The rich dirge-like music of these Shakespearian rhymes—placed so quaintly under their strange title of “Threnos,” at the end of the familiar volume—had a soothing influence upon them both at that moment.
It seemed to Philippa as if, by her utterance of them, they both came to share some sad sweet obsequies over the body of something that was neither human nor inhuman, something remote, strange, ineffable, that lay between them, and was of them and yet not of them, like the spirit-corpse of an unborn child.
They reached the bank of the river. The waters of the Loon were high and, through the darkness, a murmur as if composed of a hundred vague whispering voices blending together, rose to their ears from its dark surface.
They moved down close to the river’s edge. A small barge, with its long guiding-pole lying across it, lay moored to the bank. Without a moment’s delay—as if the thing had been prepared in advance to receive him—Adrian jumped into the barge and seized the pole.
“Come!” he said quietly.
She was too reckless and indifferent to everything now, to care greatly what they did; so without a word of protest, or any attempt to turn his purpose, she leapt in after him and settling herself in the stern, seized the heavy wooden rudder.
The tide was running sea-ward, fast and strong, and the barge, pushed vigorously by Adrian’s pole away from the bank, swept forward into the darkness.
Adrian, standing firmly on his feet, continued to hold the pole, his figure looming out of obscurity, tall and commanding.
The tide soon swept them beyond the last houses of the town and out into the open fens.