Her voice came to him softly with all its solicitude and sympathy. She knelt, to help him if need be, and her warm, supple hand rested gently on his forehead. He could have remained for a long time as he was, content with her touch, but his good sense told him that their safety demanded action. "Not hurt at all," he said, and as she withdrew her hand, he arose. "Alcatrante caught me off guard," he explained. "Yes, I saw him. There wasn't time to warn you." "He has been dogging me for an hour," Orme continued. "I felt as though he were sitting on my shoulders, like an Old Man of the Sea." "I know him of old," she replied. "He is never to be trusted." "But you--how did you happen to be here, in the Rookery?" "In the hope of finding you." "Finding me?" "I called up the Père Marquette about five minutes ago, and the clerk said that you had just been talking to him on the wire, but that he didn't know where you were. Then I remembered that you knew the Wallinghams, and I came to Tom's office to see if he had any idea where you were. I was on my way when I passed you in the elevator." "Tom and Bessie are at Glenview," explained Orme. "Yes, the girl at the inquiry-desk told me. She went to get her hat to leave for the night, and I slipped into this chamber to wait for you." "And here we are," Orme laughed--"papers and all. But I wish it weren't so dark." Orme hunted his pockets for a match. He found just one. "I don't suppose, Girl, that you happen to have such a thing as a match." She laughed lightly. "I'm sorry--no." "I have only one," he said. "I'm going to strike it, so that we can get our bearings." He scratched the match on his sole. The first precious moment of light he permitted himself to look at her, fixing her face in his mind as though he were never to see it again. It rejoiced him to find that in that instant her eyes also turned to his. The interchange of looks was hard for him to break. Only half the match was gone before he turned from her, but in that time he had asked and answered so many unspoken questions--questions which at the moment were still little more than hopes and yearnings. His heart was beating rapidly. If she had doubted him, she did not doubt him now. If she had not understood his feeling for her, she must understand it now. And the look in her own eyes--could he question that it was more than friendly? But the necessity of making the most of the light forced him to forget for the moment the tender presence of the girl who filled his heart. He therefore employed himself with a quick study of their surroundings. The chamber was about ten feet square, and lined smoothly with white tiling. It was designed to show the sanitary construction of the Wallingham refrigerator. Orme remembered how Tom had explained it all to him on a previous visit to Chicago.