“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 her 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 pretense, he laid his pipe aside and stretched out upon his blanket, leaning upon an elbow.  She heard him sigh, vaguely made out when he let his head slip down upon an arm, saw that he had grown still, and was lying stretched out across the main threshold.