An asphalt walk led in festoons from high parky nooks that sheltered
couples, down to the water-slapped edge of docks, where the tidey surf
had a thick, inarticulate lisp, as if what it had to say might only be
comprehended from the under side.
At one of the lowermost curves of the walk, the width of a brace of
railroad tracks between, a coal dock jutted out into the river. Across
these forbidden tracks, indeed, as if they did not exist,
Lilly wandered.
At the last inch of dock, so that the water licked up at her shoes,
Lilly stood poised. Not, it is true, with the diver's blade thrust of
arms, but rather the unskilled, the indeterminate movement of one
vaguely prompted from the unfathomable places of the heart.
It was upon that move that something, a terrifying restraint, laid hold
of Lilly's jangling nerve ends.
"Hey there! None o' that to-night!"
A dockman's hand, hairy as an Airedale, had her by the arm, and
somewhere at her brow, cooling it, the fine hand of Bruce Visigoth,
pressing her against him, and at that touch Lilly's hysteria shot up
like a geyser.
"Don't!" she screamed, and would have struggled for the edge except for
the two firm hands now pressing her arms to her sides.
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