’He says it was as if he had received a blow on the chest.  He gasped.  He thought he had been an awful brute somehow, and he felt remorseful, touched, happy, elated.  This, let me remind you again, is a love story; you can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive imbecility, the exalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station in torchlight, as if they had come there on purpose to have it out for the edification of concealed murderers.  If Sherif Ali’s emissaries had been possessed—­as Jim remarked—­of a pennyworth of spunk, this was the time to make a rush.  His heart was thumping—­not with fear—­but he seemed to hear the grass rustle, and he stepped smartly out of the light.  Something dark, imperfectly seen, flitted rapidly out of sight.  He called out in a strong voice, “Cornelius!  O Cornelius!” A profound silence succeeded:  his voice did not seem to have carried twenty feet.  Again the girl was by his side.  “Fly!” she said.  The old woman was coming up; her broken figure hovered in crippled little jumps on the edge of the light; they heard her mumbling, and a light, moaning sigh.  “Fly!” repeated the girl excitedly.  “They are frightened now—­this light—­the voices.  They know you are awake now—­they know you are big, strong, fearless . . .”  “If I am all that,” he began; but she interrupted him:  “Yes—­to-night!  But what of to-morrow night?  Of the next night?  Of the night after—­of all the many, many nights?  Can I be always watching?” A sobbing catch of her breath affected him beyond the power of words.

’He told me that he had never felt so small, so powerless—­and as to courage, what was the good of it? he thought.  He was so helpless that even flight seemed of no use; and though she kept on whispering, “Go to Doramin, go to Doramin,” with feverish insistence, he realised that for him there was no refuge from that loneliness which centupled all his dangers except—­in her.  “I thought,” he said to me, “that if I went away from her it would be the end of everything somehow.”  Only as they couldn’t stop there for ever in the middle of that courtyard, he made up his mind to go and look into the storehouse.  He let her follow him without thinking of any protest, as if they had been indissolubly united.  “I am fearless—­am I?” he muttered through his teeth.  She restrained his arm.  “Wait till you hear my voice,” she said, and, torch in hand, ran lightly round the corner.  He remained alone in the darkness, his face to the door:  not a sound, not a breath came from the other side.  The old hag let out a dreary groan somewhere behind his back.  He heard a high-pitched almost screaming call from the girl.  “Now!  Push!” He pushed violently; the door swung with a creak and a clatter, disclosing to his intense astonishment the low dungeon-like interior illuminated by a lurid, wavering glare.  A turmoil of smoke eddied down upon an empty wooden crate in the middle of the floor, a litter of rags and straw tried to soar, but only stirred feebly in the draught.  She had thrust the light through the bars of the window.  He saw her bare round arm extended and rigid, holding up the torch with the steadiness of an iron bracket.  A conical ragged heap of old mats cumbered a distant corner almost to the ceiling, and that was all.