gging me for an hour," Orme continued. "I felt as though
he were sitting on my shoulders, like an Old Man of the Sea."

"I know him of old," she replied. "He is never to be trusted."

"But you--how did you happen to be here, in the Rookery?"

"In the hope of finding you."

"Finding me?"

"I called up the Pere Marquette about five minutes ago, and the clerk
said that you had just been talking to him on the wire, but that he
didn't know where you were. Then I remembered that you knew the
Wallinghams, and I came to Tom's office to see if he had any idea where
you were. I was on my way when I passed you in the elevator."

"Tom and Bessie are at Glenview," explained Orme.

"Yes, the girl at the inquiry-desk told me. She went to get her hat to
leave for the night, and I slipped into this chamber to wait for you."

"And here we are," Orme laughed--"papers and all. But I wish it weren't
so dark."

Orme hunted his pockets for a match. He found just one.

"I don't suppose, Girl, that you happen to have such a thing as a match."

She laughed lightly. "I'm sorry--no."

"I have only one," he said. "I'm going to strike it, so that we can get
our bearings."

He scratched the match on his sole. The first precious moment of light he
permitted himself to look at her, fixing her face in his mind as though
he were never to see it again. It rejoiced him to find that in that
instant her eyes also turned to his.

The interchange of looks was hard for him to break. Only half the match
was gone before he turned from her, but in that time he had asked and
answered so many unspoken questions--questions which at the moment were
still little more than hopes and yearnings. His heart was beating
rapidly. If she had doubted him, she did not doubt him now. If she had
not understood his feeling for her, she must understand it now. And the
look in her own eyes--could he question that it was more than friendly?
But the necessity of making the most of the light forced him to forget
for the moment the tender presence of the girl who filled his heart. He
therefore employed himself with a quick study of their surroundings.

The chamber was about ten feet square, and lined smoothly with white
tiling. It was designed to show the sanitary construction of the
Wallingham refrigerator. Orme remembered how Tom had explained it all to
him on a previous visit to Chicago.

This was merely a storage chamber. There was no connection with an
ice-chamber