"I will not give up," she said, gravely. "But tell me, how did you get the papers?" Orme began the story of the afternoon's adventures. "Why don't you sit down?" she asked. "Why"--he stammered--"I----" He had been so conscious of his feeling toward her, so conscious of the fact that the one woman in all the world was locked in here alone with him, that since he arranged her seat he had not trusted himself to be near her. And she did not seem to understand. She wished him to sit beside her, not knowing that he felt the almost overpowering impulse to take her in his arms and crush her close to him. That desire would have been more easily controlled, had he not begun to believe that she in some degree returned his feeling for her. If they escaped from this black prison, he would rest happy in the faith that her affection for him, now, as he supposed so largely friendly, would ripen into a glorious and compelling love. But it would not be right for him to presume--to take advantage of a moment in which she might think that she cared for him more than she actually did. Then, too, he already foresaw vaguely the possible necessity for an act which would make it best that she should not hold him too dear. So long he stood silent that she spoke again. "Do sit down," she said. "I will give you part of your coat." There was a tremulous note in her laugh, but as he seated himself, she spoke with great seriousness. "When two persons understand each other as well as you and I," she said, "and are as near death as you and I, they need not be embarrassed by conventions." "We never have been very conventional with each other," he replied, shakily. Her shoulder was against his. He could hear her breathing. "Now tell me the rest of the story." "First I must change your notion that we are near death." He could feel that she was looking at him in the blackness. "Don't you think I know?" she whispered. "They will not find us until to-morrow. There isn't enough air to last. I have known it from the first." "Someone will open the door," he replied. "We may have to stay here quite a while, but----" "No, my friend. There is no likelihood that it will be opened. The clerks are leaving for the night." He was silent. "So finish the story," she went on. "Finish the story!" That was all that he could do. "Finish the story!" His story and hers--only just begun, and now to end there in the dark. But with a calmness as great as her own, he proceeded to tell all that had happened to him since he boarded the electric-car at Evanston and saw Maku sitting within. She pressed his hand gently when he described the trick by which the Japanese had brought the pursuit to an end. She laughed when he came to his meeting with the detective in his apartment. The episode with Madame Alia he passed over lightly, for part of it rankled now. Not that he blamed himself foolishly but he wished that it had not happened. "That woman did a fine thing," said the girl.