children belonging to neighbours and had sometimes stood among them at
the street looking at the water. She must be going at hazard I knew,
still she kept the by-streets quite correctly as long as they would serve
her, and then turned up into the Strand. But at every corner I could see
her head turned one way, and that way was always the river way.

It may have been only the darkness and quiet of the Adelphi that caused
her to strike into it but she struck into it much as readily as if she
had set out to go there, which perhaps was the case. She went straight
down to the Terrace and along it and looked over the iron rail, and I
often woke afterwards in my own bed with the horror of seeing her do it.
The desertion of the wharf below and the flowing of the high water there
seemed to settle her purpose. She looked about as if to make out the way
down, and she struck out the right way or the wrong way--I don't know
which, for I don't know the place before or since--and I followed her the
way she went.

It was noticeable that all this time she never once looked back. But
there was now a great change in the manner of her going, and instead of
going at a steady quick walk with her arms folded before her,--among the
dark dismal arches she went in a wild way with her arms opened wide, as
if they were wings and she was flying to her death.

We were on the wharf and she stopped. I stopped. I saw her hands at her
bonnet-strings, and I rushed between her and the brink and took her round
the waist with both my arms. She might have drowned me, I felt then, but
she could never have got quit of me.

Down to that moment my mind had been all in a maze and not half an idea
had I had in it what I should say to her, but the instant I touched her