For answer she drew him to her and flung out her hand to Dunbar. "We three. We love one another," she cried. "Do your worst." Crispin looked once more at the clock. "Melodrama," he said. "I, too, will be melodramatic. I give you twenty minutes by that clock--a situation familiar to every theatre-goer. When that clock strikes six I shall, I'm afraid, want the company of both of you gentlemen. Make your adieus then to the lady. Your eternal adieus." He smiled and gently tip-toed from the room. IV "And so the curtain falls on Act Three of this pleasant little drama," said Dunbar, huskily, turning towards the window. "There will be a twenty minutes' interval. But the last act will be played _in camera._ If only one wasn't so beastly tired--and if only it wasn't all my fault. . . ." His voice broke. Harkness went up to him, put his arm around him and drew him to him. "Look here. I'm older than both of you. I might almost be your father, so you've got to obey my orders. I'll be best man at your wedding yet, David, yours and Hesther's. There's nobody to blame. Nothing but the fog. But don't let's cheat ourselves either. We're shut up here at half-past five in the morning miles from any help, no way out, no telephone, and two damn Japs who are stronger than we are, in the power of a man who's as mad as a hatter and as bloodthirsty as a tiger. "It's going to be all right, I tell you. I know it. I feel it in my bones. But we've got to behave for these twenty minutes--only seventeen of them now--as though it won't be. It's of no use for us to make any plan. We'll have to do something on the spur of the moment when we see what the old devil has up his sleeve for us----" "Meanwhile, as I say, make the best of these minutes." He put out his arm and drew Hesther in. "I tell you that I love you both. I've only known you a day, but I love you as I've never loved any one in my life before. I love you as father and brother and comrade. It's the best thing that has happened to me in all my life." The three, body to body, stood looking out through the gilded bars at the sky, silver grey, and washed with shifting shadows. "After all," he went on, "if our luck doesn't hold, and we are going to die in the next hour or so, what is it? It's only what millions of fellows passed through in the war and under much more terrible conditions. Imagination is the worst part of that I fancy, and I suggest that we don't think of what is going to happen when this time is over--whether it goes well or ill--we'll fill these twenty minutes with every decent thought we've got, we'll think of every fine thing that we know of, and every beautiful thing, and everything that is of good report."