ngry waste of water. A strangled sob burst from her
throat.

"Oh, God! Let him come back to me! Let him come back!"

The creak of straining rowlocks and the even plash of dripping oars,
muffled by the numbing curtain of the fog, broke through the silence.
Then followed the gentle thudding noise of a boat as it bumped against
the jetty and a voice--Garth's voice--calling.

She rose from the ground where she had flung herself and came to
him, peering at him with eyes that looked like two dark stains in the
whiteness of her face.

"I though you were dead," she said dully. "Drowned. I mean--oh, of
course, it's the same thing, isn't it?" And she laughed, the shrill,
choking laughter of overwrought nerves.

Garth observed her narrowly.

"No, I've very much alive, thanks," he said, speaking in deliberately
cheerful and commonplace accents. "But you look half frozen. Why on
earth didn't you put the rug round you? Get into the boat and let me
tuck you up."

She obeyed passively, and in a few minutes they were slipping over the
water as rapidly as the mist permitted.

Sara was very silent throughout the return journey. For hours, for an
eternity it seemed, she had been in the grip of a consuming terror,
culminating at last in the conviction that Garth had failed to make the
further shore. And now, with the knowledge of his safety, the reaction
from the tension of acute anxiety left her utterly flaccid and
exhausted, incapable of anything more than a half-stunned acceptance of
the miracle.

When at last the Selwyns' house was reached, it was with a manifest
effort that she roused herself sufficiently to answer Garth's quiet
apology for the misadventure of the afternoon.

"If it was your fault that we got stranded on the island," she said,
summoning up rather a wan smile, "it is, at all events, thanks to
you that I shall be sleeping under a respectable roof, instead
of scandalizing half the neighbourhood!" She paused, then went on
uncertainly: "'Thank you' seems ludicrously inadequate for all you've
done--"

"I've done nothing," he interrupted brusquely.

"You risked your life--"

An impatient exclamation broke from him.

"And if I did? I risked something of no value, I assure you--to myself,
or any one else."

Then he added practically--

"Get Jane Crab to give you some hot soup and go to bed. You look
absolutely done."

Sara nodded, smiling more naturally.

"I will," she said. "Good-night, then." She