Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/403

 Once she told him: "The frontier is not far, sweetheart. Once over that, beyond immediate pursuit, we will stop at an inn and summon a surgeon. Can you bear, O my dearest, to wait so long?"

"I—Ah, faith! I could endure a thousand deaths—and yet live on—in your

And again he asked: '"Tis miraculous—this escape! Tell me how it was contrived."

"Through Monsieur Chambret," she replied: "Monsieur Chambret, to whom we owe all. He communicated with me through my maid, by means of that secret passage, of which you know. And, not knowing when you would arrive, dear heart—Ah, but you were long!—we laid om plans for an escape whether or not you came … I had sworn that I would marry no man but you! … It was schemed for this very morning; the automobile was to be in waiting on that by-path. I was in the act of leaving the castle when I heard the shots … I ran, was the first to enter the hall."

"And so … Ah, sweetheart, sweetheart! If the O'Rourke dies, 'twill be of sheer happiness!"

She caught him more closely to her. The pain in his wounds seemed to be lessening; a delicious and dreamy languor crept over him, and he lay very still, content in her arms, feeling himself slip gradually into slumber from which he could not be sure that he should ever waken: while the motor car crashed and roared on through the dawn—the bright dawn of many confident to-morrows.