Wellwyn. [Quietly.] Go on, go on. [There is silence.]

Ferrand. [Suddenly.] Monsieur!  Are you really English?  The
English are so civilised.

Wellwyn.  And am I not?

Ferrand.  You treat me like a brother.

     [Wellwyn has turned towards the street door at a sound of feet,
     and the clamour of voices.]

Timson. [From the street.] Take her in ’ere.  I knows ’im.

[Through the open doorway come a police constable and a loafer, bearing between them the limp white faced form of Mrs. Megan, hatless and with drowned hair, enveloped in the policeman’s waterproof.  Some curious persons bring up the rear, jostling in the doorway, among whom is Timson carrying in his hands the policeman’s dripping waterproof leg pieces.]

Ferrand. [Starting forward.] Monsieur, it is that little girl!

Wellwyn.  What’s happened?  Constable!  What’s happened!

     [The constable and loafer have laid the body down on the dais;
     with Wellwyn and Ferrand they stand bending over her.]

Constable.  ’Tempted sooicide, sir; but she hadn’t been in the water ’arf a minute when I got hold of her. [He bends lower.] Can’t understand her collapsin’ like this.

Wellwyn. [Feeling her heart.] I don’t feel anything.

Ferrand. [In a voice sharpened by emotion.] Let me try, Monsieur.

Constable. [Touching his arm.] You keep off, my lad.

Wellwyn.  No, constable—­let him.  He’s her friend.

Constable. [Releasing Ferrand—­to the loafer.] Here you!  Cut off for a doctor-sharp now! [He pushes back the curious persons.] Now then, stand away there, please—­we can’t have you round the body.  Keep back—­Clear out, now!

     [He slowly moves them back, and at last shepherds them through
     the door and shuts it on them, Timson being last.]

Ferrand.  The rum!

[Wellwyn fetches the decanter.  With the little there is left Ferrand chafes the girl’s hands and forehead, and pours some between her lips.  But there is no response from the inert body.]

Ferrand.  Her soul is still away, Monsieur!

     [Wellwyn, seizing the decanter, pours into it tea and boiling
     water.]

Constable.  It’s never drownin’, sir—­her head was hardly under; I was on to her like knife.

Ferrand. [Rubbing her feet.] She has not yet her philosophy, Monsieur; at the beginning they often try.  If she is dead! [In a voice of awed rapture.] What fortune!

Constable. [With puzzled sadness.] True enough, sir—­that!  We’d just begun to know ’er.  If she ’as been taken—­her best friends couldn’t wish ’er better.