I was there! With a beating heart I stepped up on the threshold. There were two doors, one that opened on the path, one that opened on the river. The house was empty. I had a little sinking pang of disappointment, but I passed on to the door looking out on the river. By this door was a seat, empty, but on this lay a book and a straw hat. I could feel the hot blushes cover my face, my neck, as I caught sight of these. I stooped down, feeling guilty, and took up the book. It was a book which he had read daily to me in our lesson-hours. It had his name on the blank page, and was full of his pencil-marks. I meant to ask him to give me this book; I would rather have it than anything the world held, when I should be parted from him. _When!_ I sat down on the seat beside the door, with the book lying in my lap, the straw hat on the bench. I longed to take it in my hands--to wreathe it with the clematis that grew about the door, as I had done one foolish, happy afternoon, not three weeks ago. But with a strange inconsistency, I dared not touch it; my face grew hot with blushes as I thought of it. How should I meet him? Now that the moment I had longed for had arrived, I wondered that I had dared to long for it. I felt that if I heard his step, I should fly and hide myself from him. The recollection of that last interview in the library--which I had lived over and over, nights and days, incessantly, since then, came back with fresh force, fresh vehemence. But no step approached me, all was silent; it began to impress me strangely, and I looked about me. I don't know at what moment it was, my eye fell upon the trace of footsteps on the bank, and then on the mark of the boat dragged along the sand; a little below the boat-house it had been pushed off into the water. I started to my feet, and ran down to the water's edge (at the boat-house the trees had been in the way of my seeing the river any distance). I stood still, the water lapping faintly on the sand at my feet; it was hardly a sound. I looked out on the unruffled lead-colored river: there, about quarter of a mile from the bank, the boat was lying: empty --motionless. The oars were floating a few rods from her, drifting slowly, slowly, down the stream. The sight seemed to turn my warm blood and blushes into ice: even before I had a distinct impression of what I feared, I was benumbed. But it did not take many moments for the truth, or a dread of it, to reach my brain. I covered my eyes with my hands, then sprang up the bank and called wildly. My voice was like a madwoman's, and it must have sounded far on that still air. In less than a moment Richard came hurrying with great strides down the path. I sprang to him, and caught his arm and dragged him to the water's edge. "Look," I whispered--pointing to the hat and book--and then out to the boat. I read his face in terror. It grew slowly, deadly white.