Her husband was still shaking his fist in her direction, but the two boats were well apart as she rowed away with her sweeps. He stood there, undecided. He had not expected the sudden and effective resistance. Before he knew it, she was lost in a whole fleet of little houseboats which were, to his eyes, both in the sky, underwater, and scattered all over the tip-tilting surfaces. The current, under the impulse of her rowing, carried Nelia into an eddy and she saw the cruiser rocking down a crossing into the mirage of the distance. She sat on the bow deck while her boat made a long swing in the eddy. Things did not happen down the river as she planned or expected. She regarded the previous night's entertainment with less indifference now; something about the calm of that broad river affected her. She realized that watching the killing of Palura had given her a shock so deep that now she was trembling with the weakness of horror. She had seen Gus Carline stumble into her cabin, and with angry defiance she had acted with the intention of doing to him what she had done to Prebol--but she had missed deliberately when she shot. When she recalled the matter, she saw that for weeks she had been living in a false frame of mind; that she was desperate, and not contented; that she was afraid--and that she hated fear. Her pistol was sign of her bravado, and her shots were the indication of her desperation. The memory of the wan face of Prebol brought down by her bullet was now an accusation, not a pride. Old Mississip' had received her gently in her most furious mood, but now that immense, active calm of vast power was working on the untamed soul which she owned. The river swept along, and its majesty no longer gave her the feeling that nothing mattered. Far from it! Though she rebelled against the idea, her mind knew that she was in rebellion, that she was going against the current. And the river's mood was dangerous, now, to the wanton feelings to which she had desperately yielded but unsuccessfully. The old, familiar, sharp division between right and wrong was presented to her gaze as if the river itself were calling her attention to it. She could not escape the necessity of a choice, with evil so persuasive and delightful and virtue so depressing and necessary. She investigated Terabon's outfit with curiosity and questioning. His typewriter, his maps, his few books, his stack of notes neatly compiled in loose-leaf files, were the materials which caught and held her fancy. She took them on board her shanty-boat and read the record which he had made, from day to day, from his inspection of Commission records at St. Louis to the purchase of his boat in shanty-boat town, and his departure down the river. His words were intimate and revealing: