She drew back trembling, and feeling faint.
"Do you know who the drowning person that I could not succour was?"
"No," whispered the girl.
"You."
"I?"
"Yes; you!"
The girl drew back another pace, and shuddered; she seemed about to faint.
"It was your face I saw, and you were in peril of death! and I--I was looking on and could not help you. Great heavens! fancy my finding you in want of aid in my view, and I not able to help you! All the horrible dreams of my life put together would not equal the anguish, the insupportable agony, of that."
He took out his handkerchief, breathed heavily--as though the memory of his nightmare was almost as bad as the nightmare itself--and then wiped his forehead laboriously with the handkerchief. After this he sat for a while, leaning back in his chair with a hand resting on each knee, as though to recover himself. In a few seconds he rose with the affectation of an affected briskness, intended to convey that he was struggling against emotions that overcame him. He said, with a wan smile:
"So I came straight here to have doors put on those hateful doorways. I knew you would laugh at me."