So, with the brain of a doctor and the heart of a lover, the two men worked and watched and waited through the tortuous autumn days and nights, blind to the young dawn stealing out like a luminous mist from the night-smothered mountains; deaf to the flutter of sun-dried leaves in the radiant noon-time; dull to the fruit-scented fragrance of the early twilight, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, sensing nothing, except the flicker of a pulse or the rise of a temperature.
And then at last there came a harsh, wintry feeling day, when Andrews, stepping out into the hall, called Guthrie softly to him and said, still smiling:
"Guthrie, old man, I don't think we're going to win this game!"
"W-h-a-t?" gasped Guthrie.
With his mouth still curling amiably around his words, Andrews repeated the phrase. "I said, I don't think we're going to win this game. No, nothing new's happened. She's simply burning out. Can't you understand? I mean she's probably—going to die!"
Out of the jumble of words that hurtled through Guthrie's mind only four slipped his lips.
"But—she's—my—wife!" he protested.
"Other men's wives have died before this," said Andrews still smiling.
"Man," cried Guthrie, "if you smile again, I'll break your head!"
With his tears running down like rain into the broadening trough of his smile, Andrews kept right on smiling. "You needn't be so cross about it," he said. "You're not the only one who likes her! I wanted her myself! You're nothing but a tramp on the face of the earth—and I could have given her the snuggest home in Yonkers!"