the boats.
To watch the boats! How they glided along--gently, gently! It made you
sleepy to look at them. She was in one herself now, rocking, rocking;
and the sun was going down behind the trees; and a lot more boats, more
and more, all rocking; and the sound of the oars, and the water lapping
at the sides. She would like to put her hand in the river. It looked so
cool--so cool!

The hand dropped heavily at her side, the glass broke; and she was on
her sofa still, not in a boat at all; and it was the girl Grantley who
sat by the river with Horry.

The girl Grantley! Where was that she had brought? The basket into
which she had dropped it was easily within her reach. Here was the
parcel, fastened as chemists' parcels are fastened. She shook it, and a
gleam came into her eyes. Liquid! Something to drink, to moisten her
burning tongue and swollen throat. No matter what--

* * * * *

Down by the river, on the broad path beneath the trees, where half the
population of the place repaired in the summer evenings, the girl
Grantley walked with her brother, and by their side walked Horace
Kilbourne.

Presently the brother stopped to speak to a friend, and the girl and
the other man walked on--walked through the crowds of people to where
the crowds grew less, and on still, till there was comparative
solitude.

Only the girl talked, telling him of her day's work--of what it had
brought her of pleasure, of what had gone amiss. She had the habit of
talking out her heart to him, bringing him all her difficulties and
distresses.

"It rests me as nothing else does," she told him, when he had listened
to the end, and said what had to be said. "And you? Have you nothing to
tell me?" she asked him.

"Nothing," he said.

She glanced sideways and upwards at him as he towered above her,
walking with drooping head.

"Something has happened," she said softly. "Can't you tell me? It
helps, to tell a friend."

"It is nothing to which I am not well used," he said. "The same old
wretched story. I have never told it in so many words. I am too ashamed
to tell. You know it, well enough. Who is there that does not know?"

She turned on him a face that startled him, who knew it well, and had
learnt by heart, he thought, its many changes.

"Why do you not kill her?" she said.

"Sh-sh-sh!" he whispered, surprised and reproving.

Her vivid face was aflame with passion; almost, it seemed, with h