When she rose, K. Le Moyne sprang to his feet.
Anna had noticed that he always rose when she entered his room,--with fresh towels on Katie's day out, for instance,--and she liked him for it. Years ago, the men she had known had shown this courtesy to their women; but the Street regarded such things as affectation.
“I wonder if you would do me another favor? I'm afraid you'll take to avoiding me, if I keep on.”
“This stupid story about Joe Drummond--I'm not saying I'll never marry him, but I'm certainly not engaged. Now and then, when you are taking your evening walks, if you would ask me to walk with you--”
“I can't imagine anything pleasanter; but I wish you'd explain just how--”
Sidney smiled at him. As he stood on the lowest step, their eyes were almost level.
“If I walk with you, they'll know I'm not engaged to Joe,” she said, with engaging directness.
The house was quiet. He waited in the lower hall until she had reached the top of the staircase. For some curious reason, in the time to come, that was the way Sidney always remembered K. Le Moyne--standing in the little hall, one hand upstretched to shut off the gas overhead, and his eyes on hers above.
“Good-night,” said K. Le Moyne. And all the things he had put out of his life were in his voice.
On the morning after Sidney had invited K. Le Moyne to take her to walk, Max Wilson came down to breakfast rather late. Dr. Ed had breakfasted an hour before, and had already attended, with much profanity on the part of the patient, to a boil on the back of Mr. Rosenfeld's neck.
“Better change your laundry,” cheerfully advised Dr. Ed, cutting a strip of adhesive plaster. “Your neck's irritated from your white collars.”
Rosenfeld eyed him suspiciously, but, possessing a sense of humor also, he grinned.
“It ain't my everyday things that bother me,” he replied. “It's my blankety-blank dress suit. But if a man wants to be tony--”
“Tony” was not of the Street, but of its environs. Harriet was “tony” because she walked with her elbows in and her head up. Dr. Max was “tony” because he breakfasted late, and had a man come once a week and take away his clothes to be pressed. He was “tony,” too, because he had brought back from Europe narrow-shouldered English-cut clothes, when the Street was still padding its shoulders. Even K. would have been classed with these others, for the stick that he carried on his walks, for the fact that his shabby gray coat was as unmistakably foreign in cut as Dr. Max's, had the neighborhood so much as known him by sight. But K., so far, had remained in humble obscurity, and, outside of Mrs. McKee's, was known only as the Pages' roomer.