"_Leaba luachra_," he read, "a bed of rushes, _bhi fum areir_, was beneath me last night, _agas do chaitheas amach e le banaghadb an lae_, and I threw it out with the whitening of day. _Thainic mo chead gradh le mo thaobh_, my hundred loves came to my side; _guala ee qualainn_, shoulder to shoulder, _agas beal re beal_, and mouth to mouth." "Now I know you better, Shane." "How, dearest?" "I know how you come by your--your sense of beauty, Shane. It's from your father. You have it just as he had. But he could say and you can't, Shane. You have it, but it doesn't come out that way. It comes out in the sailing of the ship, Shane. You must sail beautifully. Shane, I should love to see you sail." With a quick movement she dropped on her knees, and her beautiful dark head on the pillow of his bed. "Couldn't you take me with you once, Shane, when you sail? Away on just one voyage?" "Of course I could, dearest, and will." "Would you, my heart? Would you?" She stood up again, and swift tears came to her eyes. "I couldn't come," she said. "But, Claire-Anne--" "No," she said. She turned her back to him, so that he shouldn't see her face, and her voice vibrated. "No, Shane dear. No. You go to sea and sail your ships, and take care of them in the tempest and coax them in light weather. And go from port to port, watching the strange cities and the peoples, and seeing into them, with ... _tes yeux d'enfant_ ... your eyes of a child.... And have your life, free, big, clean.... And just in a corner ... _le plus petit coin_ ... keep me ... so when you come to Marseilles, you will come up the garden path in the dusk, and call, 'Claire-Anne!'" There was something like a sob from her. "Just say, 'Claire-Anne'...." She turned around and caught his hands for a minute, looked at him, smiled, laughed.... From his desk she picked up the Young Pretender's dagger. "What is this for, Shane? Is this yours?" "Mine now, Claire-Anne; but it was--some one else's once. My Uncle Alan, Alan Donn, gave it to me." "Yes?..." "It belonged once to Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender. He wore it at his knee in '45. Do you remember, Claire-Anne? He landed in Scotland and advanced on England, and got as far as Derby at the head of the Scottish clans and Jacobite gentlemen. 'Black Friday' they called it in London." "But he never got to London." "No, he never got to London. Crash and whir of battle, and when the smoke cleared, there were the gallant Highland clansmen scattered, and the sturdy English nobles, and the bonny Irish gentlemen. And a king on the run!" "And, Shane, what happened to him after that?" "I think--my history may not be right, but I think he spent the rest of his life a pensioner of the king of France, playing petty politics, drinking, and accepting love from romantic women, and loyalty from the beaten clans." "What a pity, Shane! What a pity!" "That he failed, dearest? I don't know."