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Page 80
He went out without an answer, his face grave and troubled again. As
her eyes followed him they were no longer gay but wistful, and then
filled with a sadness which she had not shown to him, and then suddenly
wet. But before he had gone half a dozen steps from the door she
dashed a hasty hand across her eyes and went swiftly to the smallest of
the three black leather cases he had brought up here after her.
"This is the one way out, Rod Norton!" she whispered. "The one way out
if God is with us."
Her quick fingers sought and found the tiny phial with its small white
tablets . . . labelled _Hyoscine_ . . . and secreted it in her bosom.
She was laying fresh twigs upon the blaze when he came back with the
coffee-pot, can of coffee, and a tin cup. She greeted him with another
quick smile. He saw that her cheeks were flushed rosily, that there
was subdued excitement in her eyes. And yet matters just as they were
would sufficiently explain these phenomena without causing him to quest
farther. He thought merely that he had never seen her so delightfully
pretty.
"Virginia Page," he told her as his own eyes grew bright with the new
light leaping up into them, "some day . . ."
"Sh!" she commanded, her color deepened. "Let us wait until that day
comes. Now you just obey orders; lie there and smoke while I make the
coffee."
He wanted to wait on her, but when she insisted he withdrew to the wall
a few feet away, sat down, filled his pipe, and watched her. And while
he filled his eyes with her he marvelled afresh. For it seemed to him
that her mood was one of unqualified happiness. She did all of the
talking, her words came in a ceaseless bright flow, she laughed readily
and often, her eyes were dancing, the warm color stood high in her
cheeks. That her heart was beating like mad, that the intoxication of
an intent he could not read had swept into her brain, that she was
vastly more in the mood to weep than to smile . . . all of this lay
hidden to him behind her woman's wit. For, having decided, there would
be no going back.
With the coffee boiling in the old black and spoutless pot from
Norton's cache in the Treasure Chamber, she poured what was left of the
ground coffee from its tin to the flat surface of a bit of stone. This
tin was to serve Norton as his cup.
"It's to be our night-cap," she laughed at him as she put the
improvised cup by the other. "I refuse to sit up any later; a
saddle-blanket for bunk, and then to sleep. That is my room yonder,
isn't it?" She nodded toward the black entrance to the second of the
chambers of the King's Palace. "And you will sleep here? Well, while
the coffee cools, I'm going to make my bed." She carried her blanket
on past him, was gone into the yawning darkness, was back in a moment.
"My bed's ready," she told him gayly. "This kind of housekeeping just
suits me! Now for the coffee. . . . Rod Norton, will you do as you
are told or not? You are to sit still and let me wait on you; who's
hostess here, I'd like to know?"
While out of his sight she had slipped one of the hyoscine tablets into
her palm; now, as she poured the ink-black beverage, she let it drop
into the tin can which she presented to Norton.
"Don't say it doesn't taste right!" she admonished him in a voice in
which at last he detected the nervous note.
He stood up, holding his coffee-can in his hand, meeting her strained
levity with a deep gravity.
"Virginia," he began.
"It's too late to cut in on my monologue!" she cried gayly. "Pledge me
in the drink I have made for you, Mr. Norton! Just say: 'Virginia,
here's looking at you!' Or: 'I wish you well in all that you
undertake.' Or: 'For all that you have said to me, for whatever you
may say or do in the future, I forgive you!' That's all."
"Virginia," he said gently, "I love you, my dear."
She laughed nervously.
"That's the nice way to say everything all at once!" He saw that her
hand shook, that a little of her coffee spilled, and that again she
grew steady. "Now our night-cap and good night!"
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