"Jenny! Good girl! How are you! Come along; be careful how you come. That's it.... Six more, and then stop!" Jenny obeyed him--she desired nothing else, and her doubtings were driven away in a breath. She went quickly down. The back water lapped and wattled against the stone and the boat, and she saw Keith stand up, drawing the dinghy against the steps and offering her his hand. He had previously been holding up a small lantern that gilded the brown mud with a feeble colour and made the water look like oil. "Now!" he cried quickly. "Step!" The boat rocked, and Jenny crouched down upon the narrow seat, aflame with rapture, but terrified of the water. It was so near, so inescapably near. The sense of its smooth softness, its yieldingness, and the danger lurking beneath the flowing surface was acute. She tried more desperately to sit exactly in the middle of the boat, so that she should not overbalance it. She closed her eyes, sitting very still, and heard the water saying plup-plup-plup all round her, and she was afraid. It meant soft death: she could not forget that. Jenny could not swim. She was stricken between terror and joy that overwhelmed her. Then: "That's my boat," Keith said, pointing. "I say, you _are_ a sport to come!" Jenny saw lights shining from the middle of the river, and could imagine that a yacht lay there stubbornly resisting the current of the flowing Thames. iii Crouching still, she watched Keith bend to his oars, driving the boat's nose beyond the shadowy yacht because he knew that he must allow for the current. Her eyes devoured him, and her heart sang. Plup-plup-plup-plup said the water. The oars plashed gently. Jenny saw the blackness gliding beside her, thick and swift. They might go down, down, down in that black nothingness, and nobody would know of it.... The oars ground against the edge of the dinghy--wood against wood, grumbling and echoing upon the water. Behind everything she heard the roaring of London, and was aware of lights, moving and stationary, high above them. How low upon the water they were! It seemed to be on a level with the boat's edges. And how much alone they were, moving there in the darkness while the life of the city went on so far above. If the boat sank! Jenny shivered, for she knew that she would be drowned. She could imagine a white face under the river's surface, lanterns flashing, and then--nothing. It would be all another secret happening, a mystery, the work of a tragic instant; and Jenny Blanchard would be forgotten for ever, as if she had never been. It was a horrid sensation to her as she sat there, so near death.