“Strike!” she cried; “it is what I ask. Only thou shalt strike thyself through me. What! thou know’st now what it is to be trampled under by the feet thou worship’dst! And thou shalt be haunted evermore by the shadow of another man’s happiness. Strike, I say, and kill, like me, thy spectre of unfulfilment with despair!” She tore at her dress, baring her white bosom to him. “Strike!” she cried again; then suddenly her hands dropped limp, and she moaned to herself. “I dare not think. I cannot sleep. He is always there, weeping and imploring. But there is something between--a deep red pool, with an under-motion. If I were to wade in--my God!” she cried--“I am afraid even to die!” She held up her hands to the man before her, as if in prayer. “Take me with thee--there, into the water. I will not struggle, if thou hold’st me tight. Thou wert his friend for a little while, and thou also hast suffered. Thou wilt plead for me, monsieur, wilt thou not?--thou wilt plead?” Her voice broke in a shiver. For all its wretchedness, the heart of her hearer was stricken anew. “Thou Théroigne,” he said; “thou poor twice-abandoned fool. Wouldst thou urge upon me that a first error is to be atoned by a second! Oh, thou woman--not to understand how cheap that love must be held that would disprove itself to spite its object!” God knows what angel of light or darkness had been at his elbow a moment earlier. Now, he put his hand into his breast as he spoke. She looked at him, lost and wild. “Thou didst not come to throw thyself into the river?” she muttered. “No,” he said--“but only this.” He cast it from him with the words--something he had taken from his pocket--a little spiked and scented parcel, so ridiculous and so tender. It had fulfilled its mission at last. That was “writ in water.” And the poor cherished heels, stuck with a sprig of withered geranium, went down to the sea--or, perhaps, into the maw of some sentimental pike that would swallow it all, as we mortals swallow any absurd love-story. Now, if the action was inspired by a despairing man’s intuitive altruism on behalf of a despairing harlot, we may not call it bathos. Suddenly the woman broke into a shrill laugh. “Was it an unfruitful token? Better thou and I!” she cried. “And so thou still hold’st love inviolable?” He answered with his eyes. She came quite close to him--looked up into his face. “That is well. Come with me, then, now the madness is past.” “With you!” he exclaimed scornfully. All his repulsion of her was returning before the reclaimed devil in her eyes. “With me, murderess and courtesan. Oh! it is not for myself,” she said. “It is for another--whose confession to me an hour ago sent me to seek thee out--that I would carry thee.” He stared, dumfounded, muttering “Another? what other?”