“Are we there?” she asked in a bewildered way, as if she had been dreaming.  “How quick we’ve been!”

“Yes, miss.  Mr. Redington’s down the steps.  You see them steps.  Mr. Redington’s down there in the dinghy.  Mind how you go, miss.  Hold tight to the rail....”  He closed the door of the car and pointed to the steps.

The dinghy!  Those stone steps to the black water!  Jenny was shaken by a shudder.  The horror of the water which had come upon her earlier in the evening returned more intensely.  The strokes of the clock were the same, the darkness, the feeling of the sinister water rolling there beneath the bridge, resistlessly carrying its burdens to the sea.  If Keith had not been there she would have turned and run swiftly away, overcome by her fear.  She timidly reached the steps, and stopped, peering down through the dimness.  She put her foot forward so that it hung dubiously beyond the edge of the pavement.

“What a coward!” she thought, violently, with self-contempt.  It drove her forward.  And at that moment she could see below, at the edge of the lapping water, the outline of a small boat and of a man who sat in it using the oars against the force of the current so as to keep the boat always near the steps.  She heard a dear familiar voice call out with a perfect shout of welcome: 

“Jenny!  Good girl!  How are you!  Come along; be careful how you come.  That’s it....  Six more, and then stop!” Jenny obeyed him—­she desired nothing else, and her doubtings were driven away in a breath.  She went quickly down.  The back water lapped and wattled against the stone and the boat, and she saw Keith stand up, drawing the dinghy against the steps and offering her his hand.  He had previously been holding up a small lantern that gilded the brown mud with a feeble colour and made the water look like oil.  “Now!” he cried quickly.  “Step!” The boat rocked, and Jenny crouched down upon the narrow seat, aflame with rapture, but terrified of the water.  It was so near, so inescapably near.  The sense of its smooth softness, its yieldingness, and the danger lurking beneath the flowing surface was acute.  She tried more desperately to sit exactly in the middle of the boat, so that she should not overbalance it.  She closed her eyes, sitting very still, and heard the water saying plup-plup-plup all round her, and she was afraid.  It meant soft death:  she could not forget that.  Jenny could not swim.  She was stricken between terror and joy that overwhelmed her.  Then: 

“That’s my boat,” Keith said, pointing.  “I say, you are a sport to come!” Jenny saw lights shining from the middle of the river, and could imagine that a yacht lay there stubbornly resisting the current of the flowing Thames.

iii