my lily-white and reformed Romeo, medicine will do
you no good. But I will give you quinine, which, being bitter, will
arouse in you hatred and anger--two stimulants that will add ten per
cent. to your chances. You are as strong as a caribou calf, and you
will get well if the fever doesn't get in a knockout blow when you're
off your guard."

For two weeks I lay on my back feeling like a Hindoo widow on a
burning ghat. Old Atasca, an untrained Indian nurse, sat near the
door like a petrified statue of What's-the-Use, attending to her
duties, which were, mainly, to see that time went by without slipping
a cog. Sometimes I would fancy myself back in the Philippines, or, at
worse times, sliding off the horsehair sofa in Sleepytown.

One afternoon I ordered Atasca to vamose, and got up and dressed
carefully. I took my temperature, which I was pleased to find 104.
I paid almost dainty attention to my dress, choosing solicitously
a necktie of a dull and subdued hue. The mirror showed that I was
looking little the worse from my illness. The fever gave brightness
to my eyes and color to my face. And while I looked at my reflection
my color went and came again as I thought of Chloe Greene and the
millions of eons that had passed since I'd seen her, and of Louis
Devoe and the time he had gained on me.

I went straight to her house. I seemed to float rather than walk; I
hardly felt the ground under my feet; I thought pernicious fever must
be a great boon to make one feel so strong.

I found Chloe and Louis Devoe sitting under the awning in front of the
house. She jumped up and met me with a double handshake.

"I'm glad, glad, glad to see you out again!" she cried, every word a
pearl strung on the string of her sentence. "You are well, Tommy--or
better, of course. I wanted to come to see you, but they wouldn't let
me."

"Oh yes," said I, carelessly, "it was nothing. Merely a little fever.
I am out again, as you see."

We three sat there and talked for half an hour or so. Then Chloe
looked out yearningly and almost piteously across the ocean. I could
see in her sea-blue eyes some deep and intense desire. Devoe, curse
him! saw it too.

"What is it?" we asked, in unison.

"Cocoanut-pudding," said Chloe, pathetically. "I've wanted some--oh,
so badly, for two days. It's got beyond a wish; it's an obsession."

"The cocoanut season is over," said Devoe, in that voice of his that
gave thrilling interest to his most commonplace