“Nancy!” Yes! Then I did realize who it was that I was tugging along with me for dear life. His life was in my hands—mine, when I’d felt ready to murder him an hour ago. I’d had to save it.... “Serve him right,” I thought wildly, as I struggled along. “Oh, serve him right! I’ll show him—I’ll teach him to kiss me again.” Indeed, I’m not sure that I wasn’t muttering this aloud to myself in the water. Anyhow, voices seemed buzzing in my ears—one was his own as I’d heard it yesterday—“I say! Isn’t it topping to be alive? Isn’t it topping to be alive?” And then it seemed to come to the very last effort I could make. “_Ah!_” I heard myself groan. The next thing of which I was conscious came with a shock of surprise. It was the soft jolt of my shoulders against sand. We were aground! For a minute or so I must have been swimming furiously in my depth, without even feeling the growing warmth of the shallows about me. I let go my wild, unneeded clutch of his arms, staggered to my feet, waded in, then dropped again, face downwards and panting, on to the beach, a few yards below the tide-mark of crisp, black seaweed, straws, and broken shell. It was over—we were safe. And now—what? I didn’t know. Anyhow, for a moment I lay there unable to rise or speak. I threw my arm across my eyes. Then I found that he’d dragged himself up beside me. He was leaning over me; saying something I was too dazed to catch. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want him to say anything. He needn’t suppose I’d intended to save his life. He needn’t think this absurd crisis had made any difference. There was still this morning between us. There always would be. This made no difference. None! None at all! I got up again, hearing my teeth chatter a little. I turned to the rock where I’d thrown down my peignoir, and as I did so, I heard him behind me raise his voice a little: “I say! I can’t, you know!—You’ll have to help me up to the cottages, I’m afraid—” I glanced down at him; he was sitting up, his face a little white under the tan, but quiet and expressionless. And as I looked at him, sitting there backed by the empty, sunlit cove and the cliff with the figure-head and flagstaff small as toys in the distance, I passed through the one second’s most extraordinary experience of my life. Was it a waking-dream, or what? The result of shock and over-exertion, like those buzzing voices, just before, among the waves? For of all the mad, impossible fancies to dash into one’s mind—before one’s eyes, even!—this was the maddest. This was what happened in that second’s space: