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, 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.