“Why? Why?”
“I told you. I want a saviour. I’m down in the pit. I can’t get out. You can see that for yourself.”
“Yes,” she answered, “I can see that.”
“Give me a hand, Viola, and—you’ll make me do something I’ve never done, never been able to do.”
“What?” she half whispered.
“Believe there’s a God—who cares.”
She drew in her breath sharply. Something warm surged through her. It was not like fire. It was more like the warmth that comes from a warm hand laid on a cold one. It surged through her and went away like a travelling flood.
“What are you saying?” she said in a low voice. “You are mad to come here to-night, to say this to me to-night.”
“No. It’s just to-night it had to be said.”
Suddenly she resolved to tell him. He was in the pit. So was she. Well, the condemned can be frank with one another though all the free have to practise subterfuge.