She walked on, staggering. Fresh lines of street vanished in mist, and at one spot a grass lawn reared its unevenly clipped hedge.
"What sort of fields could they be, fields of shining asphodel?"
Ah! here was the bridge. The bridge!
Like a thief in the night it loomed in the darkness, above the wide, deserted spaces, where the lights of thousands of street-lamps dwindled into infinitesimal sparks. Somewhere in the dark sky shone the mild face of a full-moon. It was the illuminated clock of a railway station, the shadowy outline of which was swallowed up by the darkness. The hands pointed to half-past one.
Lilly saw it all dimly, as through a haze. She had sunk, paralysed with terror, against the corner of the wall, which she had intended to turn. Her heart throbbed so convulsively that she thought she must fall down dead.
"No; I can't do it!" she said to herself. And then came her own answer: "But I can--I will!"
She tried to stagger a few steps further, on to the bridge where the railings seemed to be waiting for her in malice; but her legs refused to carry her. The singing in her head rose to a roar of thunder. She stood hesitating on the dark, forsaken spot; with both hands she struggled to tear the score and crumple it into a ball, but it would not yield. Her "Song of Songs" was stronger than she was. Then, all at once, her feet began to move as if of their own accord, and took her step by step beyond the lamp-post to the railings. Yes, now the chains of the palisade were between her fingers. She could see nothing of the water below but a dark slimy shimmer. So murky was it that even the lamps were not reflected in it.
Now all she had to do was to jump--and it would be over.
"Yes, I'll do it! I'll do it!" a voice within her cried.
But "The Song of Songs" must go first. It would be in the way, and hinder her climbing over the railings.