"We may need the parachute," said Paula unsteadily. "Does--does that smoke of yours drive them away?" "A little." Bell hesitated. "I say, it would be crowded, but if I came up there, or you here...." "I--I'll come back there," she said queerly. "The extra cans of gasoline here...." She slipped over the partition, in the odd flying suit which looks so much more odd when a girl wears it. She settled down beside him, and he tried painstakingly to envelope her in a cloud of tobacco smoke. The plague of insects lessened. There was nothing to do but wait for dawn. She was very quiet, but as the moon rose higher he saw that her eyes were open. The night noises of the jungle all about them came to their ears. Furtive little slitherings, and the sound of things drinking greedily at the water's edge, and once or twice peculiar little despairing small animal cries off in the darkness. * * * * * The jungle was dark and sinister, and all the more so when the moon rose high and lightened its face and left them looking into weird, abysmal blackness between moonlit branches. Bell thought busily, trying not to become too conscious of the small warm body beside him. He moved, suddenly, and found her fingers closed tightly on the sleeve of his flying suit. "Frightened, Paula?" he asked quietly. "Don't be. We'll make out." She shook her head and looked up at him, drawing away as if to scan his face more closely. "I am thinking," she said almost harshly, "of biology. I wonder--" Bell waited. He felt an intolerable strain in her tensed figure. He put his hand comfortingly over hers. And, astoundingly, he found it trembling. "Are all women fools?" she demanded in a desperate cynicism. "Are we all imbeciles? Are--" Bell's pulse pounded suddenly. He smiled. "Not unless men are imbeciles too," he said dryly. "We've been through a lot in the past two days. It's natural that we should like each other. We've worked together rather well. I--well"--his smile was distinctly a wry and uncomfortable one--"I've been the more anxious to get to some civilized place where The Master hasn't a deputy because--well--it wouldn't be fair to talk about loving you while--" he shrugged, and said curtly, "while you had no choice but to listen." * * * * * She stared at him, there in the moonlight with the jungle moving about its business of life and death about them. And very, very slowly the tenseness left her figure. And very, very slowly she smiled. "Perhaps," she said quietly, "you are lying to me, Charles. Perhaps. But it is a very honorable thing for you to say. I am not ashamed, now, of feeling that I wish to be always near you."