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They were ravenous. They boiled one egg each and ate it, and then boiled another and another, and when they finished they found that Jane had eaten four potatoes, four eggs and unlimited bread and butter, while the red-haired person had eaten six saucers of stewed tomatoes and was starting on the seventh.

“You know,” he said over the seventh, “we’ve got to figure this thing out. The entire town is solid against us–no use trying to get to a telephone. And anyhow they’ve got us surrounded. We’re in a state of siege.”

Jane was beating up an egg in milk for the D.T. patient, the capsules being exhausted, and the red-haired person was watching her closely. She had the two vertical lines between her eyes, but they looked really like lines of endeavour and not temper.

She stopped beating and looked up.

“Couldn’t I go to the village?” she asked.

“They would stop you.”

“Then–I think I know what we can do,” she said, giving the eggnog a final whisk. “My people have a summer place on the hill. If you could get there you could telephone to the city.”

“Could I get in?”

“I have a key.”

Jane did not explain that the said key had been left by her father, with the terse hope that if she came to her senses she could get into the house and get her clothes.

“Good girl,” said the red-headed person and patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll euchre the old skate yet.” Curiously, Jane did not resent either the speech or the pat.

He took the glass and tied on a white apron. “If our friend doesn’t drink this, I will,” he continued. “If he’d seen it in the making, as I have, he’d be crazy about it.”

He opened the door and stood listening. From below floated up the refrain:

I–love you o–own–ly,
I love–but–you.

“Listen to that!” he said. “Stomach’s gone, but still has a heart!”

Higgins came up the stairs heavily and stopped close by the red-haired person, whispering something to him. There was a second’s pause. Then the red-haired person gave the eggnog to Higgins and both disappeared.

Jane was puzzled. She rather thought the furnace man had got out and listened for a scuffle, but none came. She did, however, hear the singing cease below, and then commence with renewed vigour, and she heard Higgins slowly remounting the stairs. He came in, with the empty glass and a sheepish expression. Part of the eggnog was distributed over his person.

“He wants his nurse, ma’am,” said Higgins. “Wouldn’t let me near him. Flung a pillow at me.”

“Where is the doctor?” demanded Jane.

“Busy,” replied Higgins. “One of the women is sick.”

Jane was provoked. She had put some labour into the eggnog. But it shows the curious evolution going on in her that she got out the eggs and milk and made another one without protest. Then with her head up she carried it to the door.

“You might clear things away, Higgins,” she said, and went down the stairs. Her heart was going rather fast. Most of the men Jane knew drank more or less, but this was different. She would have turned back halfway there had it not been for Higgins and for owning herself conquered. That was Jane’s real weakness–she never owned herself beaten.

The singing had subsided to a low muttering. Jane stopped outside the door and took a fresh grip on her courage. Then she pushed the door open and went in.

The light was shaded, and at first the tossing figure on the bed was only a misty outline of greys and whites. She walked over, expecting a pillow at any moment and shielding the glass from attack with her hand.

“I have brought you another eggnog,” she began severely, “and if you spill it—-“

Then she looked down and saw the face on the pillow.

To her everlasting credit, Jane did not faint. But in that moment, while she stood staring down at the flushed young face with its tumbled dark hair and deep-cut lines of dissipation, the man who had sung to her over the piano, looking love into her eyes, died to her, and Jane, cold and steady, sat down on the side of the bed and fed the eggnog, spoonful by spoonful, to his corpse!