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A sound of whispering roused me. Two persons were talking under their breath close beside me. The words in the main escaped me, but I caught every now and then bitten-off phrases and half sentences, to which, however, I could attach no intelligible meaning. The words were quite close–at my very side in fact–and one of the voices sounded so familiar, that curiosity overcame dread, and I turned to look. I was not mistaken; it was Shorthouse whispering. But the other person, who must have been just a little beyond him, was lost in the darkness and invisible to me. It seemed then that Shorthouse at once turned up his face and looked at me and, by some means or other that caused me no surprise at the time, I easily made out the features in the darkness. They wore an expression I had never seen there before; he seemed distressed, exhausted, worn out, and as though he were about to give in after a long mental struggle. He looked at me, almost beseechingly, and the whispering of the other person died away.

“They’re at me,” he said.

I found it quite impossible to answer; the words stuck in my throat. His voice was thin, plaintive, almost like a child’s.

“I shall have to go. I’m not as strong as I thought. They’ll call it suicide, but, of course, it’s really murder.” There was real anguish in his voice, and it terrified me.

A deep silence followed these extraordinary words, and I somehow understood that the Other Person was just going to carry on the conversation–I even fancied I saw lips shaping themselves just over my friend’s shoulder–when I felt a sharp blow in the ribs and a voice, this time a deep voice, sounded in my ear. I opened my eyes, and the wretched dream vanished. Yet it left behind it an impression of a strong and quite unusual reality.

“Do try not to go to sleep again,” he said sternly. “You seem exhausted. Do you feel so?” There was a note in his voice I did not welcome,–less than alarm, but certainly more than mere solicitude.

“I do feel terribly sleepy all of a sudden,” I admitted, ashamed.

“So you may,” he added very earnestly; “but I rely on you to keep awake, if only to watch. You have been asleep for half an hour at least–and you were so still–I thought I’d wake you–“

“Why?” I asked, for my curiosity and nervousness were altogether too strong to be resisted. “Do you think we are in danger?”

“I think they are about here now. I feel my vitality going rapidly–that’s always the first sign. You’ll last longer than I, remember. Watch carefully.”

The conversation dropped. I was afraid to say all I wanted to say. It would have been too unmistakably a confession; and intuitively I realised the danger of admitting the existence of certain emotions until positively forced to. But presently Shorthouse began again. His voice sounded odd, and as if it had lost power. It was more like a woman’s or a boy’s voice than a man’s, and recalled the voice in my dream.

“I suppose you’ve got a knife?” he asked.

“Yes–a big clasp knife; but why?” He made no answer. “You don’t think a practical joke likely? No one suspects we’re here,” I went on. Nothing was more significant of our real feelings this night than the way we toyed with words, and never dared more than to skirt the things in our mind.

“It’s just as well to be prepared,” he answered evasively. “Better be quite sure. See which pocket it’s in–so as to be ready.”

I obeyed mechanically, and told him. But even this scrap of talk proved to me that he was getting further from me all the time in his mind. He was following a line that was strange to me, and, as he distanced me, I felt that the sympathy between us grew more and more strained. He knew more; it was not that I minded so much–but that he was willing to communicate less. And in proportion as I lost his support, I dreaded his increasing silence. Not of words–for he talked more volubly than ever, and with a fiercer purpose–but his silence in giving no hint of what he must have known to be really going on the whole time.