"Just climb inside there where it is warmer," I said, clapping him on the shoulder. "I'll be back in a minute." "Back in a minute?" he repeated as if dazed. "From the Marburys', if you don't mind," I explained. He leaned back against the cushions, disregarding the fact that with every nervous movement water ran from him as from a squeezed sponge. "Oh, I forgot your patient," said he, with a twitching mouth. "But, for God's sake, don't keep me waiting long!" I shook my head in answer; then ran, rather than walked, up the Marburys' steps; indeed, that night taught me how active a corpulent old codger can be if the need comes. Miss Peters evidently had been at the window in her night vigil, watching the storm; she opened the door. "Well?" said I. "The tide has turned." Under the hall light I looked up at her stony, expressionless face. The Sphinx itself was never more noncommittal. "What do you mean?" "I supposed you knew," she whispered. "I supposed that was why you came back to-night so late." I exclaimed in a hoarse and savage whisper. I was furious. This time I had fought with disease not only, as in a common struggle, with carnivorous Death, but as a hardened sinner whose heart has suddenly opened to a child. "Virginia is dead!" I said, glaring at her. She never changed the coldness of her tone. "No," she said. "She is going to get well." "Confound it!" I growled, under my breath. "How do you know?" "The blue wall," she answered with a sneer. "Bah!" said I, starting up the stairs. "We shall see." As I pushed open the door, I observed that the nurse had procured a red silk shade to screen the single electric lamp on the table. The yellow rays were changed to a pink, reflected on the wall, sending their rosy lights into the depths of that bottomless blue; the breaking of a clear day after a spring rain has no softer mingling of colors. For a moment I looked at the chart, then with new hope turned toward Virginia herself. Either the new tints diffused by the lamp deceived the eye, or the little girl's pale skin had in fact been warmed by a new response from the springs of life. She was sleeping quietly, her innocent face turned a little toward me and in the faint, illusive smile at her mouth, and in the relaxation of her beautiful hands, I read the confirmation of Miss Peters's prophecy. I, too, believed just then that Virginia would not die, and that, as so rarely happens in this disease, her recovery would be complete. "It is a wild night," said the bony nurse when I had tiptoed out of the room. She seemed to be wishing to draw from me an opinion on the extraordinary rally the child had made. That was her way; she always invited discussion of a subject by comments about something wholly irrelevant. "We shall see," I answered again. "A relapse might be fatal. To-morrow--we shall see." "It is raining hard," she said as she turned the latch for me.