’She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and even to leave the country.  It was his danger that was foremost in her thoughts—­even if she wanted to save herself too—­perhaps unconsciously:  but then look at the warning she had, look at the lesson that could be drawn from every moment of the recently ended life in which all her memories were centred.  She fell at his feet—­she told me so—­there by the river, in the discreet light of stars which showed nothing except great masses of silent shadows, indefinite open spaces, and trembling faintly upon the broad stream made it appear as wide as the sea.  He had lifted her up.  He lifted her up, and then she would struggle no more.  Of course not.  Strong arms, a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to rest her poor lonely little head upon.  The need—­the infinite need—­of all this for the aching heart, for the bewildered mind;—­the promptings of youth—­the necessity of the moment.  What would you have?  One understands—­unless one is incapable of understanding anything under the sun.  And so she was content to be lifted up—­and held.  “You know—­Jove! this is serious—­no nonsense in it!” as Jim had whispered hurriedly with a troubled concerned face on the threshold of his house.  I don’t know so much about nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their romance:  they came together under the shadow of a life’s disaster, like knight and maiden meeting to exchange vows amongst haunted ruins.  The starlight was good enough for that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot resolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream.  I did look upon the stream that night and from the very place; it rolled silent and as black as Styx:  the next day I went away, but I am not likely to forget what it was she wanted to be saved from when she entreated him to leave her while there was time.  She told me what it was, calmed—­she was now too passionately interested for mere excitement—­in a voice as quiet in the obscurity as her white half-lost figure.  She told me, “I didn’t want to die weeping.”  I thought I had not heard aright.

’"You did not want to die weeping?” I repeated after her.  “Like my mother,” she added readily.  The outlines of her white shape did not stir in the least.  “My mother had wept bitterly before she died,” she explained.  An inconceivable calmness seemed to have risen from the ground around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of a flood in the night, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions.  There came upon me, as though I had felt myself losing my footing in the midst of waters, a sudden dread, the dread of the unknown depths.  She went on explaining that, during the last moments, being alone with her mother, she had to leave the side of the couch to go and set her back against the door, in order to keep Cornelius out.  He desired to get in, and kept on drumming with both fists, only desisting now and again to shout huskily, “Let me in!  Let me in!  Let me in!”