His action, however, was altogether mechanical.

He scarcely glanced at what he was doing.

Somehow or other, he found the girl's hands in his.
"That brute--didn't touch you, did he ?" he asked.
She looked at him.

Whether the clouds were still outside or not, Lane felt that he had passed into Heaven.
"He did not, thanks to you," she murmured.

"But do you mean really that those guns all the time weren't loaded ?" "I don't believe they were," Richard declared stoutly.