Reeling back with the agony of her murderous blows he made a fierce effort to tear the knife from her hands, but she suddenly threw it a long way from her towards the river, where it fell with a light splash, and rushing at him twined her arms close about his neck, while her mad laughter, piercing and terrible, rang out through the quiet air.

“Together!” she said, “That day at the fair we were together, and now—­we shall be together again!  Come!—­Come!  I have waited long enough!—­your promised letter never came—­you have kept me waiting a long long while—­but now I will wait no longer!  I have found you!—­I will never let you go!”

Furiously, despite his wounds, he fought with her,—­tried to thrust her away from him,—­and beat her backwards and downwards,—­but she had the strength of ten women in her maddened frame, and she clung to him with the tenacity of some savage beast.  All around them was perfectly quiet,—­there was not a soul in sight,—­there was no place near where a shout for help could have been heard.  Struggling still, dizzy, blind and breathless, he did not see that they were nearing the edge of the slippery bank—­all his efforts were concentrated in an endeavour to shake off the infuriated creature, made more powerful in her very madness by the just sense of her burning wrong and his callous treachery—­when all at once his foot slipped and he fell to the ground.  She pounced on him like a tigress, and fastened her fingers on his throat,—­clutching his flesh and breathlessly muttering, “Never!—­never!  Never can you hide away from me any more!  Together—­together!  I will never let you go!—­” till, as his eyes rolled up in agony and his jaw relaxed, she uttered a shout of ecstasy to see him die!  He sank heavily under her fierce grasp which she never relaxed for an instant, and his dead weight dragged her unconsciously down—­down!—­she not heeding or knowing whither she was moving,—­down—­still down!—­till, as she clung to his inert body, madly determining not to let it go, she fell,—­fast grappling her betrayer’s corpse,—­into the ominous stillness of the river.  The flood opened, as it were, to receive the two,—­the dead and the living—­there was a slight ripple as though a mouth in the water smiled—­then the usual calm surface reflected the moon once more, and there was no sign of trouble.  Nothing struggled,—­nothing floated,—­all was perfectly tranquil.  The bells chimed from all the churches in the city a quarter to midnight, and their pretty echoes were wafted across the water,—­no other sound disturbed the silence,—­not a trace of the struggle was left, save just one smeared track of grass and slime, which, if examined carefully, might have been found sprinkled with blood.  But with the morning the earth would have swallowed those drops of human life as silently as the river-quicksand had sucked down the bodies of the betrayed and the betrayer;—­in neither case would Nature have any hint to give of