He could feel her groping away from him in the darkness.
"Wait," she whispered.
"But why should I wait?" he demanded.
"Listen! That second room door is still unlocked, and there's danger enough here, without inviting it."
He groped after her into the bedroom. He could hear the gentle scrape of the key and the muffled sound of the lock as she turned it, followed by the cautious slide of the brass bolt, lower on the door. He waited for her, standing at the foot of the bed. He could hear her sigh of weariness as she sat down on the edge of the disordered mattress. Then, remembering that he had cut the wires of only the larger room, he felt his way to the button at the head of the bed. He snapped the current open and instantly the blinding white light flooded the chamber.
"Is it safe here, any longer?" she asked restlessly, pausing a moment to accustom her eyes to the light, and then gazing up at him with an impersonal studiousness of stare that seemed to wall and bar her off from him. Still again he was oppressed by some sense of alienation, of looming tragedy between them. She, too, must have known some shadow of that feeling, for he saw the look of troubled concern, of unspoken pity, that crept over her face; and he turned away brusquely.
She spoke his name, quietly; and his gaze coasted round to her again. She watched him with wide and hungry eyes.
Her breast heaved, at his silence, but all she said was: "Is it safe, Jim?"
"Yes, it's perfectly safe. So tell me what you have to say. It doesn't mean any greater risk. We would only have to come back again—for I've work to do in this room yet!"
The return of the light seemed to give a new cast of practicality to his thoughts.