"Not until the last moment, dear," said Zaidie, as he set one of them before her. "We have no right to do it until then."
"Very well. When the mercury reaches a hundred and fifty. After that it will go up ten and fifteen degrees at a jump, and we——"
"Yes, at a hundred and fifty," she replied, cutting short a speech she dared not hear the end of. "I understand. It will be impossible to hope any more."
Now, side by side, they stood and watched the thermometer.
Ninety-five—ninety-eight—a hundred and three—a hundred and ten—eighteen—twenty-four—thirty-two—forty-one.
The silent minutes passed, and with each the silver thread—for them the thread of life—grew, with strange contradiction, longer and longer, and with every minute it grew more quickly.
A hundred and forty-six.
With his right arm Redgrave drew Zaidie still closer to him. He put out his left hand and took up the little glass. She did the same.
"Goodbye, dear, till we have slept and wake again!"
"Goodbye, darling, God grant that we may!" But the agony of that last farewell was more than Zaidie could bear. She looked away at the little glass in her hand, a hand which even now did not tremble. Then she raised her eyes again to take one last look at the glory of the stars, and at the Fate Incarnate in Flame which lay beneath them. Then, even as the end of the last minute came, a cry broke through her white, half-parted lips: