."

"But some one of the clerks going out may have seen that it was bolted.
Wouldn't he have pushed the bolt back? I'm going to see."

He groped to the door and tugged at the handle. The door, for all the
effect his effort had on it, might have been a section of solid wall.

"Come back," she called.

He felt his way until his foot touched the coat. As he let himself down
beside her, his hand brushed over her hair, and unconsciously she leaned
toward him. He felt the pressure of her shoulder against his side, and
the touch sent a thrill through him. He leaned back against the wall and
stared into the blackness with eyes that saw only visions of the
happiness that might have been.

"We mustn't make any effort to break out," she said. "It is useless. And
every time we move about and tug at the door, it makes us breathe that
much faster."

"Yes," he sighed, "I suppose we can only sit here and wait."

"Do you know," she said softly, "I am wondering why our situation does
not seem more terrible to me. It should, shouldn't it?"

"I hardly think so," he replied.

"The relative importance of our worldly affairs," she went on dreamily,
"appears to change when one sees that they are all to stop at once. They
recede into the background of the mind. What counts then is, oh, I don't
want to think of it! My father--he----" Her shoulders shook for a moment
under the stress of sudden grief, but she quickly regained her control.
"There, now," she whispered, "I won't do that."

For a time they sat in silence. His own whirling thoughts were of a sort
that he could not fathom; they possessed him completely, they destroyed,
seemingly, all power of analysis, they made him dumb; and they were
tangled inextricably in the blended impressions of possession and loss.

"But you," she said at last, "is your father living?"

"No," he replied.

"And your mother?" she faltered.

"She has been dead many years. And I have no brothers or sisters."

"My mother died when I was a little child," she mused. "Death seemed to
me much more awful then than it does now."

"It is always more awful to those who are left than to those who go," he
said. "But don't think of that yet."

"We _must_ think of it," she insisted.

He did not answer.

"You don't wish to die, do you?" she demanded.

"No; and I don't wish you to die. Try to take a different view, Girl. We
really have a chance of getting out."

"How?"

"Someone may come."

"Not at al