They were all bathing together from the next door raft, in a sort of dim luminous twilight. She saw her own white legs reaching out to touch the water; and she stepped in and swam about. Roddy was there, a dark head bobbing vaguely near her. Sometimes he touches her hand or her shoulder, smiling at her in a friendly way. The others made a dim group on the bank. They were all very happy: she felt ecstasy swelling within her, and passing from her among them all. Charlie suddenly came into the group. Oh, there was Charlie safe and well and alive after all, and nobody need be unhappy any more! He did not speak. He emerged swiftly from among them, and they all watched him in silence while he stooped to the dim river and slipped in. He turned his face, his hidden face, downstream, and went floating and swimming gently along. He too was happy. A dark misty solitude of night and water was ahead of him, and he went into it without pause or backward look, and it folded around him. Horror crept in: for he was disappearing. A voice broke ringingly, in anguish: ‘Come back!’ It shattered itself, aghast, upon emptiness. Softly he vanished. She cried aloud and woke into a night streaming, blind with the rain’s enormous weeping. He never came again. His son was born and his grandmother died; but he was too far, too spent a ghost to raise his head at that. PART TWO 1 They were coming back. When she knew this she dared not venture beyond the garden for fear of encountering them unexpectedly. Only the dark was safe; and night after sleepless night she jumped out of the kitchen window into the garden, and crossed the lawn’s pattern of long tree-shadows, sharp-cut upon the blank moon-blanched level of the grass. All the colours were drained away; only the white spring flowers in the border shone up with a glimmer as of phosphorus, and the budding tree-tops were picked out, line by cold line, in a thin and silvery wash of light. She went dancingly down the garden, feeling moon-changed, powerful and elated; and paused at the river’s edge. The water shone mildly as it flowed. She scanned it up and down; it was deserted utterly, it was hers alone. She took off her few clothes and stepped in, dipping rapidly; and the water slipped over her breasts, round her shoulders, covering all her body. The chill water wounded her; her breath came shudderingly, in great gasps; but after a moment she started to swim vigorously downstream. It was exquisite joy to be naked in the water’s sharp clasp. In comparison, the happiness of swimming in a bathing suit was vulgar and contemptible. To swim by moonlight alone was a sacred and passionate mystery. The water was in love with her body. She gave herself to it with reluctance and it embraced her bitterly. She endured it, soon she desired it; she was in love with it. Gradually its harshness was appeased, and it held her and caressed her gently in her motion.