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.

Carlotta followed them out.

Almost on their heels came K. He was in the white coat, and more and
more he looked like the man who had raised up from his work and held out
something in his hand. Sidney's head was aching and confused.

She sat there in her chair, looking small and childish. The dawn was
morning now--horizontal rays of sunlight on the stable roof and across
the windowsill of the anaesthetizing-room, where a row of bottles sat on
a clean towel.

The tall man--or was it K.?--looked at her, and then reached up and
turned off the electric light. Why, it was K., of course; and he was
putting out the hall light before he went upstairs. When the light was
out everything was gray. She could not see. She slid very quietly out of
her chair, and lay at his feet in a dead faint.

K. carried her to the elevator. He held her as he had held her that day
at the park when she fell in the river, very carefully, tenderly, as one
holds something infinitely precious. Not until he had placed her on her
bed did she open her eyes. But she was conscious before that. She was
so tired, and to be carried like that, in strong arms, not knowing where
one was going, or caring--

The nurse he had summoned hustled out for aromatic ammonia. Sidney,
lying among her pillows, looked up at K.

"How is he?"

"A little better. There's a chance, dear."

"I have been so mixed up. All the time I was sitting waiting, I kept
thinking that it was you who were operating! Will he really get well?"

"It looks promising."

"I should like to thank Dr. Edwardes."

The nurse was a long time getting the ammonia. There was so much to talk
about: that Dr. Max had been out with Carlotta Harrison, and had been
shot by a jealous woman; the inexplicable return to life of the great
Edwardes; and--a fact the nurse herself