To have shouted, to have made a violent gesture of any sort, might have made her lose her grip on that window; for it is not to be denied that she was very pale, and that her long-lashed eyes looked enormous, almost ghostly, behind the glass. But for her to get that window up would mean the fall of the knife across her fingers, like a paper-cutting block in a newspaper office. The devil was playing his fish on a long line tonight, and I don't doubt he enjoyed it. But it was the worst moment in the affair. I don't suppose I could have shouted even if I had wished to. I moved over slowly, blotting out the sight of the dead man and trying to hold her eye. Someone kept repeating steadily and monotonously:
"The other window. Take your hands off that window. Go to the other window. The other window. Take your hands off that window. The other — "
She understood. She disappeared. In two seconds more I was hauling her across the sill of the other window, yanking her through in a way that must have bruised her knees. She was in her stocking feet for that journey; and, though she seemed a trifle out of breath, she was calm enough to smile.
"Sorry, Ken," she said quietly. "But I couldn't stay there. You were so long. You were so long I thought something must have hap — "
"It has. Are you all right?"
"Quite. Except that we're both filthy dirty. I say, you're hurting my hands! Not so hard, old boy: what's the matter: there's nothing wrong with my hands?"
No, there was not. I had never loved her more than at that moment, although I could not have said so, and, anyway, this was hardly what you could call the proper place for the amenities of courtship. She looked round the corner of my arm.
"Who-who is it, Ken?"
"Unless I've gone completely off my chump, it's Hogenauer.'
"But that's —'