He walked ahead of her; the light, shining through the solferino lamp-shade, made a rosy nimbus about his bare head, but scarcely penetrated the fog. They went thus, all three, single file, along the path to the rickety wooden pier; at the end of it, they stood staring out into the mist. Twice he called, loudly, "Flora!"...
"Not a sound!" he said. "Is there any possible place in the house where she could have hidden herself? I mean, gone to sleep, or anything?"
"Not a place! I've looked everywhere. (He refused me.)"
They turned silently to go back. Just as they reached the path again Howard stopped—so abruptly that the lamp sent a jarring gleam into the white darkness.
"Fred—?"
She looked where he was looking, and caught her breath.
"No!" she said; "oh, no—no! It can't be!"
"Hold the lamp. I'll go and see—"
He climbed down the little bluff and waded into the sedge. The swaying mass that had looked like a stone until a larger wave stirred it, came in nearer the shore, caught on the shoaling beach, rolled, and was still. Frederica saw him bend over it, then try, frantically, to lift it in his arms. She put the lamp on the wharf. ("Don't touch it, Zip!"), slid, catching at tufts of grass, and bending branches—down the crumbling bank, plunged into the water up to her knees, and together, half pulling, half carrying that sodden bundle, they stumbled over the oozy bottom and through the sedges. The lifting it up the bluff was terrible; the dripping figure, sagging and bending, was so heavy!