‘I didn’t know it,’ she said; ‘I never felt you touch me.’

‘But I did!’ he insisted.

‘Well, if you did, you didn’t do it on purpose.’

Into this trap he fell.

‘Yes, I did!’ he declared. ‘I hated you: I pushed you in because I wanted you to drown.’

Reassured, she saw that once more he was telling lies. It comforted her to find that he had not got out of her depth; her old Jonathan, the Jonathan she knew, was safely hers again.

‘Then why did you try to save me?’ she inquired.

‘I didn’t try; not really. I only pretended to.’

‘Who was that for?’

‘Myself, I suppose. It would have been easier to think of afterwards, you see: that I—tried.’