er blanket
on past him, was gone into the yawning darkness, was back in a moment.

"My bed's ready," she told him gayly. "This kind of housekeeping just
suits me! Now for the coffee. . . . Rod Norton, will you do as you
are told or not? You are to sit still and let me wait on you; who's
hostess here, I'd like to know?"

While out of his sight she had slipped one of the hyoscine tablets into
her palm; now, as she poured the ink-black beverage, she let it drop
into the tin can which she presented to Norton.

"Don't say it doesn't taste right!" she admonished him in a voice in
which at last he detected the nervous note.

He stood up, holding his coffee-can in his hand, meeting her strained
levity with a deep gravity.

"Virginia," he began.

"It's too late to cut in on my monologue!" she cried gayly. "Pledge me
in the drink I have made for you, Mr. Norton! Just say: 'Virginia,
here's looking at you!' Or: 'I wish you well in all that you
undertake.' Or: 'For all that you have said to me, for whatever you
may say or do in the future, I forgive you!' That's all."

"Virginia," he said gently, "I love you, my dear."

She laughed nervously.

"That's the nice way to say everything all at once!" He saw that her
hand shook, that a little of her coffee spilled, and that again she
grew steady. "Now our night-cap and good night!"

She drank hurriedly. Thereafter she yawned and made her little
pretense of increased drowsiness.

"It's been such a long day," she said. "You'll forgive me if I tumble
right straight into sleepy-land?"

Again they said good night and she left him, going down among the eerie
dancing shadows to her own quarter, drawing his moody eyes after her.
When she had gone, he threw down his own blanket across the main
entrance of the King's Palace, filled his pipe again, and sat staring
out into the night.

The fire cast up its red flare spasmodically, licked at the last of the
dead branches which, rolling apart, burned out upon the rock floor.
The darkness once more blotted out all detail saving the few
smouldering coals, the knobs of stone in the small flickering circles
of light, the quiet form of the man silhouetted against the lesser dark
of the night without. Virginia, rigid and motionless at the spot to
which she had stolen noiselessly, watched him breathlessly.

For only a little he sat smoking. Then, as though he experienced
something of that weariness of which she had made prete