Then he spoke tenderly to her. What he said I could not hear—I only heard the tone.
'O sir!' she cried, in piteous entreaty, 'do let me go. Why should a wretched creature like me be forced to live? It's no good to you, sir. Do let me go.'
'Come here,' he said, drawing her close to the fence. 'Stand up again on the beam. Look down.'
She obeyed, in a mechanical kind of way. But as he talked, and she kept looking down on the dark mystery beneath, flowing past with every now and then a dull vengeful glitter—continuous, forceful, slow, he felt her shudder in his still clasping arm.
'Look,' he said, 'how it crawls along—black and slimy! how silent and yet how fierce! Is that a nice place to go to down there? Would there be any rest there, do you think, tumbled about among filth and creeping things, and slugs that feed on the dead; among drowned women like yourself drifting by, and murdered men, and strangled babies? Is that the door by which you would like to go out of the world?'
'It's no worse,' she faltered, '—not so bad as what I should leave behind.'
'If this were the only way out of it, I would not keep you from it. I would say, “Poor thing! there is no help: she must go.” But there is another way.'
'There is no other way, sir—if you knew all,' she said.
'Tell me, then.'
'I cannot. I dare not. Please—I would rather go.'