After that it
will go up ten and fifteen degrees at a jump, and we----"
"Yes, at a hundred and fifty," she replied, cutting short a speech she
dared not hear the end of. "I understand. It will be impossible to hope
any more."
Now, side by side, they stood and watched the thermometer.
Ninety-five--ninety-eight--a hundred and three--a hundred and
ten--eighteen--twenty-four--thirty-two--forty-one.
The silent minutes passed, and with each the silver thread--for them the
thread of life--grew, with strange contradiction, longer and longer, and
with every minute it grew more quickly.
A hundred and forty-six.
With his right arm Redgrave drew Zaidie still closer to him. He put out
his left hand and took up the little glass. She did the same.
"Goodbye, dear, till we have slept and wake again!"
"Goodbye, darling, God grant that we may!" But the agony of that last
farewell was more than Zaidie could bear. She looked away at the little
glass in her hand, a hand which even now did not tremble. Then she
raised her eyes again to take one last look at the glory of the stars,
and at the Fate Incarnate in Flame which lay beneath them. Then, even as
the end of the last minute came, a cry broke through her white,
half-parted lips:
"The Earth, the Earth--thank God, the Earth!"
With the hand that held the draught of Lethe--which in another moment
she would have swallowed--she caught at her husband's hand, pulled the
glass out of it, and then with a little sigh she dropped senseless on
the floor of the conning-tower.
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