he sat, facing astern, helplessly
clutching the gunwale, and his cry, raucous as that of a maimed animal,
signaled the fall of the house. Sobbing, he collapsed on the bank.

Bachelder looked down upon him. Momentarily stunned, his thought
returned along with a feeling of relief that would have framed itself
thus in words: "Poor Desdemona! Now she will never know!"

"_Senor! Senor! Mira!_" A boatman touched his shoulder.

Two heads were swirling down the flood, a light and a dark. Bachelder
instantly knew Ethel, but, as yet, he could not make out the strong
swimmer who was at such infinite pains to hold the fair head above
water. Though, time and again, the dark head went under for smotheringly
long intervals, Ethel's never once dipped, and, up or down, the swimmer
battled fiercely, angling across the flood. She--for long hair stamped
her a woman--gained seventy yards shoreward while floating down two
hundred. Three hundred gave her another fifty. So, rising and sinking,
she drifted with her burden down upon Paul and Bachelder. At fifty yards
the artist caught a glimpse of her face, but not till she was almost
under their hands did Paul recognize the swimmer.

"Andrea!" he shouted.

* * * * *

Reassured by Bachelder's cheery shout, Ethel had busied herself
collecting her watch and other trinkets from the bureau till a smacking
of wet feet caused her to turn, startled. A woman stood in the door, a
woman of matchless amplitudes, such as of old tempted the gods from
heaven. Stark naked, save for the black cloud that dripped below her
waist, her bronze beauty was framed by the ponderous arch.

"I don't know who you are," Ethel said, recovering, "but you are very
beautiful, and, under the circumstances, welcome. Under ordinary
conditions, your advent would have been a trifle embarrassing. I must
find you a shawl before the canoes come. Here, take this blanket."

She little imagined how embarrassing the visitation might have proved
under very ordinary conditions. Though the news of Paul's return did
cross before the bridge was carried away, Andrea did not hear it till
that morning, and she would never have had it from a Tewana neighbor.
They pitied the bereavement to which widowhood in the most cruel of
forms was now added. But among them she unfortunately counted a peon
woman of the upper Mexican plateau, one of the class which took from the
Conquest only Spanish viciousness to add to A