Funny that she could cry like that, I thought, watching her. I must give her something to make her stop--if Bill were here-- _Bill! Bill!_ I must have screamed. Sarah, her arms around me, was herself in a minute, had herself in hand. "There, there," she said soothingly. "They'll be all right, I am sure. You're to be calm, Miss Mavis, and not take on so." Calm! With the Far Country just within reach--and the fire sweeping across the cane-fields. I put her away from me. "Go to the kitchen, Sarah dear," I said very quietly, "and wait for news. Have Wing and Fong gone too?" She nodded. "I'll wait here," I said. "I had better get out the Doctor's kit and all the first-aid things. Someone may be burned--" She sobbed at that, but turned and went to the kitchen. I went into Bill's room. For a minute I did nothing--only touched the things on his bureau--his brush, his comb-- A little snap-shot of me stood there. Of me, in a wheel-chair--I had forgotten that-- I opened a leather case which stood on the bureau, it had his initials on it, and a small key lay beside it. Opened it and saw my letters to Richard Warren. They were tossed together, as if he had been reading them. He had told me that he never kept letters. Somehow, I found the first-aid things and the little emergency case. They were on the table by his bed. And then, taking them into the living-room, I called out to Sarah to find some linen and tear it into sheets--we had very little gauze in the house. My hands on the first-aid kit, I sat down to think. It was too bad Wright was not here. He would not lose his head. But Mercedes would. I was glad she was in Havana. Suddenly I laughed to think of them, dancing at the Mendez ball-- Sarah came in, her hands full of an old sheet. "Any news?" I asked, steadily. "It's going fast," she said dully. "You can see it--" I went to the window. The whole sky was crimson. I saw the smoke wreathing up through the flame, fancied that I heard shouts--strained my eyes for the sight of a tall, lean figure. He would come soon, I knew, and tell me that it had been a nightmare, that he was safe, that he had been in no danger-- I looked around. Sarah had gone out, quietly. No one was there. Softly I went across the room, opened the door, and slipped like a ghost into the menacing night. I walked at first. Then ran. The plants and trees caught at my dress. They wanted to hold me back. I shook myself free and went on. Nearer and nearer. How much smoke there was! The whole last crop gone. Thousands of arrobas of sugar, gone in a breath! Good, loyal Juan, I thought, as I went on, stumbling, falling once to my knees. My dress was ruined. Bill will buy me another, I said aloud. Not Charity--Love. Suddenly I was in the midst of it. The flame and the smoke, the hurrying figures, black with soot and sweat, digging the trenches that might save the cane. "Bill!"