“So you may,” he added very earnestly; “but I rely on you to keep awake, if only to watch.  You have been asleep for half an hour at least—­and you were so still—­I thought I’d wake you—­”

“Why?” I asked, for my curiosity and nervousness were altogether too strong to be resisted.  “Do you think we are in danger?”

“I think they are about here now.  I feel my vitality going rapidly—­that’s always the first sign.  You’ll last longer than I, remember.  Watch carefully.”

The conversation dropped.  I was afraid to say all I wanted to say.  It would have been too unmistakably a confession; and intuitively I realised the danger of admitting the existence of certain emotions until positively forced to.  But presently Shorthouse began again.  His voice sounded odd, and as if it had lost power.  It was more like a woman’s or a boy’s voice than a man’s, and recalled the voice in my dream.

“I suppose you’ve got a knife?” he asked.

“Yes—­a big clasp knife; but why?” He made no answer.  “You don’t think a practical joke likely?  No one suspects we’re here,” I went on.  Nothing was more significant of our real feelings this night than the way we toyed with words, and never dared more than to skirt the things in our mind.

“It’s just as well to be prepared,” he answered evasively.  “Better be quite sure.  See which pocket it’s in—­so as to be ready.”

I obeyed mechanically, and told him.  But even this scrap of talk proved to me that he was getting further from me all the time in his mind.  He was following a line that was strange to me, and, as he distanced me, I felt that the sympathy between us grew more and more strained. He knew more; it was not that I minded so much—­but that he was willing to communicate less.  And in proportion as I lost his support, I dreaded his increasing silence.  Not of words—­for he talked more volubly than ever, and with a fiercer purpose—­but his silence in giving no hint of what he must have known to be really going on the whole time.

The night was perfectly still.  Shorthouse continued steadily talking, and I jogged him now and again with remarks or questions in order to keep awake.  He paid no attention, however, to either.

About two in the morning a short shower fell, and the drops rattled sharply on the roof like shot.  I was glad when it stopped, for it completely drowned all other sounds and made it impossible to hear anything else that might be going on.  Something was going on, too, all the time, though for the life of me I could not say what.  The outer world had grown quite dim—­the house-party, the shooters, the billiard-room, and the ordinary daily incidents of my visit.  All my energies were concentrated on the present, and the constant strain of watching, waiting, listening, was excessively telling.