At the same moment, or a fraction of a moment later, Varick laughed aloud; it was a discordant laugh, evidently at something Bubbles had just said, for Donnington heard the words, "Really, Bubbles!" uttered in a loud, remonstrating, and yet jovial voice. And then, all at once, some instinct caused the young man to wheel sharply round, to see, a long way back from the others, Varick standing solitary on the brick path. His companion had vanished. It was as if the earth had swallowed her up. "Where's Bubbles?" shouted Donnington. But Varick, still standing in the middle of the path, did not look as if he heard Donnington's question. The young man set off running towards him. "What's happened?" he cried fiercely. "Where's Bubbles, Varick?" Varick was ashen; and he looked dazed--utterly unlike his usual collected self. "She stumbled--and went over the side of the embankment. She's in the water, down there," he said at last, in a hoarse, stifled voice. Donnington turned quickly, and stared down into the grey water. He could see nothing--nothing! He threw off his coat. "Was it just here?" He looked at Varick with a feeling of anguished exasperation; it was as if the horror and the shock had congealed the man's mental faculties. Suddenly Varick roused himself. "Can you swim?" He gripped Donnington strongly by the arm. "If not, it's--it's no good your going in--you'd only drown too." Donnington wrenched himself free from the other's hold, and, rushing down the bank, threw himself into the icy cold water.... Suddenly he saw, a long way off, a small, shapeless, mass rising ... he swam towards it, and then he gave a sobbing gasp of relief. It was Bubbles ... Bubbles already unconscious; but of that he was vaguely glad, knowing that it would much simplify his task. Very soon, although he was quite unaware of it, the affrighted, startled little crowd of people gathered together just above the place where he was painfully, slowly, swimming about, looking for a spot where he could try and effect a landing with his now heavy, inert burden. Dr. Panton threw himself down flat across the path and held out a walking stick over the slippery mud bank, but the stick was hopelessly, grotesquely out of Donnington's reach. All at once Blanche Farrow detached herself from the others and began running towards the cottage which formed the apex of the reservoir. "I'm going for a rope," she called out. "I'll be back in three or four minutes." But, thanks to Dr. Panton's ingenuity, the man in the water had not to wait even so short a time as that.