“Here’s my flask. Use it.” He put the flask into Flynn’s hand. He pressed the hand as he did so. Then he left the guardroom and walked over to Mary McPhillip. She left the doorway when she saw him coming. He found her sitting on the form. He stood beside her, looking at the ground, wrapt in thought, gripping her shoulder with his right hand. She became terrified at his attitude, at his silence and the look on his face, which she could see dimly in the gloom. His face had become ashen pale. His eyes had sunk and grown glassy. The blood had left his lips. He was continually grinding his back teeth, slowly. “Dan,” she whispered at length, “what’s the matter with you?” He did not answer for several seconds. Then he started, gasped, and let go her shoulder. He took two paces rapidly towards the door. He halted and put his hand to his forehead. He wheeled about and looked at her curiously. “Oh yes,” he said calmly. “I forgot. Excuse me. I was thinking of something and I didn’t hear what you said. Let me see. Yes.” He sat down beside her. He took her right hand gently into both his own and began to fondle it, with the soft gentle movements of a cat. He began to speak gently, in a soft, sad voice, looking at the floor in front of him. “You’ll have to stay here with me now, Mary,” he said, “until I’m leaving here. Maybe we’ll have to stay here two hours, maybe more. Gypo has escaped. I can’t move until I get news of him. The prisoner has escaped,” he repeated almost inaudibly. “If he can’t be found it will be the end of me, Mary. He knows so much.” Mary turned towards him eagerly and swallowed her breath. Her eyes grew moist and her lips quivered. The gentle tone of his voice went straight to her heart. It drew her towards him, not with the dreadful fascination with which she was drawn towards him before, but with a soft, gentle attraction, like what she had imagined love would be. Not the calm, calculating, respectable affection she experienced for the man she intended to marry, Joseph Augustine Short, but that tumultuous, devouring passion which she had expected real love to be, the love that was written of in books and poems. Ah! How she could love him like this! Soft and gentle like this! She could approach him and touch him, touch something in him that was soft and gentle and sympathetic and human. He was in danger. Good God! It was good that he was in danger, if it helped to disclose to her his real self. It had made him weak, this danger, ridding him of the horrid, impenetrable strength, that kept him cruel and cold. If she could have him to herself like this, she would sacrifice even her religion for his love. Aye! She would even forsake God for him like this. So she thought, looking at him with tears in her eyes. She smoothed his shoulder gently with her hand and whispered to him: “Dan,” she said, “you are in danger. Can I help you, Dan? Dan, you know I’d give my life for you.” Gallagher turned towards her slowly.