"I'm rather proud of us, aren't you, Michael Daragh?--Of course, I expect I shouldn't be so--so Nathan Hale and Casabianca and--and Lady Jane Grey--if I didn't know that we'll soon be up in the air again, safe--_breathing_ ..." She coughed again, but her voice went on, husky, gallant. "If we could have looked an hour ahead an hour ago, you and I, dripping pity on that boy, feeling so utterly secure ourselves--'_Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?_' M.D., I got a silver thimble for learning that by heart when I was eight. Rollicking nursery rhyme, wasn't it? But I adored it, especially the parts I didn't understand. '_From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud_'--you know, for years I thought it meant one of those fascinating places with swinging half-doors and rows and rows of feet visible from the outside, into which one's nurse would never let one peer, and I thought 'shroud' was a sort of cracker to be eaten with the beer! Wasn't that funny? I remember thinking----" But now the big Irishman stopped her with a groan which shook him from head to heel. "Core of my heart," he said, "will you hush your pretending? God forgive me for a heedless fool has dragged you down to a black death this night!" "What," said Jane interestedly, "what was it you called me?" He caught her up to him, fiercely, furiously, and she could feel him trembling, that tall tower of strength, like a terrified child. "Core of my heart," he said again, and now his wild kisses separated his wild words--"_Acushla ... Mavourneen ... Solis na Suile_ ..." and the tide of fear which had been rising in her turned and slipped away into a sea of rose and silver bliss, and with it went forever the hot shame of the afternoon and the cold misery of the evening. It seemed to her that she could not breathe at all now, what with the acrid air and the power of his arms about her, but it did not matter. "I that loved you from the first moment my eyes were resting on the wonder of your face and heard the harps sounding in your voice, I have brought you death!" "No, Michael Daragh," she said hoarsely, breathlessly, "you have brought me life!" His voice was scorched and dry with smoke, and she had to strain her ears to hear his lyric lovemaking. "Journeys' end"--she thought again as she had thought that afternoon. Sarah Farraday would say that she was making phrases, trying to be clever, even in this great and terrible moment,--to be thinking that she had taken the subway to the heights.... Presently she put a reproving hand over his lips. "Oh, Michael Daragh! I expect I don't know God as well as you do, but I know Him better than that! _Of course_ we'll be saved! _Don't_ keep saying you wouldn't tell me this if we weren't dying! Nothing could happen to us ... _now_ ... what do you suppose makes me so sleepy?... Do you mind if I just sleep a--f--few minutes? I'm pretty--t--tired...."