"Suppose this should be the Great Gateway," she said at last, very slowly, but quite cheerfully and naturally. "I am wondering what there is beyond."
"I've often wondered, too," said Jim.
"I've sometimes thought, and I've said it, too, that I was crazy to die, just to see what happens," Agatha went on, laughing a little at her own memories. "But I find I'm not at all eager for it, now, when it would be so easy to go under and not come up again. Are you?"
"No, I've never felt eager to die; least of all, now."
Agatha was silent a while.
"What do you think death means? Shall we be we to-morrow, say, provided we can't keep afloat?" she asked by and by.
"Why, yes, I think so," said Jim. "I don't know why or how, but I guess we go on somewhere; and I rather think our best moments here—our moments of happiness or heroism, if we ever have any—are going to be the regular thing." Jim laughed a little, partly at his own lame ending, and partly because he felt Agatha's hand closing more tightly over his. He didn't want her to get blue just yet, after her brave fight.
But Agatha wasn't blue. She answered thoughtfully: "That isn't a bad idea," and then cheerfully turned to a consideration of the possibilities of a rescue at dawn.
James had evolved a plan to wait till enough light came to enable them to reach the Jeanne D'Arc, if she was still afloat; then to climb aboard and hunt for provisions and life preservers or something to use for a raft. If he could do this, then they would be in a somewhat better plight, at least for a time. He prayed that the Jeanne D'Arc might still be alive.
The two talked little, leaving silences between them full of wonder. The details of life, the ordinary personalities, were blotted out. Without explanation or speech of any kind, they understood each other. They were not, in this hour, members of a complex and artificial society; they were not even man and woman; they were two souls stripped of everything but the need for fortitude and sweetness.