steps from the door she
dashed a hasty hand across her eyes and went swiftly to the smallest of
the three black leather cases he had brought up here after her.

"This is the one way out, Rod Norton!" she whispered. "The one way out
if God is with us."

Her quick fingers sought and found the tiny phial with its small white
tablets . . . labelled _Hyoscine_ . . . and secreted it in her bosom.
She was laying fresh twigs upon the blaze when he came back with the
coffee-pot, can of coffee, and a tin cup. She greeted him with another
quick smile. He saw that her cheeks were flushed rosily, that there
was subdued excitement in her eyes. And yet matters just as they were
would sufficiently explain these phenomena without causing him to quest
farther. He thought merely that he had never seen her so delightfully
pretty.

"Virginia Page," he told her as his own eyes grew bright with the new
light leaping up into them, "some day . . ."

"Sh!" she commanded, her color deepened. "Let us wait until that day
comes. Now you just obey orders; lie there and smoke while I make the
coffee."

He wanted to wait on her, but when she insisted he withdrew to the wall
a few feet away, sat down, filled his pipe, and watched her. And while
he filled his eyes with her he marvelled afresh. For it seemed to him
that her mood was one of unqualified happiness. She did all of the
talking, her words came in a ceaseless bright flow, she laughed readily
and often, her eyes were dancing, the warm color stood high in her
cheeks. That her heart was beating like mad, that the intoxication of
an intent he could not read had swept into her brain, that she was
vastly more in the mood to weep than to smile . . . all of this lay
hidden to him behind her woman's wit. For, having decided, there would
be no going back.

With the coffee boiling in the old black and spoutless pot from
Norton's cache in the Treasure Chamber, she poured what was left of the
ground coffee from its tin to the flat surface of a bit of stone. This
tin was to serve Norton as his cup.

"It's to be our night-cap," she laughed at him as she put the
improvised cup by the other. "I refuse to sit up any later; a
saddle-blanket for bunk, and then to sleep. That is my room yonder,
isn't it?" She nodded toward the black entrance to the second of the
chambers of the King's Palace. "And you will sleep here? Well, while
the coffee cools, I'm going to make my bed." She carried h