A sharp fit of coughing came up, choking him. He rose and hurried out into the hall. Augusta started to follow him, but a movement in the bedroom caught her ear and she turned back. She wanted to follow him, to make him tell her just what was the trouble. But the fear of what her mother might do was too strong upon her. For the time, Wardwell had escaped. In his own room, he sat down at the desk, gasping between spells of coughing and trying to smother the noise with his handkerchief. The coughing stopped after a little, and he was surprised to feel a sensation of pleasant warm moisture in his irritated throat. He cocked one ear up in a funny way he had, as though to listen. Then put his handkerchief to his lips and held it there a moment. When he drawn it away and looked meditatively for a little while at the red blotch on it, he nodded his head. He did not take this fresh piece of news argumentatively, defiantly, as he had met the words of the doctor. This was definite, conclusive. He must deliberate. He decided that he would deliberate. That was the thing. This matter must be thought out carefully. He looked at the typewriter in front of him, for counsel. Then suddenly his arms shot out grabbing the rusted iron frame of the typewriter and hugging it, while his head sank down upon it and he whispered to it in agony: "God! Never another good line on you!" This has to be told. In that moment, that battered old contraption of cast iron and rattling keys was more to Jimmie Wardwell than woman, man or child could be. It was dearer to him, it was nearer to where he thought and really lived. And he loved it and hugged it to him, as though already they were trying to take part of his soul from him. For men of Wardwell's kind are like that. When the passion of creating has once gotten fire in their souls, they are damned to live this life alone. No articulate being can come near. And in their loneliness they fasten on something connected with their passion. There have been men who have loved to the death a rickety old table at which they have worked, or even a corner of a garret room. After a while Jimmie lurched up out of his chair and fumblingly got ready to crawl into bed. It was the first time that he had missed going down to say good night, but he dared not face Augusta tonight. The idea of dying, physically, meant little or nothing to him. He had never thought of it. He did not think of it now. But the failures of the past months and this last sure sign of physical failure, of the end in fact, threw him into blind panic; not a panic in fear of pain, or darkness, still less of punishment. No, it was the fear that the spirit fire, burning pent up and mad within him, was to be smothered. He was afraid, afraid that he, Jimmie Wardwell, would be snuffed out before he could form and bring out the things that burned within him and craved for expression.