She paused on the thought, and her heart began to beat faster with a hopeful excitement such as she had not known for a very long while.
"Perhaps it will be much better than one imagines possible. Perhaps there'll be real forgiveness and understanding—and then my having done this won't matter. Anyway, I shall know very soon, if only I'm brave just for a few minutes."
She drew a long breath, then, instinctively stretching her arms straight out before her so as to balance herself, she began to move forward.
The first unmistakable touch of the water round her feet made her gasp and stifle a scream, but she waded on, encouraging herself in a low murmur, as though speaking to a child:
"It's only like going into the sea when one's bathing—pretend it's that, then you won't be frightened. Just straight on—it will be over quite soon—"
She was moving, slowly, but without pause, her hands held out in front of her, the ground still beneath her slipping feet, which felt oddly weighted. Once she began to pull the woollen scarf over her mouth, but with the sense of breathlessness came the beginning of panic, and she tore it away again.
"Go on—coward—coward," she urged herself. "Remember what it would mean to make another muddle of this, and to fail."
The cold invaded her body and her teeth began to chatter.
For an instant she stood, surrounded by the silent water, cold and terror and the weight of her now sodden clothing paralysing her, so that she could move neither backwards to the shore nor forward into the blackness in front of her.
"I must," muttered Alex, and wrenched one foot desperately out of the mud below. With the forward movement, she lost her balance, and her hands clutched instinctively at the water's level. Then the clogging bottom of the pond sheered away suddenly from beneath her, and there was only water, dark and icy and rushing, above and below and all round her.