“’Tis your father’s blame, this, and well do we know it,” he grated. “’Twas in the back of me mind all night and all day that if we ever got out o’ this I’d take me two hands and choke him to hell, as we’re chokin’ this minut’. But ’tis all past and gone now, what wid the blessed love an’ nerve of you, little gyerl; an’ here’s hopin’ that the Gawd you believe in ’ll let you die quiet-like an’ peaceable, as I’d want my own little gyerl to go if I had wan.” Through all this, David Vallory lived as one in hideous dream. But when the flare of another of the precious matches, a tiny flame that was scarcely visible in its brief and futile struggle with the heavy air, showed him that a second night was far advanced, he drew Virginia away to the heading and made her lie down on the coat-covered pallet, which he had remade, propping it as high as he could on the broken stone to escape the lower stratum of air. For a long time she was silent, and when she spoke it was to ask if he were still beside her. “Yes, Vinnie; I am here--and I shall be here when they find us.” “You think it is all over, then?” “I know that in a few more hours, a very few, the end must come. We can’t go on breathing this air indefinitely.” She sat up again at that, and again he knew that she was holding her head in her hands. “Have you ever wondered how the end would come to you, David?--how you would feel, and what you would do?” “Not as often as I ought perhaps. There was a time last year, when I was in a caisson with Shubrick at Coulee du Sac. The bottom blew out under the air pressure, and we all thought we were gone. I don’t remember much about what I thought--only that Shubrick and I owed it to the ‘sand-hogs’ to get them into the air-lock first.” “Once I saw a woman die,” she said, her voice thrilling with suppressed emotion. “She was horribly frightened at the last, and--and I’ve always prayed since then that when my time should come I might not go that way.” “You won’t,” he made himself say; “there isn’t a drop of craven blood in you, Vinnie--dear.” Again the brooding silence fell, and, as before, it was the young woman who broke it. “If we are going to be stifled in a little while--as I suppose we are--it doesn’t matter much what we say to each other, does it, David? I mean that we needn’t consider any future, so far as we usually count futures in a conventional way?” “No; we are only a man and a woman, naked before the God who created us, Vinnie--and we are about to die.” “Then--David, dear--_I love you!_” “I know it,” he returned gently; “I have known it for a night and a day,” and he took her in his arms and kissed her almost solemnly. “You are giving your life because you tried to save mine.” She made no effort to free herself. She was weary and weak to the point of collapse, and the supporting arms were grateful and comforting.