She did not speak, and for a long time they sat in silence. Many emotions were racing through him. His happiness was almost a pain, for it came to him in this extremity when there was no hope ahead. She had not yielded herself, but she had not resisted his embrace; even now her head was on his shoulder. Indeed, he had given her no chance to confess what she might feel for him.
Nor would he give her that chance. No, it was better that her love for him—he knew now that in her heart she must love him—it was better that it should not be crystallized by definite expression. For he had thought of a way by which she, at least, might be saved. With the faint possibility of rescue for them both, he hesitated to take the step. And yet every moment he was using that much more of the air that might keep her alive through the night.
It would be only right to wait until he was reasonably sure that all the clerks in the office had gone. That time could not be long now. But already the air was beginning to seem close; it was not so easy to breathe as it had been.
Gently putting her from him, he said: “The air will last longer if we lie down. The heart does not need so much blood, then.”
She did not answer, but moved from her seat on his folded coat, and he took it and arranged it as a pillow and, finding her hand, showed her where it was. He heard the rustle of her clothing as she adjusted herself on the floor. She clung to his hand, while he still sat beside her.
“Now,” he said, cheerfully, “I am going to find out what time it is, by breaking the crystal of my watch. I’ve seen blind men tell the time by feeling the dial.”
His watch was an old hunting-case which had belonged to his father. He opened it and cracked the crystal with his pocket-knife. As nearly as he could determine by the sense of touch, it was seven o’clock. Bessie Wallingham would be wondering by this time why he had broken an engagement with her for the second time that day.
“There is one thing more to do,” he said. “It is seven o’clock; I don’t know how much longer we shall be able to breathe easily, and I am going to write a note which will explain matters to the persons who find us—if we should not happen to be able to tell them.”
Laboriously he penciled on the back of an old envelope the explanation of their presence there, making a complete and careful charge against Alcatrante. He laid the message on the floor.
On second thought, he picked it up again and put it in his pocket, for if by any chance they should be rescued, he might forget it. In that event its discovery would possibly bring an exposure of facts which the girl and her father would not care to have disclosed.