He gathered her up wholly into his arms. "No, no! Don't go to sleep! Don't be leaving me till you must!" She cuddled down cozily like a drowsy baby. "M.D. ... did you ever play----" "What, Acushla?" "Babes in the Woods? That's what we are, aren't we?" and she tried to sing, huskily, gasping---- "'And when they were dead, The robins so red Brought straw ... berry ... blos ... soms And over them----'" "Core of my heart," he cried out, "Don't be leaving me!" "Michael Daragh, dearest," she said quite clearly and steadily, "I love you better than all the world--and I've loved the world a lot!" Her lips groped to find his and then she was limp in his clasp. * * * * * Waves; _waves_; WAVES! Little, lulling ones, singing her to sleep; great, shining ones, splashing and crashing, lifting and flinging her; voices, tiresome, insistent, calling her, calling her, calling her in from play---- * * * * * "There, now, God love her, she'll do!" said Michael Daragh. "No, praises be, we'll not need the ambulance! I've a machine here will take us round the park till she's drunk her fill of clean air again.... No, thank you kindly, I can take her myself.... If you'll open the door, just----" Out in the sharp night wind, memory picked its way back, hesitating, through the chaos. "Let you rest easy, now," said the Irishman's voice, steady, cheerful, reassuring. "Don't be talking yet, the way you've no breath in you at all. Drink deep of the good air, just, till--what? Well, then, 'twas an accident in the subway, and you fainted and I carried you out, and we came up a manhole." Barren words these, naked of charm ... bleak ... bare. She beheld herself, her bright spring plumage smirched and draggled, all her pinions trailing. About the man, too, there was something lacking, something failing, something unendurably missing and gone. "Your arms ..." she said, fretfully. Speech was still a burden. She lifted his arms and laid them about her, but they fell slackly away. "We are back in the world again, Jane Vail," he said. "You in yours and I in mine, and 'tis a far cry between the two. 'Twas the black hole of death loosed my tongue, but now----" "Michael Daragh"--she stopped speaking and gave herself over to the task of tugging his arm about her and holding it there with both her grimy hands--"Michael Daragh, we d--died together very splendidly--b--but we're going to l--live together just as well!" CHAPTER XX (TELEGRAM) New York, N.Y. 4--10. MISS SARAH FARRADAY, VALLEY VIEW, VERMONT. Engaged. JANE VAIL. (TELEGRAM) New York, N.Y. 4--11. MISS SARAH FARRADAY, VALLEY VIEW, VERMONT. Michael Daragh, of course, you goose. JANE VAIL. _New York, April Twelfth._ SALLY DARLING,