All the same, Florence waited and hoped. “Now he’s a third of the way to the place above the lagoon,” she assured herself. “Now half—now two-thirds.
“Now!”
She caught her breath. Something was happening. The man was seen to teeter.
“If he falls—” She set her lips tight. “If he does, if he falls and kills some one, I shall never forgive myself. A knife!” She all but said it aloud. “A knife with a diamond-studded hilt—what’s that to a human life?”
But the man had regained his poise. He was tripping along as before.
“He—he’s almost there,” she sighed, as a low prayer escaped her lips. “He—he must be over the water. Thank—thank God!”
But, after all, what did this astounding person propose to do?
Did he plan it, or was it the work of Fate? Perhaps no one will ever know. Be that as it may, just as he reached a spot above the center of the lagoon the man was seen once more to waver.
This time he did not regain his poise, but with a movement that seemed half a leap, half a fall, launched himself into mid-air.
Florence closed her eyes. She opened them at once to find the Chinaman still going down.