'Look,' he said, 'how it crawls along--black and slimy! how silent
and yet how fierce! Is that a nice place to go to down there?
Would there be any rest there, do you think, tumbled about among
filth and creeping things, and slugs that feed on the dead; among
drowned women like yourself drifting by, and murdered men, and
strangled babies? Is that the door by which you would like to go
out of the world?'
'It's no worse,' she faltered, '--not so bad as what I should leave
behind.'
'If this were the only way out of it, I would not keep you from it.
I would say, "Poor thing! there is no help: she must go." But
there is another way.'
'There is no other way, sir--if you knew all,' she said.
'Tell me, then.'
'I cannot. I dare not. Please--I would rather go.'
She looked, from the mere glimpses I could get of her, somewhere
about five-and-twenty, making due allowance for the wear of
suffering so evident even in those glimpses. I think she might have
been beautiful if the waste of her history could have been restored.
That she had had at least some advantages of education, was evident
from both her tone and her speech. But oh, the wild eyes, and the
tortured lips, drawn back from the teeth with an agony of
hopelessness, as she struggled anew, perhaps mistrusting them, to
escape from the great arms that held her!
'But the river cannot drown you,' Falconer said. 'It can only stop
your breath. It cannot stop your thinking.
Pages:
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674