"Joking!" At last the query had pierced the fear-dulled brain. "Joking! God, no! It's real, real, deadly real, that's what ... Oh, Mollie--!" Instinctively, as a child, the man's head had gone to the girl's lap. Though never before had they spoken of love or of marriage, neither noted the incongruity now. "It's all over. We'll never be married, never again get out into the country together, never even see the green grass next Spring--at least I won't--never.... Oh, Mollie, Mollie!" The man's back rose and fell spasmodically. His voice broke. "Mollie, make me forget; I can't bear to think of it. Can't! Can't!" Not a muscle of the girl's body stirred; she made no sound. No one in advance would have believed it possible, but it was true. Five minutes passed. The man became quiet. "Steve," the voice was very even, "what else did the doctor say?" "Eh?" It was the doddering query of an old man. The girl repeated the question, slowly, with infinite patience, as though she were speaking to a child. "What else did the doctor say?" Her tranquillity in a measure calmed the man. "Oh, he said a lot of things; but that's all I remember--what I told you. It was the last thing, and he kind of tilted back in his chair. The spring needed oil; it fairly screamed. I can hear it now. "'Steve Babcock,' said he, 'you've got to go some place where it's drier, where the air's pure and clean and sweet the year round. Mexico's the spot for you, or somewhere in the Far West where you can spend all your time in the open--under the roof of Heaven.' "He leaned forward, and again that cursed spring interrupted. "'If you don't go, and go right away,' he said, 'as sure as I'm talking to you, you're a dead man.'" Babcock straightened, and, leaden-eyed, looked dully into the blaze. "Those," he whispered, "were his last words." "And if you do go?"--very quietly. "He said I had a chance--a fighting chance." Once more the hopeless, deprecatory gesture. "But what's the use? You know, as well as I, that I haven't a hundred dollars to my name. He might just as well have told me to go to the moon. "We poor folks are like rats in a trap when they turn the water on--helpless. We--" Babcock had wandered on, forgetting, for the moment, that it was his own case he was analyzing. Now of a sudden it recurred to him, cumulatively, crushingly and, as before, his head instinctively sought refuge. "We can't do anything but take our medicine, Mollie--just take our medicine." _Patter_, _patter_ sounded the sleet against the window-panes, mingling with the roar of the wind in the chimney, with the short, quick breaths of the man. In silence he reached out, took one of the girl's hands captive, and held it against his cheek. For a minute--five minutes--she did not stir, did not utter a sound; only the soft oval face tightened until its gentle outlines grew sharp, and the brown skin almost white. All at once her lips compressed; she had reached a decision.