her breast heaving,
and her lips apart.

"Great heaven!" he said, "what an imagination you must have to dream
such a dream as that."

"Imagination," she answered, returning to her natural manner. "I have
none, Mr. Bingham. I used to have, but I lost it when I lost--everything
else. Can you interpret my dream? Of course you cannot; it is nothing
but nonsense--such stuff as dreams are made of, that is all."

"It may be nonsense, I daresay it is, but it is beautiful nonsense," he
answered. "I wish ladies had more of such stuff to give the world."

"Ah, well, dreams may be wiser than wakings, and nonsense than learned
talk, for all we know. But there's an end of it. I do not know why I
repeated it to you. I am sorry that I did repeat it, but it seemed so
real it shook me out of myself. This is what comes of breaking in upon
the routine of life by being three parts drowned. One finds queer things
at the bottom of the sea, you know. By the way I hope that you are
recovering. I do not think that you will care to go canoeing again with
me, Mr. Bingham."

There was an opening for a compliment here, but Geoffrey felt that it
would be too much in earnest if spoken, so he resisted the temptation.

"What, Miss Granger," he said, "should a man say to a lady who but last
night saved his life, at the risk, indeed almost at the cost, of her
own?"

"It was nothing," she answered, colouring; "I clung to you, that was
all, more by instinct than from any motive. I think I had a vague idea
that you might float and support me."

"Miss Granger, the occasion is too serious for polite fibs. I know how
you saved my life. I do not know how to thank you for it."

"Then don't thank me at all, Mr. Bingham. Why should you thank me? I
only did what I was bound to do. I would far rather die than desert a
companion in distress, of any sort; we all must die, but it would be
dreadful to die ashamed. You know what they say, that if you save a
person from drowning you will do them an injury afterwards. That is how
they put it here; in some parts the saying is the other way about, but I
am not likely ever to do you an injury, so it does not make me unhappy.
It was an awful experience: you were senseless, so you cannot know how
strange it felt lying upon the slippery rock, and seeing those great
white waves rush upon us through the gloom, with nothing but the night
above, and the sea around, and death between the two. I have been lonely
for many ye