Yet distress was too eloquent in the broken query: "What am I to do?"
Heartsick, self-sick to boot, he essayed to suggest that she consult Colonel Stanistreet, but lacking so much effrontery, stammered and fell silent.
Perhaps misinterpreting, she cried in quick contrition: "I am forgetting! Forgive me. I should have said: what are you to do?"
He whipped his wits together.
"Look down, turn your face aside, smile. … I have a plan, a desperate remedy, but the best I can contrive. When next the lift comes up, we must try to be near it. There is one row of tables which we must break through by main force. Leave that to me, follow as I clear a way, go straight into the lift. If anything happens, run down the stairway on the left. The ground floor is two flights below. If I am any way detained, don't stop—go on, get your wraps, take the first taxi you see, return directly to the Knickerbocker. I will telephone you later."
"If you live," she breathed.
"Never fear for me. …"
"But if I do? Do you imagine I could rest if I thought you had sacrificed yourself for me?"
"You must not think that. I am far too selfish"
"That is not so. And I refuse positively to do as you wish unless you tell me how I may communicate with you."
Resigned to humour her, he recited his address and the number of the house telephone, and when she had memorized both by iteration, resumed:
