“Ned!  Will you not offer me a cigarette?”

He was all confusion at seeming remiss.

“My dear one!  A thousand pardons!  I did not think—­”

“—­That I smoked?  Are you disappointed?”

He smiled.  “It is one charm the more—­if there is room for one.”

He handed her a cigarette and lighted a match, his eyes resting upon her as she drew in the first breath of smoke with a quaint seriousness that smote him with a thought of the boy.

“Dearest,” he said, suddenly, “I have been so happy to-day that I have thought of no one but ourselves, and now, all at once—­”

Her eyes flashed up to his; she divined his thought, and it was as though she put forth all her strength to ward off a physical danger.

“Oh, mon cher, and was it not your day—­our day?  Would you have marred it with other thoughts?”

“No; but yet—­”

“No!  No!” She put out her hand, she pleaded with eyes and lips and voice.  “Look!  Until this little cigarette is burned out!” She held up the glowing tip.  “When that is over, our day is over; then we return to the world—­but not until then.  Is it—­what do you say—­a bargain?” Her white teeth flashed, her glance flashed with the brightness of tears, her fingers rested for a second upon his.

The restaurant was practically empty; a few summer tourists were dining at tables close to the door, but Blake had chosen the farthest, dimmest corner and there they sat in semi-isolation, living the last moments of their day with an intensity that neither dared to express and that each was conscious of with every beat of the heart.

Maxine laughed as she drew her second puff of smoke, but her laugh had a nervous thinness.  Blake filled their liqueur-glasses, but his gesture was uneven and a little of the brandy spilled upon the cloth.

“A libation to the gods!” he said.  “May they smile upon us!” He lifted his glass and emptied it.

Maxine forced a smile.  “The gods know best!” she said, but as she raised her glass, her hand, also, trembled.

But Blake ignored her perturbation, as she ignored his.  The coming ordeal lay stark across their path, but neither would look upon it, neither would see beyond the tip of Maxine’s cigarette—­the tiny beacon, consuming even as it gave light!

A silence fell—­a silence of full five minutes—­then Blake, yielding once more to the craving for the solace of contact, put his hand over hers.

“Dear one, I know nothing of what is coming, but that I am utterly in your hands.  But let me say one thing.  To-day has been heaven—­the golden, the seventh heaven!”

She said nothing, she did not meet his eyes, but her cold fingers clasped his convulsively, and two tears fell hot upon their hands.

That was all; that was the sum of their expression.  No other word was spoken.  They sat silent, watching the cigarette burn itself out between Maxine’s fingers.