He left the room. They lingered; looking again at their canvases,
understanding their own work as they had not hitherto and more strongly
than ever drawn toward their model whom that day they missed. Slowly and
with disappointment and with many conjectures as to why she had not
come, they separated.




V

It was Sunday. All round St. Luke's Hospital quiet reigned. The day was
very still up there on the heights under the blue curtain of the sky.

When he had been hurled against the curb on the dark street, had been
rolled over and tossed there and left there with no outcry, no movement,
as limp and senseless as a mangled weed, the careless crowd which
somewhere in the city every day gathers about such scenes quickly
gathered about him. In this throng was the physician whose car stood
near by; and he, used to sights of suffering but touched by that tragedy
of unconscious child and half-crazed mother, had hurried them in his
own car to St. Luke's--to St. Luke's, which is always open, always
ready, and always free to those who lack means.

Just before they stopped at the entrance she had pleaded in the doctor's
ear for a luxury.

"To the private ward," he said to those who lifted the lad to the
stretcher, speaking as though in response to her entreaty.