I sat like one paralysed, unable either to stir or speak.  The willows seemed to bow their heads in mocking farewell as I glided past them.  I heard the faint baying of a dog on some distant farm, and it sounded like a death-note in my frightened ears.  Suddenly the spell that had held me was loosened, and I started to my feet.  The boat heeled over, and but for a sudden instinctive movement backward I should have gone headlong into the river, and have ended my troubles there and then.  The boat righted itself, veered half-round and then went steadily on its way down the stream.  I sank on my knees and buried my face in my hands, and began to cry.  When I had cried a little while it came into my mind that I would say my prayers.  So I said them, with clasped hands and wet eyes; and the words seemed to come from me and affect me in a way that I had never experienced before.  As I write these lines I have a vivid recollection of noticing how blurred and large the moon looked through my tears.

My heart was now quieted a little; I was no longer so utterly overmastered by my fears.  I was recalled to a more vivid sense of earth and its realities by the low, melancholy striking of some village clock.  I gazed eagerly along both banks of the river; but although the moon shone so brightly, neither house nor church nor any sign of human habitation was visible.  When the clock had told its last syllable, the silence seemed even more profound than before.  I might have been floating on a river that wound through a country never trodden by the foot of man, so entirely alone, so utterly removed from all human aid, did I feel myself to be.

I drew the skirt of my frock over my shoulders, for the night air was beginning to chill me, and contrived to regain the seat I had taken on first entering the boat.  Whither would the river carry me, was the question I now put to myself.  To the sea, doubtless.  Had I not been taught at school that sooner or later all rivers emptied themselves into the ocean?  The immensity of the thought appalled me.  It seemed to chill the beating of my heart; I grew cold from head to foot.  Still the boat held its course steadily, swept onward by the resistless current; still the willows nodded their fantastic farewells.  Along the level meadows far and wide the white mist lay like a vast winding-sheet; now and then through the stillness I heard, or seemed to hear, a moan—­a mournful wail, as of some spirit just released from earthly bonds, and forced to leave its dear ones behind.  The moonlight looked cruel, and the water very, very cold.  Someone had told me that death by drowning was swift and painless.  Those stars up there were millions of miles away; how long would it take my soul, I wondered, to travel that distance—­to reach those glowing orbs—­to leave them behind?  How glorious such a journey, beyond all power of thought, to track one’s way among the worlds that flash through space!  In the world I should leave there would be one person only who would mourn for me—­Sister Agnes, who would—­But what noise was that?