With a faint sigh she said: “I am glad it is to be together.” She sat up, still holding his hand. “If it need be at all,” she added, a new firmness in her voice.
“If it need be at all!” Orme searched his mind again for some promise of escape from this prison which had been so suddenly glorified for them. The smooth, unbreakable walls; the thin seam of the door; the thermometer. Why had he not thought of it before? The thermometer!
With an exclamation, he leaped to his feet.
“What is it?” she cried.
“A chance! A small chance—but still a chance!”
He found his way to the handle of the door, which his first attempt at escape had taught him was not connected with the outer knob. Then he located the covering which protected the coils of the thermometer.
Striking with his heel, he tried to break the metal grating. It would not yield. Again and again he threw his weight into the blows, but without effect.
At last he remembered his pocket-knife. Thrusting one end of it through the grating, he prodded at the glass coils within. There was a tinkling sound. He had succeeded.
He groped his way back to the girl and seated himself beside her. With the confession of their love, a new hope had sprung up in them. They might still be freed, and, though the air was becoming stifling, neither of them believed that a joy as great as theirs could be born to live but a few hours.
For the hundredth time he was saying: “I can’t believe that we have known each other only one day.”