With their arms across each other's shoulders they went back into the sick room. Rousing from her lethargy, the young woman opened her eyes upon them with the first understanding that she had shown for some days. Inquisitively she stared from Guthrie's somber eyes to Andrews' distorted cheerfulness. Taking instant advantage of her unwonted rationality, Andrews blurted out the question that was uppermost in his professional responsibility. "Don't you think, maybe, your people ought to know about your being sick?" he said. "Now, if you could give us any addresses." For a second it really seemed as though the question would merely safely ignite her common sense. "Why yes, of course," she acquiesced. "My brother." Then suddenly, without any warning, her most dangerous imagination caught fire. "You mean," she faltered, "that--I--am--not--going to get well?" Before either man was quick enough to contradict her, the shock had done its work. Piteously she turned her face to the pillow. "Never--never--to--go--to--Oxford?" she whispered in mournful astonishment. "Never--even--to--see my--Bay of Naples?--Never to--have a--a--perfectly happy Christmas?" A little petulantly then her brain began to clog. "I think I--might at least have had--the pink sash!" she complained. Then, equally suddenly her strength rallied for an instant and the eyes that she lifted to Guthrie's were filled with a desperate effort at raillery. "Bring on your--anchovies and caviar," she reminded him, "and the stuffed green peppers--and remember I don't like my fillet too well done--and--" Five minutes later in the hallway Andrews caught Guthrie just as he was chasing downstairs after Hanlon. "What are you going to do?" he asked curiously. "I am going to send Hanlon out to the telegraph station," said Guthrie. "I'm going to wire to Denver for a pink sash!" "What she was raving about?" quizzed Andrews. "Are you raving too?" "It's the only blamed thing in the whole world that she's asked for that I can get her," said Guthrie. "It'll take five days," growled Andrews. "I know it!" "It won't do her any good." "I can't help that!" "She'll--be gone before it gets here." "You can't help that!" But she wasn't "gone," at all before it came. All her vitalities charred, to be sure, like a fire-swept woodland, but still tenacious of life, still fighting for reorganization, a little less feverish, a little stronger-pulsed, she opened her eyes in a puzzled, sad sort of little smile when Guthrie shook the great, broad, shimmering gauze-like ribbon ticklingly down across her wasted hands, and then apparently drowsed off to sleep again. But when both men came back to the room a few moments later, almost half the pink sash was cuddled under her cheek. And Hanlon's Mary came and peered through the doorway, with the whining baby still in her arms, and reaching out and fretting a piece of pink fringe between her hardy fingers, sniffed mightily.