Ever since she had been able to leave her bed Elinor had been formulating a plan of escape.  Once the door had been left unlocked, but her clothing had been removed from the room, and then, too, she had not learned the thing she was waiting for.  Now she had clothing, a dark dressing gown and slippers, and she had the information.  But the door was securely locked.

She had often thought of the window, In the day time it frightened her to look down, although it fascinated her, too.  But at night it seemed much simpler.  The void below was concealed in the darkness, a soft darkness that hid the hard, inhospitable earth.  A darkness one could fall into and onto.

She was not a brave woman.  She had moral rather than physical courage.  It was easier for her to face Doyle in a black mood than the gulf below the window-sill, but she knew now that she must get away, if she were to go at all.  She got out of bed, and using her crutches carefully moved to the sill, trying to accustom herself to the thought of going over the edge.  The plaster cast on her leg was a real handicap.  She must get it over first.  How heavy it was, and unwieldy!

She found her scissors, and, stripping the bed, sat down to cut and tear the bedding into strips.  Prisoners escaped that way; she had read about such things.  But the knots took up an amazing amount of length.  It was four o’clock in the morning when she had a serviceable rope, and she knew it was too short.  In the end she tore down the window curtains and added them, working desperately against time.

She began to suspect, too, that Olga was not sleeping.  She smelled faintly the odor of the long Russian cigarettes the girl smoked.  She put out her light and worked in the darkness, a strange figure of adventure, this middle-aged woman with her smooth hair and lined face, sitting in her cambric nightgown with her crutches on the floor beside her.

She secured the end of the rope to the foot of her metal bed, pushing the bed painfully and cautiously, inch by inch, to the window.  And in so doing she knocked over the call-bell on the stand, and almost immediately she heard Olga moving about.

The girl was coming unsteadily toward the door.  If she opened it—­

“I don’t want anything, Olga,” she called, “I knocked the bell over accidentally.”

Olga hesitated, muttered, moved away again.  Elinor was covered with a cold sweat.

She began to think of the window as a refuge.  Surely nothing outside could be so terrible as this house itself.  The black aperture seemed friendly; it beckoned to her with friendly hands.

She dropped her crutches.  They fell with two soft thuds on the earth below and it seemed to her that they were a long time in falling.  She listened after that, but Olga made no sign.  Then slowly and painfully she worked her injured leg over the sill, and sat there looking down and breathing with difficulty.  Then she freed her dressing gown around her, and slid over the edge.