Then with a queer little cry which might have been his name had it been articulate, she broke adrift. Broke, for the time, from all moorings, and possessed with but the one idea that she _could_ not do one thing, that she _must_ do another, she turned to the garden, and,--the red-gold fruit still in her hand,--hurried breathlessly through the waning light, through the dead-sweet perfume of the blossoms, till she found herself, she knew not why--save that she must have air, have space--upon the edge of the river. There was something now swaying idly against the landing-stage; a rude craft buoyed up by air! And there was a rude sort of man in it,--comprehending, yet uncomprehending,--primitive, simple, expectant. "_Huzoor!_" he said, with broad smiles and outstretched hand. "I have been waiting the _Huzoor's_ pleasure. The Presence will go whither?" Whither? Even in her excitement the quaint coincidence struck her as absurd, and yet it seemed to sweep her further still from her moorings. Whither? She gave that queer little cry again, and this time it was "Lance! Lance!" "Whither did the Miss-_sahiba_ say?" asked Am-ma gravely. The cry turned to a strange laugh. "To Eshwara--where else does the river go--where else?" The strange, frail boat was sidling against the landing-stage in the pulse of the river; her stranger, frailer self was adrift on the greater river of life. And a hand, heedless, seeing nothing strange in either, careless of all the fine-drawn niceties of culture, had hold of hers. "So, straight to the centre, _Huzoor!_ I have placed the seat correctly. That is right! The Miss-_sahiba_ recollects the old rules; we shall be in Eshwara before dawn!" She sat down mechanically, feeling only that she was adrift--adrift on the river that went to Eshwara--where else--and that she was glad; glad because she could not stay, because she could not face-- And then the thought came of facing something else--_his_ glad delight when she came floating down the river--not dead, like the Lily Maid to Lancelot--but alive--a woman with a red-gold apple in her hand-- She sat staring at what she held, as if hypnotized by its colour, absolutely unconscious of anything else till Am-ma's voice came stolidly. "We must pick up the raft first, _Huzoor_. This slave let it drift while he waited for the Miss; but we shall find it at the ferry." At the ferry! The familiar idea startled her from dreams to the reality. How came she there? What had she done? What did this mean? A flush of intolerable shame swept to her face; she rose to escape. But Am-ma's warning hand was on hers in an instant; that hand, so heedless of so many limitations, so certain here that there was no escape from _these_ limitations. "The Miss-_sahiba_ forgets," he said deferentially. "When one is in the stream there is no change possible; but if the place is not right we can alter it at the ferry."