Two days had gone by. Up and down the length of a long curtained room Downey slowly paced, with drooping head and drawn white face. Sumptuously upholstered chairs and carven tables were ranged about him, as if to lend luxury to his final hours. But it was not these that he observed; his eyes were drawn constantly to the door, which was crossed with steel bars, beyond which two kilted figures stood beside an ugly black apparatus resembling a machine-gun.
Bitterly he reviewed in his mind his fruitless efforts to free himself. The windows were locked and grated; the single door was guarded, and he was under constant surveillance. Every effort had been made to render his last days comfortable—but what comfort could he take when he was held like a doomed ox in the stall, awaiting the slaughter? He had hardly slept and barely taken food; and the final irony, he thought, occurred when he was handed a steel plaque which read, "The Purple Badge of Heroism. Died for his country this Thirty-Third day of May, in the year 314 of the New Era."
"Well, guess I'm as good as dead already," he reflected as he stared at these words.
He had flung the iron plaque to the furthest corner of the room, and had sunken into a chair with his head buried in his hands, when a rattling at the door caused him to start up abruptly.
"A visitor to see the prisoner!" he heard one of the guards droning, automatically. And the other responded, as automatically, "Let her in! Let her in!"
Leaping up, he observed Judith peering dismally through the bars.
"Mort!" she cried, in tones of mingled joy and sadness; while as he sprang forward to meet her he observed that two kilted women and a guard accompanied her. He also noted—and was a little hurt at the incongruity of the fact—that she had taken pains with her make-up: she was carrying her handbag, and the rouge on her lips was particularly thick, and the powder was smeared on her cheeks in great white patches.
"Mort, I—I've done everything," she exclaimed, as she flung out both hands to him. "But it was—it was no use. They wouldn't even let me see you till this minute. I—I've come to say good-bye, Mort."
He noticed that her big blue eyes were brimmed with tears. And in the tumult of that moment his own eyes were moist. With a swift impulse, he drew her to him, bending down and pressing his lips against hers. But, even as he did so, a powerful restraint seized him against his will. Caught by a sudden spasm, he turned aside, inwardly cursing—and sneezed.
Then again he sneezed, and again, and again, with fierce explosiveness; and the tears rolled from his eyes, which began to grow red and inflamed. Seven times in all he sneezed; then, with a growl, he muttered, "Damnation! There goes my hay-fever again!"