reathe her
own vitality into his failing pulses.

"Open your eyes to me, darling!" she besought him. "See how I love you!
And see how I want your love! I can't do without it, Billikins. It's my
only safeguard. What! He is dead? I say he is not--he is not! Or if he
is, he shall rise again. He shall come back. See! He is looking at me!
How dare you say he is dead?"

The wild anguish of her voice reached him, pierced him, rousing him as
no other power on earth could have roused him. Out of that deathly
inertia he drew himself, inch by inch, as out of some clinging swamp.
His hand found strength to tighten upon hers. He opened his eyes,
leaden-lidded as they were, and saw her face all white and drawn, gazing
into his own with such an agony of love, such a consuming fire of
worship, that it seemed as if his whole being were drawn by it, warmed,
comforted, revived.

She hung above him, fierce in her devotion, driving back the destroyer
by the sheer burning intensity of her love. "You shan't die, Billikins!"
she told him, passionately. "You can't die--now I am here!"

She stooped her face to his. He turned his lips instinctively to meet
it, and suddenly it was as though a flame had kindled between them--hot,
ardent, compelling. His dying pulses thrilled to it, his blood ran
warmer.

"You--have--come--back!" he said, with slow articulation.

"My darling--my darling!" she made quivering answer. "Say I've come--in
time!"

He tried to speak again, but could not. Yet the deathly cold was giving
way like ice before the sun. He could feel his heart beating where
before he had felt nothing. A hand that was not Puck's came out of the
void beyond her and held a spoonful of spirit to his mouth. He swallowed
it with difficulty, and was conscious of a greater warmth.

"There, my own boy, my own boy!" she murmured over him. "You're coming
back to me. Say you're coming back!"

His lips quivered like a child's. He forced them to answer her. "If
you--will--stay," he said.

"I will never leave you again, darling," she made swift answer. "Never,
never again! You shall have all that you want--all--all!"

Her arms closed about him. He felt the warmth of her body, the
passionate nearness of her soul; and therewith the flame that had
kindled between them leaped to a great and burning glow, encompassing
them both--the Sacred Fire.

A wonderful sense of comfort came upon him. He turned to her as a man
turns to only one woman in all the