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, G.o.d 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, rea.s.suring. "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 I always intended to (no matter what I may have babbled of a man-I-met-on-the-boat, or of an extremely civil engineer!) from the first instant I set my wishful eye on his zealot's brow and his fighter's jaw and heard the burbling brogue that might be eaten with a spoon?

It's taken me four years and a subway accident, but I consider the time wholly well spent. I'm snugly and securely engaged to marry Michael Daragh and he's entirely resigned to it. In fact, one might even go so far as to say, without undue exaggeration, that he is pleased!

(I'll wager you dashed right down to the Woman's Exchange and got towels! Aren't you glad V. is such a nice, easy letter to embroider?)

That subway affair was ghastly, useful as it did prove to me. We thought surely our hour had struck, but we behaved with Early Christian Martyr fort.i.tude and much more sprightly cheer, and when Michael Daragh thought the end had come he staged a love scene which made all the love scenes I ever wrote and all the love scenes I ever read sound like time-tables or statistics! Months of misunderstanding were explained away in minutes; he honestly believed me to be secretly engaged to Rodney Harrison (there I see the fine Italian hand of Emma Ellis, poor thing, oh, _poor_ thing--to want Michael Daragh and not to have him!) and he still more honestly believed that I lived and moved and had my brilliant being in a world too far removed from his shabby and c.u.mbered one, and that he was only my more or less valued but humble friend--oh, miles of that sort of piffle! Well, when we were safe in the upper air again, he basely tried to repudiate me,--handsome speeches about not shadowing my bright life and all that--very fetching as literature but not at all satisfying to a young woman who had just achieved a betrothal after long and earnest endeavor! I foiled him! You can't think how brazen I was. I was still a bit hazy with smoke and exhaustion, and I honestly believe if he hadn't given in I'd have screamed for a policeman!

But once he gave up the fruitless struggle, he began to have a very good time indeed. I will even go so far as to state that he hugs his chains.

Yours in "a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy,"

JANE.

_New York.

April Eighteenth._

SALLY MACHREE,

(See how Irish she is already!) The first towel has come and makes me feel such a housekeeper! You're a lamb, but you'll finish life with a tin cup and a "Pity the Blind" sign if you go on making "st.i.tches as fine as a fairy's first tooth."

We are to be married (see how calmly and steadily she sets down that astounding word?) in June, and domesticity has descended upon me. I read only women's magazines, household departments only, I read recipes and memorize them, I haunt linen shops and furniture stores.

But, oh, I need a mother and a sister or two, and you'll simply have to come down to me for a month. Can't you? Of course you can. Your mother will feed the piano. I must have you.

I've found a house in West Ninth Street, near the blessed old Square, close enough to the Brevoort when the kitchen is bolsheviking. It is deliciously old with high ceilings and haughty chandeliers and austere marble mantels, and all sorts of inconveniences which I picturesquely adore, but which will leave the n.o.ble army of labor quite cold. I shall make the drawing-room very English, part of my precious rosewood and mahogany sent down from Valley View (though I shall keep that house largely as it is) and cunning Kensington curtains and little pots of ivy, and "set-pieces" of bead work, and that dear, dim portrait of great-grandmother Vail in cap and ringlets. The dining room will be sober, too, but there's a nook just off it which I shall use for a breakfast room, looking out into the prim, Prunella sc.r.a.p of garden, and that I will make giddy-gay with chintz and Minton. There'll be a remote workroom for me, far upstairs, and a friendly brown study where Michael Daragh's lame dogs may come to be helped over their stiles.

Sarah, I'm as domestic as a setting hen! I foresee I shall be a living version of Mr. Solomon's lady of the Proverb--_working willingly with my hands, rising while it is yet night_. (M.D. keeps fearfully early hours)--_My candle going not out by night_ (candles will be perfect in that house!). My husband shall, indeed, _be known in the gates_, but he won't _sitteth_ there, for home will be far too attractive. Nine to one, as always, I'll ply my trade, but before and after office hours I'll be _looketh_-ing _well to the ways of my household_ and _eateth_-ing not the bread of idleness (except at tea!). _Many daughters have done virtuously_ but I shall excel them all. I admit it.

JANE.

P.S. Michael Daragh is beamish with bliss. He's done himself out in purple and fine linen and yet manages, miraculously, not to look in the least like other men, and he doesn't even stoop any more. Sally, you know when he was in Ireland we all--especially Emma Ellis and the romantic music students--conjectured as to what he was when he was at home, and cast him for many fetching roles, from a sacrificial younger son to a Sin-eater, and always a belted earl at the very least. He has told me all about himself now, naturally, and it would be a blow to Emma E. and the little music makers, so I mercifully mean never to let them know. He hasn't any immediate family, and was brought up by an uncle who had a large and prosperous wholesale grocery business in Cork! (Could anything be less lyrical, I ask you?) He wanted M.D. to go into the business after he had finished college, and M.D., quite naturally, being M.D., wouldn't and they quarreled, and M.D. came over here with just his small income from his father's small estate, and went into settlement work. He was called home to the uncle's death-bed, but the uncle, contrary to the best literary precedents, hadn't softened to any extent worth mentioning, and died as crabbed as he had lived, greatly annoyed, no doubt, to realize that his demise released certain decent little incomes from the main family estate to the stubborn nephew, but immensely pleased with himself for making his fortune over to outsiders. So, my other-worldly spouse will have a comfortable income after all, but he may divide it with dope-fiends and Fallen Sisters and their ilk to his heart's content since my royalties, like s...o...b..a.l.l.s, gather as they roll!

Sally, you must come down and stay with me. "Please, pretty please!"

JANE.