It splashed into the still waters noisily. The swans swam away for a moment, then returned in curiosity. As Wooton came to the surface, he screamed out an oath and a cry for help. There was a boatman at the water-steps of the adjoining café, and in a few minutes he had pulled the choking man out of the water.
Wooton glared up to where Lancaster stood, still hot with anger. "Damn him," he thought, "if he were not so much stronger than I--" But the thought prevailed, and he told the boatman to row further down the canal.
To the waiters who had rushed up, Lancaster had been very cool. "_Es handelt sich um eine Wette_" he assured them. The whole thing had been so swift, so silent, that up to the moment of the splash in the water, there had been no eye-witnesses. He smiled at the waiters, paying his bill, and leaving a liberal _trinkgeld_. "_Mein freund hat die wette gewonnen_." Then he sauntered out with a final fierce glance in the direction of the boat that was turning the corner in the far distance, bearing away the scoundrelisms that lived in Wooton.
When he reached the marble circle of the fountain in the gardens of Sans-souci, Lancaster stopped, and addressed the spray, bitterly: "So that was why I was refused? Well, well! It seems, as I said a little while ago, that there are still new emotions in store for me." He watched the spray turn to mist that was almost invisible. "That is the way with ideals," he mused. Then he turned with a laugh in the direction of the terraces. "How absurd he looked, in the water!" He went on, laughing quietly.
The late John Stewart had, in his lifetime, achieved the distinction of being a model husband. He was devoted to his wife in more senses of the word than one; he was content to appear stupid so she might shine the more; content to slave at Mammon's shrine for his wife's sake. His fund of patience, of tolerance, of faith, had been infinite. It was in return for these things that his wife, as he lay in the dying moments of typhoid, whispered to him, with a tremendous suspicion that she had seemed blind to much of her fortune, "John, dear John, you musn't go, not yet. I--I--"
And though John assured her that he was going to get well, the next day found the promise broken.