The thought of dying with the husband she loved had a strange, romantic sweetness for her heart. In the bright and awful glare of light thrown upon the waters by the burning ship, her pale and lovely face had upon it an expression of rapt and Heavenly sweetness and content, untouched by dread or fear. Vane's arm was drawn around her, and they were slowly swimming about and looking for some drifting desperate hope of rescue. A few minutes ago the black waves, weirdly illumined by the red glare of the flames, had been filled with a writhing, despairing, shrieking mass of anguished humanity, but now they had all disappeared. Some had floated off to a distance, some had sunk beneath the waves and found a watery grave-- "Unknelled, uncoffined, and unsung." Vane and Reine were quite alone for a moment--alone, and drawn seemingly nearer together than they had ever been in life by the deadly peril that menaced them. They had made up their minds to death. Both were good swimmers, but they were too far from land for their strength and skill to avail. They clung together, each feeling instinctively that death would be less hard if shared together. At that moment one of the life-boats that had been seized upon in the first moments of peril by a fortunate few, came in sight of them. It was crowded, already, but one manly heart saw and pitied the terrible case of the two victims. He shouted that they would make room for one more--they would take the woman in. "Come, Reine, they will save you, my darling," Vane Charteris cried out, tenderly and joyfully, yet with the solemnity of a last farewell in his eyes, as he drew his young wife forward. But with a sudden cry of anguish, the girl resisted him. The bare thought of forsaking her husband and leaving him to die alone, was more bitter than death. With that thought came the remembrance of the precious paper she had crossed the sea to win from Vane's vengeful keeping. "Let me save you--remember you have Maud's precious paper," she cried out, hoarsely, and pushing him frantically from her with both extended hands, she sank down--down into the depths of the sea. They waited a moment, but she did not rise again, and seeing that Vane had lost consciousness, they drew him into the life-boat, and in the efforts to revive him, they soon drifted out of sight of the spot where the devoted girl had disappeared beneath the fire-illumined waves.