MY mother looked in at the library door, and disturbed me over mybooks.

"I have been hanging a little picture in my room," she said."Come upstairs, my dear, and give me your opinion of it."

I rose and followed her. She pointed to a miniature portrait,hanging above the mantelpiece.

"Do you know whose likeness that is?" she asked, half sadly, halfplayfully. "George! Do you really not recognize yourself atthirteen years old?"

How should I recognize myself? Worn by sickness and sorrow;browned by the sun on my long homeward voyage; my hair alreadygrowing thin over my forehead; my eyes already habituated totheir one sad and weary look; what had I in common with the fair,plump, curly-headed, bright-eyed boy who confronted me in theminiature? The mere sight of the portrait produced the mostextraordinary effect on my mind. It struck me with anoverwhelming melancholy; it filled me with a despair of myselftoo dreadful to be endured. Making the best excuse I could to mymother, I left the room. In another minute I was out of thehouse.

I crossed the park, and left my own possessions behind me.Following a by-road, I came to our well-known river; so beautifulin itself, so famous among trout-fishers throughout Scotland. Itwas not then the fishing season. No human being was in sight as Itook my seat on the bank. The old stone bridge which spanned thestream was within a hundred yards of me; the setting sun stilltinged the swift-flowing water under the arches with its red anddying light.

Still the boy's face in the miniature pursued me. Still theportrait seemed to reproach me in a merciless language of itsown: "Look at what you were once; think of what you are now!"

I hid my face in the soft, fragrant grass. I thought of thewasted years of my life between thirteen and twenty-three.

How was it to end? If I lived to the ordinary life of man, whatprospect had I before me?

Love? Marriage? I burst out laughing as the idea crossed my mind.Since the innocently happy days of my boyhood I had known no moreof love than the insect that now crept over my hand as it lay onthe grass. My money, to be sure, would buy me a wife; but wouldmy money make her dear to me? dear as Mary had once been, in thegolden time when my portrait was first painted?

Mary! Was she still living? Was she married? Should I know heragain if I saw her? Absurd! I had not seen her since she was tenyears old: she was now a woman, as I was a man. Would she know_me_ if we met? The portrait, still pursuing me, answered thequestion: "Look at what you were once; think of what you arenow!"

I rose and walked backward and forward, and tried to turn thecurrent of my thoughts in some new direction.

It was not to be done. After a banishment of years, Mary had gotback again into my mind. I sat down once more on the river bank.The sun was sinking fast. Black shadows hovered under the archesof the old stone bridge. The red light had faded from theswift-flowing water, and had left it overspread with onemonotonous hue of steely gray. The first stars looked downpeacefully from the cloudless sky. The first shiverings of thenight breeze were audible among the trees, and visible here andthere in the shallow places of the stream. And still, the darkerit grew, the more persistently my portrait led me back to thepast, the more vividly the long-lost image of the child Maryshowed itself to me in my thoughts.

Was this the prelude of her coming back to me in dreams; in herperfected womanhood, in the young prime of her life?

It might be so.

I was no longer unworthy of her, as I had once been. The effectproduced on me by the sight of my portrait was in itself due tomoral and mental changes in me for the better, which had beensteadily proceeding since the time when my wound had laid mehelpless among strangers in a strange land. Sickness, which hasmade itself teacher and friend to many a man, had made itselfteacher and friend to me. I looked back with horror at the vicesof my youth; at the fruitless after-days when I had impiouslydoubted all that is most noble, all that is most consoling inhuman life. Consecrated by sorrow, purified by repentance, was itvain in me to hope that her spirit a nd my spirit might yet beunited again? Who could tell?

I rose once more. It could serve no good purpose to linger untilnight by the banks of the river. I had left the house, feelingthe impulse which drives us, in certain excited conditions of themind, to take refuge in movement and change. The remedy hadfailed; my mind was as strangely disturbed as ever. My wisestcourse would be to go home, and keep my good mother company overher favorite game of piquet.

I turned to take the road back, and stopped, struck by thetranquil beauty of the last faint light in the western sky,shining behind the black line formed by the parapet of thebridge.

In the grand gathering of the night shadows, in the deepstillness of the dying day, I stood alone and watched the sinkinglight.

As I looked, there came a change over the scene. Suddenly andsoftly a living figure glided into view on the bridge. It passedbehind the black line of the parapet, in the last long rays ofthe western light. It crossed the bridge. It paused, and crossedback again half-way. Then it stopped. The minutes passed, andthere the figure stood, a motionless black object, behind theblack parapet of the bridge.

I advanced a little, moving near enough to obtain a closer viewof the dress in which the figure was attired. The dress showed methat the solitary stranger was a woman.

She did not notice me in the shadow which the trees cast on thebank. She stood with her arms folded in her cloak, looking downat the darkening river.

Why was she waiting there at the close of evening alone?

As the question occurred to me, I saw her head move. She lookedalong the bridge, first on one side of her, then on the other.Was she waiting for some person who was to meet her? Or was shesuspicious of observation, and anxious to make sure that she wasalone?

A sudden doubt of her purpose in seeking that solitary place, asudden distrust of the lonely bridge and the swift-flowing river,set my heart beating quickly and roused me to instant action. Ihurried up the rising ground which led from the river-bank to thebridge, determined on speaking to her while the opportunity wasstill mine.

She neither saw nor heard me until I was close to her. Iapproached with an irrepressible feeling of agitation; notknowing how she might receive me when I spoke to her. The momentshe turned and faced me, my composure came back. It was as if,expecting to see a stranger, I had unexpectedly encountered afriend.

And yet she _was_ a stranger. I had never before looked on thatgrave and noble face, on that grand figure whose exquisite graceand symmetry even her long cloak could not wholly hide. She wasnot, perhaps, a strictly beautiful woman. There were defects inher which were sufficiently marked to show themselves in thefading light. Her hair, for example, seen under the large gardenhat that she wore, looked almost as short as the hair of a man;and the color of it was of that dull, lusterless brown hue whichis so commonly seen in English women of the ordinary type. Still,in spite of these drawbacks, there was a latent charm in herexpression, there was an inbred fascination in her manner, whichinstantly found its way to my sympathies and its hold on myadmiration. She won me in the moment when I first looked at her.

"May I inquire if you have lost your way?" I asked.

Her eyes rested on my face with a strange look of inquiry inthem. She did not appear to be surprised or confused at myventuring to address her.

"I know this part of the country well," I went on. "Can I be ofany use to you?"

She still looked at me with steady, inquiring eyes. For a moment,stranger as I was, my face seemed to trouble her as if it hadbeen a face that she had seen and forgotten again. If she reallyhad this idea, she at once dismissed it with a little toss of herhead, and looked away at the river as if she felt no furtherinterest in me.

"Thank you. I have not lost my way. I am accustomed to walkingalone. Good-evening."

She spoke coldly, but courteously. Her voice was delicious; herbow, as she left me, was the perfection of unaffected grace. Sheleft the bridge on the side by which I had first seen herapproach it, and walked slowly away along the darkening track ofthe highroad.

Still I was not quite satisfied. There was something underlyingthe charming expression and the fascinating manner which myinstinct felt to be something wrong. As I walked away toward theopposite end of the bridge, the doubt began to grow on me whethershe had spoken the truth. In leaving the neighborhood of theriver, was she simply trying to get rid of me?

I at once resolved to put this suspicion of her to the test.Leaving the bridge, I had only to cross the road beyond, and toenter a plantation on the bank of the river. Here, concealedbehind the first tree which was large enough to hide me, I couldcommand a view of the bridge, and I could fairly count ondetecting her, if she returned to the river, while there was aray of light to see her by. It was not easy walking in theobscurity of the plantation: I had almost to grope my way to thenearest tree that suited my purpose.

I had just steadied my foothold on the uneven ground behind thetree, when the stillness of the twilight hour was suddenly brokenby the distant sound of a voice.

The voice was a woman's. It was not raised to any high pitch; itsaccent was the accent of prayer, and the words it uttered werethese:

"Christ, have mercy on me!"

There was silence again. A nameless fear crept over me, as Ilooked out on the bridge.

She was standing on the parapet. Before I could move, before Icould cry out, before I could even breathe again freely, sheleaped into the river.

The current ran my way. I could see her, as she rose to thesurface, floating by in the light on the mid-stream. I ranheadlong down the bank. She sank again, in the moment when Istopped to throw aside my hat and coat and to kick off my shoes.I was a practiced swimmer. The instant I was in the water mycomposure came back to me--I felt like myself again.

The current swept me out into the mid-stream, and greatlyincreased the speed at which I swam. I was close behind her whenshe rose for the second time--a shadowy thing, just visible a fewinches below the surface of the river. One more stroke, and myleft arm was round her; I had her face out of the water. She wasinsensible. I could hold her in the right way to leave me masterof all my movements; I could devote myself, without flurry orfatigue, to the exertion of taking her back to the shore.

My first attempt satisfied me that there was no reasonable hope,burdened as I now was, of breasting the strong current runningtoward the mid-river from either bank. I tried it on one side,and I tried it on the other, and gave it up. The one choice leftwas to let myself drift with her down the stream. Some fiftyyards lower, the river took a turn round a promontory of land, onwhich stood a little inn much frequented by anglers in theseason. As we approached the place, I made another attempt (againan attempt in vain) to reach the shore. Our last chance now wasto be heard by the people of the inn. I shouted at the full pitchof my voice as we drifted past. The cry was answered. A man putoff in a boat. In five minutes more I had her safe on the bankagain; and the man and I were carrying her to the inn by theriver-side.

The landlady and her servant-girl were equally willing to be ofservice, and equally ignorant of what they were to do.Fortunately, my medical education made me competent to directthem. A good fire, warm blankets, hot water in bottles, were allat my disposal. I showed the women myself how to ply the work ofrevival. They persevered, and I persevered; and still there shelay, in her perfect beauty of form, without a sign of lifeperceptible; there she lay, to all outward appearance, dead bydrowning.

A last hope was left--the hope of restoring her (if I couldconstruct the apparatus in time) by the process called"artificial respiration." I was just endeavoring to tell thelandlady what I wanted and was just conscious o f a strangedifficulty in expressing myself, when the good woman startedback, and looked at me with a scream of terror.

"Good God, sir, you're bleeding!" she cried. "What's the matter?Where are you hurt?"

In the moment when she spoke to me I knew what had happened. Theold Indian wound (irritated, doubtless, by the violent exertionthat I had imposed on myself) had opened again. I struggledagainst the sudden sense of faintness that seized on me; I triedto tell the people of the inn what to do. It was useless. Idropped to my knees; my head sunk on the bosom of the womanstretched senseless upon the low couch beneath me. Thedeath-in-life that had got _her_ had got _me_. Lost to the worldabout us, we lay, with my blood flowing on her, united in ourdeathly trance.

Where were our spirits at that moment? Were they together andconscious of each other? United by a spiritual bond, undiscoveredand unsuspected by us in the flesh, did we two, who had met asstrangers on the fatal bridge, know each other again in thetrance? You who have loved and lost--you whose one consolation ithas been to believe in other worlds than this--can you turn frommy questions in contempt? Can you honestly say that they havenever been _your_ questions too?