, and then: "Won't you sit down?"

He was still rather theatrical. He dramatized himself, as he had that
night the June before when he had asked Sidney to marry him. He stood
just inside the doorway. He offered no conventional greeting whatever;
but, after surveying her briefly, her black gown, the lines around her
eyes:--

"You're not going back to that place, of course?"

"I--I haven't decided."

"Then somebody's got to decide for you. The thing for you to do is to
stay right here, Sidney. People know you on the Street. Nobody here
would ever accuse you of trying to murder anybody."

In spite of herself, Sidney smiled a little.

"Nobody thinks I tried to murder him. It was a mistake about the
medicines. I didn't do it, Joe."

His love was purely selfish, for he brushed aside her protest as if she
had not spoken.

"You give me the word and I'll go and get your things; I've got a car of
my own now."

"But, Joe, they have only done what they thought was right. Whoever made
it, there was a mistake."

He stared at her incredulously.

"You don't mean that you are going to stand for this sort of thing?
Every time some fool makes a mistake, are they going to blame it on
you?"

"Please don't be theatrical. Come in and sit down. I can't talk to you
if you explode like a rocket all the time."

Her matter-of-fact tone had its effect. He advanced into the room, but
he still scorned a chair.

"I guess you've been wondering why you haven't heard from me," he said.
"I've seen you more than you've seen me."

Sidney looked uneasy. The idea of espionage is always repugnant, and
to have a rejected lover always in the offing, as it were, was
disconcerting.

"I wish you would be just a little bit sensible, Joe. It's so silly of
you, really. It's not because you care for me; it's really because you
care for yourself."

"You can't look at me and say that, Sid."

He ran his finger around his collar--an old gesture; but the collar was
very loose. He was thin; his neck showed it.

"I'm just eating my heart out for you, and that's the truth. And it
isn't only that. Everywhere I go, people say, 'There's the fellow Sidney
Page turned down when she went to the hospital.' I've got so I keep off
the Street as much as I can."

Sidney was half alarmed, half irritated. This wild, excited boy was not
the doggedly faithful youth she had always known. It seemed to her
that he was hardly sane--that underneath his quiet manner and