The carriage was driven to where Chiquita in great anxiety awaited their coming. The surgeon had preceded them, informing the matron that it was a case of blood poisoning, and arranged for the admission of his patient. At 9 o'clock that evening the affected part was lanced, giving temporary relief, but this disclosed a dangerous complication which would require a tedious operation and a prolonged stay in the hospital. The next morning, as Chiquita prepared Jack for the operating table, they joked about the medicine tepee and dwelt long upon the singular coincidence that should bring them together under such circumstances. Chiquita administered the anesthetics. While Jack was losing consciousness, struggling vainly to gasp a breath of fresh air, she recalled the vivid description of hospital life which he had so long ago on Rock Creek depicted to her. As the surgeon skillfully wielded his various instruments, and with the electric wire burned the sensitive flesh along the track of the affected part, Chiquita for the first time felt a sinking, gaping, craving of her heart. She realized in that one moment what it meant. She felt that if Jack should die her heart would cease its tumultuous beating, that if he lived she should forever have to keep her secret and stifle the emotions which her love for him revealed. A sudden thought surged within her. "No one would know; should she"-- "He is not for me--I am a Ute's daughter, a degraded Indian. Can I live and see him the husband of another and not betray my secret? Oh, Jack! perhaps it had been better that Chiquita had never become a medicine tepee queen! Were it not better that the sister of the forest should never have been educated? 'A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.' "I can not turn back. I will stifle my love for the one who lies there helpless. I will consecrate my life to the customs of his people, that I may leave a legacy to my people--the inheritance which civilization brings." Mechanically she performed the rest of her duties; nurses had taken the unconscious form away in its swaths of bandages, while she remained to administer to other patients and begin the long siege of love's starvation, until her heart should capitulate and turn to stone. The day following the operation, Chiquita's first duties were to take Jack's temperature and respiration, and note other conditions. She performed the latter with perfect composure, but when she essayed the counting of those "little blood knocks upon the wrist," her own heart beat so furiously that she was fearful of making an error, and was obliged to ask another nurse to take that record. Afterward, however, she was able to control her feelings, and take Jack's temperature with composure.