"Yes; but to-morrow night, and next night! Oh, God! I'm smothering.
Lift me up!"

He sat on the side of the bed and lifted her until she rested against his
shoulder. A deathly pallor had spread over her features, and she clung to
him weakly.

Through the long hours of the stormy night he sat there, soothing and
comforting her, as he would have soothed a terror-stricken child. By
and by her clinging hands grew passive in his, her rigid, jerking limbs
relaxed, and she fell into a feverish sleep broken by fitful sobs and
smothered outcries. As Dan sat there, with her helpless weight against
him, and gently stroked the wet black hair from her brow, something
fierce and protective stirred in him, the quick instinct of the
chivalrous strong to defend the weak. Here was somebody more wretched,
more desolate, more utterly lonely than himself--a soft, fearful,
feminine somebody, ill-fitted to fight the world with those frail,
white hands.

Hitherto he had blindly worshiped at one shrine, and now the image was
shattered, the shrine was empty--so appallingly empty that he was ready
to fill it at any cost. For the first time in three days he ceased to
think of Nance Molloy or of Mac Clarke, whose burden he was all
unconsciously bearing. He ceased, also, to think of the soul he had
been trying so earnestly to save. He thought instead of the tender
weight against his shoulder, of the heavy lashes that lay on the
tear-stained cheeks so close to his, of the soft, white brow under his
rough, brown fingers. Something older than love or religion was making
its claim on Dan.