he driving of steel it went through Angelique that the aching and
passion and ferocity which rose in her were love. She loved that man
under the water; she so loved him that she must go down after him; for
what was life, with him there? She must have loved him when she was a
child, and he used to take off his hat to her, saying, "Good-day,
mademoiselle." She must have felt a childish jealousy of the woman
called Madame Menard, who had once owned him,--had owned the very
coloring of his face, the laugh in his eye, the mastery of his presence
among men. She loved Colonel Menard--and he was gone.

"Turn over the boat!" screamed Angelique. "He is caught in the cellars
of this old house,--the floors are broken. We must find him. He will
never come up."

The men, ready to do anything which was suggested to their slow minds,
made haste to creep along the weakened flooring, which shook as they
moved, and to push the boat from its lodgment. The oars were fast in the
rowlocks, and stuck against beams or stones, and made hard work of
getting the boat righted.

"Why does he not come up? Does any one stay under water as long as this?
Oh, be quick! Turn it,--turn it over!" Angelique reached down with the
men to grasp the slippery boat, her vivid will giving their clumsiness
direction and force. They got it free and turned it, dipping a little
water as they did so; but she let herself into its wet hollow and bailed
that out with her hands. The two dropped directly after her, and with
one push of the oars sent the boat over the spot where Colonel Menard
had gone down.

"Which of you will go in?"

"Ma'amselle, I can't swim," piteously declared the older negro.

"Neither can I, ma'amselle," pleaded the other.

"Then I shall have to go in myself. I cannot swim, either, and I shall
die, but I cannot help it."

The desperate and useless impulse which so often perishes in words
returned upon her with its absurdity as she stared down, trying to part
the muddy atoms of the Mississippi. The men held the boat in a scarcely
visible stream moving from west to east through the gaps in the
building. They eyed her, waiting the motions of the Caucasian mind, but
dumbly certain it was their duty to seize her if she tried to throw
herself in.

They waited until Angelique hid her face upon a bench, shivering in her
clinging garments with a chill which was colder than any the river gave.
A ghostly shadow of themselves and the boat and the colla