not hear
much. I know, however, that she said quite suddenly, 'I had better
swim back to the pier. Hold on tight, Jeremiah!'..." He faltered again
before ending. "I don't know why she went, but she said, 'I must go,'
and swam away."

That was all Fenwick could tell. The explanation came later. It was
that unhappy petticoat-tape! A swimmer's leg-stroke may be encumbered
in a calm sea, or when the only question is of keeping afloat for
awhile. But in moderately rough water, and in a struggle against
a running tide--which makes a certain speed imperative--the conditions
are altered. Sally may have judged wrongly in trying to return to the
pier, but remember--she could not in the first moments know that the
mishap had been seen, and help was near at hand. Least of all could
she estimate the difficulty of swimming in a loosened encumbered
skirt. In our judgment, she would have done better to remain near the
life-belt, even if she, too, had ultimately had to depend on it. The
additional risk for Fenwick would have been small.

After he had ended what he had to tell he remained quite still, and
scarcely spoke during the hour that followed. Twice or three times
during that hour Rosalind rose to go out and ask if there was any
change. But, turning to him with her hand on the door, and asking
"Shall I go?" she was always met with "What good will it do? Conrad
will tell us at once," and returned to her place beside him. After
all, what she heard might be the end of Hope. Better stave off Despair
to the last.

She watched the deliberate hands of the clock going cruelly on,
unfaltering, ready to register in cold blood the moment that should
say that Sally, as they knew her, was no more. Thomas Locock, of
Rochester, had taken care of that. Where would those hands be on that
clock-face when all attempt at resuscitation had to stop? And why live
after it?

She fancied she could hear, at intervals, Dr. Conrad's voice giving
instructions; and the voice of the Scotsman, less doubtfully, which
always sounded like that of a medical man, for some reason not
defined. As the clock-hand pointed to ten, she heard both quite
near--outside Lloyd's Coffeehouse, evidently. Then she knew why she
had so readily relinquished her purpose of getting at Dr. Conrad
for news. It was the dread of seeing anything of the necessary
manipulation of the body. Could she have helped, it would have been
different. No, if she must look upon her darling dead, le