With the same curious certainty that his strength had led her back to life, and that if he called to her now she would answer, Baird bent to her ear: "Ann--?" he said softly. He called to her several times, softly, insistently, waited, then called again. When, finally, her eyelids lifted, he was so imbued with the certainty that speech would follow that the sweep of relief did not unsteady him. She was looking at him widely, fully, but without blankness. She knew him. He waited, giving her time. It seemed to Baird that her half-awakened thoughts crossed her eyes like slowly-moving shadows. Then her gaze turned slowly from him to the room, to the half-open door and the blackness beyond. And suddenly recollection appeared to leap up in her, twitching the muscles in her face until it set in a mask of pain. She turned strained eyes on him, and speech broke from her, a voice husky but demanding: "Is it true, what he told me--that Edward was dying?" Baird had not thought it would be this way. He had not considered what Ann would say when she spoke; all he had thought was that, if only she could speak, he would know whether or not she was injured, whether she was in pain. Baird's native quickness and coolness almost forsook him; he retained only presence of mind enough to grasp the fact that it was Edward she loved, and that he dared not thrust the truth upon her suddenly and abnormally active brain. He parleyed until he could think. "Who told you that, dear?" Her speech came quickly and thickly: "Garvin. He came for me. He said Edward's horse threw him an' he was dyin' an' wanted me." Baird had done his thinking, and had hazarded a guess as well. "He didn't tell you the truth," he said clearly and decidedly. "He simply wanted you to come with him." She said nothing, but she relaxed; the rigid muscles in her face softened into relief and her eyes grew cloudy and slowly closed. The spurt of abnormal animation passed. With a new fear tugging at him, Baird watched the moisture gather on her forehead and about her lips and noted the utter laxness of her hands and the weighted heaviness of her eyelids. Was she slipping into unconsciousness again? He bent over her. "Ann, does your back hurt?" he begged. She breathed rather than spoke the word, "No--" "Do you feel any pain?" She moved her head in denial. "You're sleepy--that's all?" She did not answer. If she had fainted, it was a warm breathing unconsciousness like the sleep of exhaustion. And she had said she was not in pain.... As he listened to her regular breathing Baird gradually lost his fear; nature was helping her now. He loosened the hot thing in which she was wrapped, and sat with her hand in his; if she grew feverish he would know it. There was nothing over which he could exert himself; he must simply wait; sit there till morning, if no one came.