Courtship -- Fiction; Mate selection -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Women authors -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"We must just wait."
There was a shuddering groan from the floor, just at their feet, and he
bent with his pocket flash. It was the gaunt girl in the middy blouse....
"Keep fast hold of my coat," said Daragh. He bent and lifted the girl on
to the opposite seat. "There must be others. I must look."
"Let me hold the flash," said Jane. "That will give you both hands free.
I won't let go of you." They traversed the black length of the car, doing
the grim little they could do where there was anything to be done, and
then they went back to their corner. Jane's teeth were chattering. "But
I'm not afraid, M.D.," she said. "It's just--the ghoulishness of it! The
abysmal savagery--I can't _bear_ it!"
"Many there were as cool as ourselves," he said, "swept on by the panic
and couldn't help themselves. It was the wild few only that brought the
curse. And let you remember this--for every one that pushed and fought
and trampled there are twenty up there now, above ground, wondering what
way they'll help us the soonest, working for us, risking, daring----"
"Yes, I know it," said Jane obediently. She leaned back in her corner. It
was true that she was not afraid. She felt very peaceful and very gentle.
The red rage was gone and the gray depression, and the scorn and the
bitterness, and Rodney Harrison was gone. She began to talk, easily and
interestedly. "You know, one looks back on this sort of thing, after it's
all over, as educational. One doesn't enjoy _having_ an experience like
this, but _having_ had it makes for growth, shouldn't you say?" His
grasp on her hand tightened but he did not answer. "Well, Michael
Daragh, I've crowded about every sensation into my life except--death.
This is really not so bad as being in that Mexican prison was! For one
thing, you're here"--she curled her fingers more tightly into his--"and
there I had only my extremely civil engineer. I did my best to fall in
love with him, M.D., but I couldn't seem to manage it." She stopped to
cough. "The air is getting pretty awful, isn't it? But I don't believe
it will be much longer, now, do you?"
"I do not," he said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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