“Hush, hush!” said I. “Calm yourself.”

But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, “Oh, the river!” over and over again.

“I know it’s like me!” she exclaimed. “I know that I belong to it. I know that it’s the natural company of such as I am! It comes from country places, where there was once no harm in it⁠—and it creeps through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable⁠—and it goes away, like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled⁠—and I feel that I must go with it!” I have never known what despair was, except in the tone of those words.

“I can’t keep away from it. I can’t forget it. It haunts me day and night. It’s the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that’s fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!”