and gradually becoming rigid. She touched his fingers; they were cold, though his body was still warm. She listened at his chest. All was still within. The bumping of near thirty years had ceased.

After her first appalled sense of what had happened the faint notes of a military or other brass band from the river reached her ears; and in a provoked tone she exclaimed, `To think he should die just now! Why did he die just now!' Then meditating another moment or two she went to the door, softly closed it as before, and again descended the stairs.

`Here she is!' said one of the workmen. `We wondered if you were coming after all. Come along; we must be quick to get a good place.... Well, how is he? Sleeping well still? Of course, we don't want to drag 'ee away if - '

`Oh yes - sleeping quite sound. He won't wake yet,' she said hurriedly.

They went with the crowd down Cardinal Street, where they presently reached the bridge, and the gay barges burst upon their view. Thence they passed by a narrow slit down to the riverside path - now dusty, hot, and thronged. Almost as soon as they had arrived the grand procession of boats began; the oars smacking with a loud kiss on the face of the stream, as they were lowered from the perpendicular.

`Oh, I say - how jolly! I'm glad I've come,' said Arabella. `And - it can't hurt my husband - my being away.'

On the opposite side of the river, on the crowded barges, were gorgeous nosegays of feminine beauty, fashionably arrayed in green, pink, blue, and white. The blue flag of the boat club denoted the centre of interest, beneath which a band in red uniform gave out the notes she had already heard in the death- chamber. Collegians of all sorts, in canoes with ladies, watching keenly for `our' boat, darted up and down. While she regarded the lively scene somebody touched Arabella in the ribs, and looking round she saw Vilbert.

`That philtre is operating, you know!' he said with a leer. `Shame on 'ee to wreck a heart so!'

`I shan't talk of love to-day.'

`Why not? It is a general holiday.'

She did not reply. Vilbert's arm stole round her waist, which act could be performed unobserved in the crowd. An arch expression overspread Arabella's face at the feel of the arm, but she kept her eyes on the river as if she did not know of the embrace.

The crowd surged, pushing Arabella and her friends sometimes nearly into the river, and she would have laughed heartily at the horse-play that succeeded, if the imprint on her mind's eye of a pale, statuesque countenance she had lately gazed upon had not sobered her a little.

The fun on the water reached the acme of excitement; there were immersions, there were shouts: the race was lost and won, the pink and blue and yellow ladies retired from the barges, and the people who had watched began to move.

`Well - it's been awfully good,' cried Arabella. `But I think I must get back to my poor man. Father is there, so far as I know; but I had better get back.'

`What's your hurry?'

`Well, I must go.... Dear, dear, this is awkward!'

At the narrow gangway where the people ascended from the riverside path to the bridge the crowd was literally jammed into one hot mass - Arabella and Vilbert with the rest; and here they remained motionless,


  By PanEris using Melati.

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