The moonlight played in the ripples as they closed over her face; it surely was not water, but liquid silver, fluid diamond.
He endeavored to hold her head under the surface. She did not struggle. She did not even move. But suddenly a pang shot through him, as though he had been pierced by another bullet. The bandage about his wound gave way, and the hot blood broke forth again.
Jonas reeled back in terror, lest his consciousness should desert him, and he sank for an instant insensible, face foremost, into the water.
As it was, where he knelt, among the water-plants, they were yielding under his weight.
He scrambled away, and clung to a distorted pine on the summit of a sand-knoll.
Giddy and faint, he laid his head against the bush, and inhaled the invigorating odor of the turpentine. Gradually he recovered, and was able to stand unsupported.
Then he looked in the direction where Mehetabel lay. She had not stirred. The bare white arms were exposed and gleaming in the moonlight. The face he did not see. He shrank from looking towards it.
Then he slunk away, homewards.