He drove the canoe into a thorn-bush, so that it should not upset, and he seized her wrist so roughly that she thought she screamed. There was something splendid in that scream being able to disquiet the night, and in an elation of woe she screamed again.
"Do you know what you're doing?" he demanded.
She found herself asking Guy if she were screaming, and when she knew that at last she could hurt him, she screamed more loudly.
"You used to laugh at me when I said I might go mad," she cried. "Now do you like it? Do you like it?"
"Pauline, I beg you to keep quiet. Pauline, think of your people. Will you promise to keep quiet, if I take you out of this thorn-bush?"
He began to laugh not very mirthfully, and that he could laugh infuriated her so much that she was silent with rage, while Guy disentangled the canoe from the thorn-bush and more swiftly than before urged it toward home.
When they reached the grassy bank that divided the Abbey stream from the mill-pool, she would not get out of the canoe to walk to the other side.
"I cannot cross that pool," she said. "Guy, don't ask me to. I've been afraid of it always. If we cross it to-night, I shall drown myself."
He tried to argue with her. He pleaded with her, he railed at her and finally he laughed at her, until she got out and watched him launch the canoe on the farther side and beckon through the tremulous sheen to her. Wildly she ran down the steep bank and flung herself into the water.
"Where am I? Guy, where am I?"