*

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,

Thanks for your two wires, though the first one--"So happy, but who
is it?" was a bit feeble-minded, you must admit. Could you imagine
me marrying any one in the wide world _but_ Michael Daragh? Haven't