Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/90

 above them, and there was a woman's scream breaking down into moans. He felt the tragedy of parting—that in the briefness of life he should lose one moment of her living presence.

"I'm going in after her; see she gets there safe," he said.

The frigid edge of the stone sill bit his hands, but he vaulted, thrust up his knee, crawled hastily through the window. Ahead of him, in the cork-floored hallway lit only by a tiny electric globe, Leora was tiptoeing toward a flight of stairs. He ran after her, on his toes. She squeaked as he caught her arm.

"We got to say good-night better than that!" he grumbled. "With that damn' Duer—"

"Ssssssh! They'd simply murder me if they caught you here. Do you want to get me fired?"

"Would you care, if it was because of me?"

"Yes—no—well— But they'd probably fire you from medic school, my lad. If—" His caressing hands could feel her shiver with anxiety. She peered along the corridor, and his quickened imagination created sneaking forms, eyes peering from doorways. She sighed, then, resolutely: "We can't talk here. We'll slip up to my room—roommate's away for the week. Stand there, in the shadow. If nobody in sight upstairs, I'll come back."

He followed her to the floor above, to a white door, then breathlessly inside. As he closed the door he was touched by this cramped refuge, with its camp-beds and photographs from home and softly wrinkled linen. He clasped her, but with hand against his chest she forbade him, as she mourned:

"You were jealous again! How can you distrust me so? With that fool! Women not like him? They wouldn't have a chance! Likes himself too well. And then you jealous!"

"I wasn't— Yes, I was, but I don't care! To have to sit there and grin like a hyena, with him between us, when I wanted to talk to you, to kiss you! All right! Probably I'll always be jealous. It's you that have got to trust me. I'm not easy-going; never will be. Oh, trust me—"

Their profound and unresisted kiss was the more blind in memory of that barren hour with Angus. They forgot that the superintendent of nurses might dreadfully come bursting in; they forgot that Angus was waiting. "Oh, curse Angus—let him go home!" was Martin's only reflection, as his eyes closed and his long loneliness vanished.