their own lives.

"I wish you _would_ shout," she said.

"Very well," he said, and going over to the door, he called out several
times with the full power of his lungs. The sound, pent in that narrow
room, fairly crashed in their ears, but there was no answer from without.

"Don't do it again," she said at last. Then she sighed. "Oh, the irony of
it!" she exclaimed.

"I know." He laughed. "But don't give up, Girl. We'll deliver those
papers yet."

"I will not give up," she said, gravely. "But tell me, how did you get
the papers?"

Orme began the story of the afternoon's adventures.

"Why don't you sit down?" she asked.

"Why"--he stammered--"I----"

He had been so conscious of his feeling toward her, so conscious of the
fact that the one woman in all the world was locked in here alone with
him, that since he arranged her seat he had not trusted himself to be
near her. And she did not seem to understand.

She wished him to sit beside her, not knowing that he felt the almost
overpowering impulse to take her in his arms and crush her close to him.
That desire would have been more easily controlled, had he not begun to
believe that she in some degree returned his feeling for her. If they
escaped from this black prison, he would rest happy in the faith that her
affection for him, now, as he supposed so largely friendly, would ripen
into a glorious and compelling love. But it would not be right for him to
presume--to take advantage of a moment in which she might think that she
cared for him more than she actually did. Then, too, he already foresaw
vaguely the possible necessity for an act which would make it best that
she should not hold him too dear. So long he stood silent that she spoke
again.

"Do sit down," she said. "I will give you part of your coat."

There was a tremulous note in her laugh, but as he seated himself, she
spoke with great seriousness. "When two persons understand each other as
well as you and I," she said, "and are as near death as you and I, they
need not be embarrassed by conventions."

"We never have been very conventional with each other," he replied,
shakily. Her shoulder was against his. He could hear her breathing.

"Now tell me the rest of the story."

"First I must change your notion that we are near death."

He could feel that she was looking at him in the blackness. "Don't you
think I know?" she whispered. "They will not find us until to-morrow.
There isn't enough air to