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 She came up swimming. She had forgotten that she knew how to swim. She had not been in the water since she was twelve years old. Yet now she swam, vigorously and toward the bank. Even above humiliation and despair there rose in her a sense of power and triumph as she realized that she was master of the water.

Her long arms rising alternately above the muddy smoothness brought her in a few strokes close to the bank. When she was within a few feet of it she remembered suddenly that she had not come to the horsepond to take a swim. She relaxed her body and tried hard to sink. The next moment her feet touched the slimy ooze of the bottom and she saw that the water was not above her shoulders. Standing there breast high in the muddy water with the ooze welling up between her toes, she caught herself thinking that she was glad she had not put on her shoes, which were nearly new. Suddenly she began to laugh, wildly, hysterically into the rainy night.

As she waded to the bank, still laughing insanely, she cut her foot on some sharp object that lay at the bottom of the pond, a piece of old stovepipe perhaps or a broken bottle. She gave a sharp scream of pain, then laughed again.

But when she had climbed up the slippery incline of mud and crouched on the wet ground in the rain there was no hysteria left. Slow tears of misery and despair welled into her eyes.

She thought of trying once more. But what would be the use, she told herself dejectedly. She would only wade out again.

She began to shake with cold. Shiver after shiver passed through her and her teeth chattered. All at once she felt as if she had never been so cold in all her life. Still she crouched shuddering on the soggy ground and hugged herself in a vain attempt to get warm.

At last she got up and plodded slowly back to the house that she had thought never to see again. There she squeezed the water out of her hair and rubbed herself dry, piled her clothes in a dripping heap on the porch and turned the washtub over