“Yes,” he said slowly.  “It’s sweet of you, Virginia.  If you got my gun and shot my head off, I don’t know who should blame you.  I shouldn’t!” he concluded with a forced attempt to match her smile.

“Then we understand each other?  As long as each does the best he can see his way to do, the other finds no fault?” And when he nodded she rose quickly and came to him, putting out her hand as he rose.  “Rod Norton,” she said simply, and her eyes shone steady and clear into his, “I wish you the best there is.  I think we should both pray a little to God to help us to-night. . . .  And now, if you will run up to your Treasure Chamber and bring down the coffee, I’ll promise to be here when you get back.  And to make you a good hot drink; I feel the need of it and so do you.”

He went out without an answer, his face grave and troubled again.  As her eyes followed him they were no longer gay but wistful, and then filled with a sadness which she had not shown to him, and then suddenly wet.  But before he had gone half a dozen 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.