Her husband reminded her of the common idea that all the scenes of your life came before you, as in a panorama, when you were drowning. ‘I should not like that,’ she said, with a shiver. Then Abbondio interposed, he to whom the boat belonged which the Beresfords hired, and told how he had been drowned once. ‘They brought me back,’ he said; ‘and I shall have to die twice now, which is hard upon a man; for I was gone; if they had not brought me back, I should never have known anything more. No, Signora, I did not see all that had happened in my life. I felt only that I had slipped the net, and was grasping and grasping at it, and could not get it.’ ‘That was painful,’ she said, eagerly. ‘It was a confusion,’ said the fisherman. Mrs. Beresford called to her husband to give him some money for the poor widows who had lost their men in the boat. ‘A confusion!’ she said to herself, dreamily. It was a very still day after the storm, and she had been looking with a strange wistfulness at the soft blue ripples of the water which had drowned these men. ‘A confusion! How strange it is that we know so little about dying! A lingering death would be good for that, that you could write it down hour by hour that others might know.’ ‘One would not be able,’ said her husband; ‘besides, I think everything gets misty; and one ceases to be interested about other people. I don’t much believe those stories that represent passionate feeling in the dying. The soul gets languid. Did I ever tell you what a friend of mine said who was dead like Abbondio till the doctors got hold of her and forced her back?’ ‘No,’ she said, growing very pale; ‘tell me, James.’ ‘She told me that she felt nothing that was painful, but as if she was floating away on the sea somewhere about Capri, where she had once been. Do you remember the sea there, how blue it is about those great Faraglioni rocks? And there she was floating--floating--not suffering; mind and body, all softly afloat; until they got hold of her, as I say, and forced her back.’ ‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a shiver; ‘I should not like to be forced back. Poor soul! She will have to die once again some time; but if it was only like that, she will not be much afraid.’ ‘She was as far gone as she could go, to come back, I have heard. What queer talk this is, my darling! The accident has spoiled all our pleasure.’ ‘No; it is pleasant talk. I like that idea of floating; it is better, far better, than Abbondio’s confusion; but that, I suppose, was because of the suddenness in his case, and clutching at something perhaps as he got into the water. It was not an accident with her, was it? She was dying of an illness as we poor women do.’ ‘And most men, Annie; the greater part of us all.’ ‘Yes, yes; I know. Poor woman! And they brought her back?’