ce such a sound had been pleasant in her
ears; but now it turned her cold with fear. On one side the backwater
flowed sluggishly on around the osier-bed; on the other it hurried
smoothly, silently away, to broaden suddenly before it swept in white
foam over an open weir into a deep pool below. She trembled violently
and the oars moved feebly in her hands, chill for all the warmth of the
afternoon. Her boat was in the stream which led to the weir, but not yet
fully caught by the current. A few more strokes and the thing would be
done, she would be carried quickly on and over that dancing, sparkling
edge into the deep pool below. Her courage failed, could not be screwed
to the sticking-point; she hung on the oars, and the boat, as if
answering to her thought, stopped, swung half around. As she held the
boat with the oars and closed her eyes in an anguish of hesitation and
terror, a strange convulsion shook her, such as she had felt once
before, and a low cry, not her own, broke from her lips.

"No--no!" they uttered, hoarsely.

The Thing was there then, awake to its danger, and in another moment
might snatch her from herself, return laughing at her cowardice, to that
house by the river. She pressed her lips hard together, and silently,
with all the strength of her hate and of her love, bent to the oars. The
little boat shot forward into mid-stream, the current seized it and
swept it rapidly on towards the dancing edge of water. She dropped the
sculls and a hoarse shriek broke from her lips; but it was not she who
shrieked, for in her heart was no fear, but triumph--triumph as of one
who is at length avenged of her mortal enemy.

* * * * *

In the darkened drawing-room, the room so full of traces of all that had
been exquisite in Mildred Stewart, Ian mourned alone. Presently the door
opened a little, and a tall, slender, childish figure in a white smock,
slipped in and closed it gently behind him. Tony stole up to his father
and stood between his knees. He looked at Ian, silent, pale, large-eyed.
That a grown-up person and a man should shed tears was strange, even
portentous, to him.

"Won't Mummy come back, not ever?" asked the child at last, piteously,
in a half whisper.

"No, never, Tony; Mummy won't ever come back. She's gone--gone for
always."

The child looked in his father's eyes strangely, penetratingly.

"Which Mummy?" he asked.

THE END

* * *