She crept down the stairs, bare-footed, and into the drawing-room. She drew back the heavy curtains from the windows that opened down to the ground. Outside was the terraced garden that sloped down to the edge of the river. Her hand was on the bolt of the window. Suddenly she heard quick footsteps coming down the passage. In a moment she had hidden herself behind the screen that stood against the door. She knew those footsteps. Involuntarily her hands linked tightly together, and her breath came quickly. He was not so careful as she had been; he came boldly into the room, opened the window noisily, and went out into the garden. As he went out she caught one glimpse of his face, and she knew what he would do. She sprang from behind the screen. “Claud, Claud!” she called. He stopped with a sudden start, and came towards her. “What are you doing here?” he asked, in a voice that was not like his voice. “I,” she panted--“I came to save you, Claud. Oh, go back again!” He would have taken her hands, but she shrank away from him. They only stayed there for a few minutes. She talked to him and pleaded with him. There was little need for such pleading, for he had yielded to her from the first. He gave her the only promise that she would let him make, and then he went back to his room. She quietly closed the windows, and drew the curtains again. She seemed to herself both sad and happy now, and very tired. And Fate had an approving smile upon her bitter face. “They are two obedient children,” she said. “They were going to take matters into their own hands, and they resisted the temptation. Very well, they shall be rewarded.” So Fate sent the girl a present of a beautiful brain-fever with pictures in it. And when it was over she fell asleep, and dreamed that she was floating on a sea that had no shores and flowed for ever, bearing her farther and farther away from this. And she woke no more. And Fate thought that she should then do something for Claud. So she killed another woman, and killed her with thirty other people in a railway accident, thereby escaping any charge of impartial justice. They both had loved him, and they were both dead, and he got much happier. In the unprepared passages of this life a glimpse at the context would be useful. * * * * * Poor stuff--isn’t it? VI. ON LOAFING; TOGETHER WITH A SECOND ANECDOTE FROM THE ENTERTAINMENTS OF KAPNIDES. I took my canoe the other day up that part of the river where only Masters of Arts are allowed to drown themselves without a certificate. None of them were doing it on the day I was there, and it was rather dull, and the boat went to sleep with its cold nose resting on the soft grass that edged the river.