At the last inch of dock, so that the water licked up at her shoes, Lilly stood poised. Not, it is true, with the diver's blade thrust of arms, but rather the unskilled, the indeterminate movement of one vaguely prompted from the unfathomable places of the heart.
It was upon that move that something, a terrifying restraint, laid hold of Lilly's jangling nerve ends.
"Hey there! None o' that to-night!"
A dockman's hand, hairy as an Airedale, had her by the arm, and somewhere at her brow, cooling it, the fine hand of Bruce Visigoth, pressing her against him, and at that touch Lilly's hysteria shot up like a geyser.
"Don't!" she screamed, and would have struggled for the edge except for the two firm hands now pressing her arms to her sides.
"Lilly, for God's sake, get hold of yourself!"
"Let me go! Let me go!"
"Aw no; we don't leggo. It's a good stroke we both happened to spy you at the same minute. There's nothin' gives strength like a spell of the craziness. You'd 'a' jumped me alone, sure!"
"No! No! It wasn't that—God, not that! Tell me, Bruce, it wasn't—that."
"Of course it wasn't, Lilly."