ut it's so dark here."

"Not too dark to see a helping hand--if there is one," he answered.

And he stretched out his arm into her boat and took her right hand from
the oar it was holding.

"And there is one," he added.

She felt a hand that loved her hand, and there was no veil over her
face. How strange that was. How utterly impossible it seemed. Yet it
was so. No woman can be deceived in the touch of a hand on hers. If it
loves--she knows.

"What are you going to do, Viola?"

"I don't know."

There was a sound almost of shame, a humble sound, in her voice.

"I can't do anything," she murmured. "You would know that to-morrow, in
sunlight."

"To-morrow I'll come in sunlight."

"No, no. I shall not be there."

"I shall come."

"Oh!--good-night," she said.

She began to feel extraordinarily, terribly excited. She could not tell
whether it was an excitement of horror, of joy--what it was. But it
mounted to her brain and rushed into her heart. It was in her veins like
an intoxicant, and in her eyes like fire, and thrilled in her nerves
and beat in her arteries. And it seemed to be an excitement full of
passionate contradictions. She was at the same time like a woman on a
throne and a woman in the dust--radiant as one worshipped, bowed as one
beaten.

"Good-night, good-night," she repeated, scarcely knowing what she said.

Her hand struggled in his hand.

"Viola, if you destroy yourself you destroy two people."

She scarcely heard him speaking.

"D'you understand?"

"No, no. Not to-night. I can't understand anything to-night."

"Then to-morrow."

"Yes, to-morrow-to-morrow."

He would not let go her hand, and now his was arbitrary, the hand of a
master rather than of a lover.

"You won't dare to murder me," he said.

"Murder--what do you mean?"

He had used the word to arrest her attention, which was wandering almost
as the attention of a madwoman wanders.

"If you hide your face in the water I shall never see those stars above
the pit's mouth."

"I can't help it--I can't help anything. It's not my fault, it's not my
fault."

"It will be your fault. It will be your crime."

"Your hand is driving me mad," she gasped.

She meant it, felt that it was so. He let her go instantly. She began to
row back towards Casa Felice. And now that mystical attention of which
she had been conscious, that soul watching the night, her in the night,
was surely profounder, watched with more intensity as a