the other seat from Lefevre; and thus without another word
they drove to the Embankment. At the foot of the steps by Cleopatra's
Needle, they found a waterman and a boat in waiting. They entered the
boat, Lefevre going forward while Julius sat down at the tiller. The
waterman pulled out. The tide was ebbing, and they slipped swiftly down
the dark river, with broken reflections of lamps and lanterns on either
bank streaming deep into the water like molten gold as they passed, and
with tall buildings and chimney-shafts showing black against the calm
night sky. Lefevre found it necessary at intervals to assure himself
that he was not drifting in a dream, or that the ghastly, burning-eyed
figure, wrapped in a dark cloak in the stern, was not a strange visitor
from the nether world.

Soon after they had shot through London Bridge they were alongside a
yacht almost in mid-stream. It was clear that all had been prearranged
for Julius's arrival; for as soon as they were on board, the yacht
(loosed from her upper mooring by the waterman who had brought them down
the river) began to stand away.

"We had better go forward," said Courtney. "Are you warm enough?"

The doctor answered that he was. Courtney gave an order to one of the
men, who went below and returned with a fur-lined coat which his master
put on. That little incident gave a curious shock to Lefevre: it made
him think of the mysterious stranger who had sat down opposite the young
officer in the Brighton train, and it showed him that he had not been
completely satisfied that his friend Julius and the person he had been
wont to think of as Hernando Courtney were one and the same.

They went forward to be free of the sail and its tackling. Courtney,
wrapped in his extra, his fur-lined coat, pointing to a low
folding-chair for Lefevre, threw himself on a heap of cordage. He looked
around and above him, at the rippling, flashing water and the black
hulls of ships, and at the serene, starlit heavens stretching over all.

"How wonderful!--how beautiful it all is!" he exclaimed. "All,
all!--even the dullest and deadest-seeming things are vibrating,
palpitating with the very madness of life! He set the world in my heart,
and oh, how I loved!--how I loved the world!"

"It is a wonderful world," said Lefevre, trying to speak cheerfully;
"and you will take delight in it again when this abnormal fit of
depression is over."

"Never, Lefevre!--never, never!" said Courtney in