’Twas nought but my own perversity that hindered me from joining the glee, that severed me from all the happiness; but I chose rather to be miserable in my solitude, and I turned my back upon it, and went along and climbed the steps and sat on the broad garden-wall, and looked down into the clear, dark water ever slipping by, and took the fragrance of the night, and heard the chime of the chordant sailors as they heaved the anchor of some ship a furlong down the stream,—­voices breathing out of the dusky distance, rich and deep.  And looking at the little boat tethered there beneath, I mind that I bethought me then how likely ’twould be for one in too great haste to unlock the water-gate of the garden, climbing these very steps, and letting herself down by the branch of this old dipping willow here, how likely ’twould be for one, should the boat but slip from under, how likely ’twould be for one to sink in the two fathom of tide,—­dress or scarf but tangling in the roots of the great tree reaching out hungrily through the dark, transparent depth below,—­how likely to drown or e’er a hand could raise her!  And I mind, when thinking of the cool, embracing flow, the drawing, desiring, tender current, the swift, soft, rushing death, I placed my own hand on the willow-branch, and drew back, stung as if by conscience that I trifled thus with a gift so sacred as life.

Then I went stealing up the alleys again, beginning to be half afraid, for they seemed to me full of something strange, unusual sound, rustling motion,—­whether it were a waving bough, a dropping o’er-ripe pear, a footstep on adjacent walks.  Nay, indeed, I saw now!  I leaned against the beach-bole there, all wrapt in shade, and looked at them where they inadvertently stood in the full gleam of the lighted windows:  ’twas Angus, and ’twas Effie.  He spoke,—­a low, earnest pleading,—­I could not hear a word, or I had fled,—­then he stooped, and his lips had touched her brow.  Oh, had he but struck me! less had been the blow, less the smart!—­the blow, though all along I had awaited it.  Ah, I remembered another kiss, one that had sunk into my brain as a pearl would sink in the sea, that when my heart had been saddest I had but just to shut my eyes and feel again falling soft and warm on my lids, lingering, loving, interpenetrating my soul with its glow;—­and this, oh, ’t was like a blade cleaving that same brain with swift, sharp flash!  I flew into the house, but Effie was almost there before me,—­and on my way, falling, gliffered in the gloom, against something, I snatched me back with a dim feeling that ’t was Angus, and yet Angus had followed Effie in.  I slipped among the folk and sat down somewhere at length like as if stunned.