Elma gazed at him aghast in the utmost horror. She knew what he meant at once. She didn’t even need that he should finish his sentence.
“Never!” she said, firmly clenching her small hand hard. “It’s so wrong of you to think of it, even. I could never permit it. It’s your duty to keep yourself alive at all hazards as long as ever you can. You should remember your mother, your sisters, your family.”
“Why, that’s just it,” Cyril answered, a little crestfallen, and feeling he had done quite a wicked thing in venturing to suggest that his companion should have every chance for her own life. “I’ve got no mother, you see, no sisters, no family. Nobody on earth would ever be one penny the worse if I were to die, except my twin brother; he’s the only relation I ever had in my life; and even HE, I dare say, would very soon get over it. Whereas YOU”—he paused and glanced at her compassionately—“there are probably many to whom the loss would be a very serious one. If I could do anything to save you—-” He broke off suddenly, for Elma looked up at him once more with a little burst of despair.
“If you talk like that,” she cried, with a familiarity that comes of association in a very great danger, “I don’t know what I shall do; I don’t know what I shall say to you. Why, I couldn’t bear to be left alone here to die by myself. If only for MY sake, now we’re boxed up here together, I think you ought to wait and do the best you can for yourself.”
“Very well,” Cyril answered once more, in a most obedient tone. “If you wish me to live to keep you company in the tunnel, I’ll live while I may. You have only to say what you wish. I’m here to wait upon you.”
In any other circumstances, such a phrase would have been a mere piece of conversational politeness. At that critical moment, Elma knew it for just what it was—a simple expression of his real feeling.
CHAPTER III. — CYRIL WARING’S BROTHER.
It was nine o’clock that self-same night, and two men sat together in a comfortable sitting-room under the gabled roofs of Staple Inn, Holborn. It was as cosy a nook as any to be found within the four-mile radius, and artistic withal in its furniture and decorations.