter. You know who it is from. And I am not going to ask your forgiveness, or anything of that sort. I don’t expect it. But one thing hurt me more than anything else, the other night. You said you’d lost your faith in yourself. This is to tell you that you need not. And you said something else—that any one can ‘come back.’ I wonder!”
K. stood in the hall of the little house with the letter in his hand. Just beyond on the doorstep was Sidney, waiting for him. His arms were still warm from the touch of her. Beyond lay the Street, and beyond that lay the world and a man’s work to do. Work, and faith to do it, a good woman’s hand in the dark, a Providence that made things right in the end.
“Are you coming, K.?”
“Coming,” he said. And, when he was beside her, his long figure folded to the short measure of the step, he stooped humbly and kissed the hem of her soft white dress.
Across the Street, Mr. Wagner wrote something in the dark and then lighted a match.
“So K. is in love with Sidney Page, after all!” he had written. “She is a sweet girl, and he is every inch a man. But, to my mind, a certain lady—”
Mrs. McKee flushed and blew out the match.
Late September now on the Street, with Joe gone and his mother eyeing the postman with pitiful eagerness; with Mrs. Rosenfeld moving heavily about the setting-up of the new furniture; and with Johnny driving heavenly cars, brake and clutch legs well and Strong. Late September, with Max recovering and settling his tie for any pretty nurse who happened along, but listening eagerly for Dr. Ed’s square tread in the hall; with Tillie rocking her baby on the porch at Schwitter’s, and Carlotta staring westward over rolling seas; with Christine taking up her burden and Grace laying hers down; with Joe’s tragic young eyes growing quiet with the peace of the tropics.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” she reads. “I shall not want.”…“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Sidney, on her knees in the little parlor, repeats the words with the others. K. has gone from the Street, and before long she will join him. With the vision of his steady eyes before her, she adds her own prayer to the others—that the touch of his arms about her may not make her forget the vow she has taken, of charity and its sister, service, of a cup of water to the thirsty, of open arms to a tired child.
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