"How shall I go?" she asked herself. She knew, from the talk she had heard, that a policeman was somewhere around, watching the house. She looked out of a window and saw him, leaning against a fence, taking occasional sly puffs from a pipe he held in the hollow of his hand.
She did not dare descend the stairs. She looked out of the window. It was not very far to the roof of a porch, and against the porch was a trellis, with a wealth of honeysuckle growing upon it.
How she did it, Margaret could not afterwards remember. But she crawled forth from the window, and climbed down the trellis as if it were a ladder. The sweet scent of the honeysuckle made her sick, and she came close to falling in a faint at the foot of the vines.
Reaching the ground, she stared around like a frightened fawn seeking to hide from the hunters. Then, without knowing why, she sped for the river bank.
The water looked cool and inviting, and for several minutes the beautiful girl stood there, gazing steadily down into those depths. Should she make a leap and end it all?
"It would be the easiest way out of it!" she moaned to herself. "The easiest way, and nobody would care!"
But, as she bent lower, she seemed to see reflected, not her own face, but the face of Raymond. With a cry of despair, she shrank back as if struck a blow.
"No! no! It will not do!" she moaned. "Not that! Not that!"
She ran along the river bank until she came to where a rowboat was tied up. On the seats were the oars, and, scarcely knowing what she was doing, she leaped into the craft, untied the painter, and took up the oars.
The fresh air seemed to give her strength, and she pulled on and on. She grew thirsty and stopped to drink some of the water and to bathe her face and hands. While doing this, her hat slipped overboard and drifted away, but she did not notice this.