"Ja. I wished but to see nearer the American Fraulein's hat, and
you--She is rich, so?"
"I really don't know. I think not."
"And good?"
"Yes, of course."
Marie was small; she stood, her head back, her eyes narrowed,
looking up at Byrne. There was nothing evil in her face, it was
not even hard. Rather, there was a sort of weariness, as of age
and experience. She had put on a white dress, cut out at the
neck, and above her collarbones were small, cuplike hollows. She
was very thin.
"I was sad to-night," she said plaintively. "I wished to jump out
the window."
Byrne was startled, but the girl was smiling at the recollection.
"And I made you feel like that?"
"Not you--the other Fraulein. I was dirt to her. I--" She stopped
tragically, then sniffled.
"The sausages!" she cried, and gathering up her skirts ran toward
the kitchen. Byrne went on into the sitting-room.
Stewart was a single man spending two years in post-graduate work
in Germany and Austria, not so much because the Germans and
Austrians could teach what could not be taught at home, but
because of the wealth of clinical material. The great European
hospitals, filled to overflowing, offered unlimited choice of
cases. The contempt for human life of overpopulated cities,
coupled with the extreme poverty and helplessness of the masses,
combined to form that tragic part of the world which dies that
others may live.
Stewart, like Byrne, was doing surgery, and the very lack of
fineness which Byrne felt in the man promised something in his
work, a sort of ruthlessness, a singleness of purpose, good or
bad, an overwhelming egotism that in his profession might only be
a necessary self-reliance.
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