WITH that, the Princess pointed. And Gerald also now looked toward the river.... He viewed an unsolid-seeming world of dimly colored movings. Directly before him the deep river sparkled and rippled eastward with unhurried, very shallow undulations. But, under the sun’s warmth, mists rising everywhere above the waters streamed eastward too, unhastily, and in such unequal volume that now this and now another portion of the wide landscape beyond the river was irregularly glimpsed and then, gradually but with a surprising quickness, veiled. Very lovely medallions of green lawns and shrubbery and distant hills thus seemed to take form and then to dissolve into the mists’ incessant gray flowing, toward the newly risen sun.... And Gerald also saw that, some fifty feet away from him, an unusually unclad elderly woman was approaching the river bank, carrying in her thin arms a child. The woman trudged forward toward the river like a drugged person, because of the doom which was upon her. Now this woman seemed to stumble, and she fell into the water, but in falling she cast the child from her, so that it remained safe in the coarse tall-growing grass. The woman whom divine will had led hither to serve as a scapegoat for the Princess Evasherah proceeded to drown satisfactorily, and with indeed a sort of decorum. She sank twice, with hardly any beating or splashing of the waters, because of that doom which was upon her. The child, though, whom no long years of living had taught to accept a preponderance of unpleasant happenings, screamed continuously, in candid, mewing disapproval of divine will. Out of the near-by reeds came a bright-eyed jackal; and it furtively approached the child. The Princess rose from the alabaster couch and from Gerald’s partially detaining arms. She stood for an instant irresolute. In her lovely face was trouble. Her mouth, a little open, trembled. Gerald liked that. Here was revealed the ever-tender heart of womanhood and the quick generous sympathy with all afflicted persons which living had taught him to look for only in the best literature. The Princess quitted Gerald. She hastened to the river bank. The jackal backed from her, crouching in a half-circle, with bared teeth, and the reeds swallowed the beast. The Princess leaned down, and with a lovely gesture of compassion the Princess caught the drowning woman by one hand and assisted her ashore. It was then that the Princess Evasherah cried out in wordless surprise. Then too her raised hands clenched, and her little fists jerked downward in a gesture of candid exasperation.