"How is he, doctor?" she asked. "May I see him now?" "Keep her out!" Marc growled from his pillow. "If she so much as sticks a hand in here I'll bite it!" The doctor took Julie's arm. "Don't worry," he said. "Everyone's a little neurotic these days." He guided her back into the hall and closed the door. Marc shifted his gaze from the door to the ceiling. The laughter of the Fredericks and their guests drifted in through the open window, and he reflected on its quality: it was the laughter of desperation, not abandoned. Then the scream of a fire siren sounded faintly in the distance, and a woman echoed the cry weirdly from somewhere down the block--another patient for the good doctor. Marc closed his eyes and waited for the sedatives to work. An echo of pain throbbed along his spine. He tried to shift a bit, but the tape held him in place, and the pain was only worse for the effort. He looked at the ceiling again and noted its singular blankness without pleasure. Finally he decided to turn his mind to other things--to the past and happier circumstances. Instantly, without any conscious cooperation, Toffee's pert face stirred in his memory. The ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. Not that the thought of Toffee was undilutedly pleasant. The gamin creature of his mind had a strong predisposition for trouble as well as pleasure--a sort of special magnetism that drew calamity to herself as well as the hapless souls around her. And yet the basic feeling, when thinking of Toffee, was one of distinct cheer. If trouble came to her it was never altogether unmixed with a certain element of hilarity. There was always a dash of excitement at least. * * * * * Naturally Toffee had not been in Marc's mind at all these last few months. For one thing he had been much too concerned with the perilous state of the world, and Toffee, not a consistent inhabitant of this world, or much of any other, was difficult to picture in conjunction with truly worldly matters. If it could be said that Toffee lived at all, it would have to be the Valley of Marc's mind. Not that she wasn't quite real; it was just that she did not exist materially unless she was projected into the material world through Marc's imagination. After that she was as flesh and blood as anyone--indeed, to an almost overwhelming degree at times. If Marc had grown used to this strange circumstance--that his mind could actually create a living, breathing perfect hellion of a redhead--it was only by virtue of repetition. The human mind can adjust to the wildest of impossibilities in time, if it is only subjected to them often enough. The smile grew on Marc's lips as he considered the provocative form and features of Toffee. It was a vision to prod the sternest lips into a smile. Then the smile vanished as Julie's footsteps sounded outside in the hallway. Marc listened to their approach, turning his eyes toward the door.