Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/372

 only of you, and of my gladness—my terrible gladness, that you had come. All yesterday I wandered, and it seemed to me that I could not live when you were gone. Oh, say that you are glad, too. Say that you are glad to die with me as I am glad to die with you.'

'All I know is that I am with you,' Graham muttered. Her passion, her beauty dazed him. She was like a flame within his arms. 'I am glad because I have you. That is all I need.'

Silent, with closed eyes, they kissed each other, again and again, passionately; and as they clung together the sound of the dull, portentous uproar smote again upon their ears.

But those longed-for kisses, in all their tragic sweetness, seemed now irrelevant. He was nearer her when he could look at her than when he kissed her. Let him sink once more into those radiant eyes. Let him lose himself. For the cabin again trembled beneath them; the water had risen nearly to the roof; he was seeing, in dark flashes, the swiftly approaching death. How would it be at the end? Could they keep this rapture fast?—hold closely to each other, while they fought the cold, insensate element that would batter at lips and nostrils? How horrible to have to fight death even while one prayed for its deliverance! And, looking into her starry eyes, thinking that this loveliness must die in torment, Graham groaned aloud.

As if she guessed his thoughts she smiled at him and, with a gesture maternal in its tenderness, she drew his