“Poor soul!” I says, “haven’t you no home to go to?”
She looked at me with eyes that didn’t know me, and nodded her head.
“Then go to it,” I says, “for the love of Heaven.”
She nods and whispers, “I am going.”
“Then here’s a trifle to help you,” I says, “and I would spare more if I could, be sure.”
But she put my hand away with the money in it.
“This is the Last Act,” she says, not speaking to me, but loud and clear, as if she had been giving orders to someone at a distance. “Ring down the curtain!”
She clapped her hands above her head, and laughed that awful laugh, and, before I could breathe, jumped on the parapet, as lightly as a rope-dancer.
I screamed for help and caught at her poor clothing, but the rotten stuff seemed to melt in my hands, and Nick’s mother was gone—down in the black water!
I see it all, like a picture, as I write, and my dear boy a-trying to jump in after her, and me a-holding him in my arms, and the policemen that came running up.