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.

"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 dow