The man had not gone away. She had her back to him, but she heard him run a few steps along the frost-bitten bank, and she knew it was to make his work sure.
John became a dead weight upon her. She struggled fiercely with him, but he dragged her heavily to her knees, and fell from her grasp, exposing himself to full view. There was a click.
With a wild cry she flung herself down upon his body, covering him with her own, her face pressed against his.
"We will die together! We will die together!" she gasped.
She heard a low curse from the bank. And suddenly there was a turmoil of voices, and a rushing and flaring of lights all round her, and then a sharp cry like the fire-engines clearing the London streets.
"I must get him to the side," she said to herself, and she beat her hands feebly on the ice.
Away in the distance, in some other world, the band struck up, "He's a fine old English gentleman."
Her hands touched something wet and warm.
"The thaw has come at last," she thought, and consciousness and feeling ebbed away together.
