The woman braced herself on the railing, back arched, and rocked side to side. The sound of laughing and splashing awoke in Lilian a feeling she’d not had in a long time. There was life where these two were — quite different from the life back on the picnic rock. Lilian had once felt so ready for life — then Walter Vail had happened to her and afterwards she no longer felt so ready. She thought, But if I were on that boat …

The man swam around to the side of the boat where a rope ladder dangled against the hull. Lilian got a peculiar, thrilled sensation to think he and she were in the same body of water. He climbed up the rungs, rounded into a threatening pose, and the woman’s rippling figure darted up to the bow. The man stalked her, big and dripping. She cried out, and wound herself around a bow stay with both arms. The man took hold of her shoulders, she cried out again — he was all wet! He tugged at her, but not with real effort. She was pleading, laughing. Then, with one harsh yank, he pulled her away from the stay. She screamed a high-pitched scream — they could probably hear it around the bend in the river. The screaming stopped, and while the woman still tried to free her arms, she was speaking to the man in a lower, more reasonable voice.

He let her go and rested on one leg, waiting, arms crossed. The woman hesitated, then crumpled forward, folding around herself, down onto her knees — Lilian’s heart beat, watching — then she crouched over completely and put her head to the deck and seemed to kiss the man’s feet. Her face turned up to him. Their laughter had changed. She knelt up and put her hands on his hips. Her elbows stuck out to the side so the flap of her sleeves fluttered down. The man glanced around him, and for one dazzling moment Lilian thought he spotted her dark seal head in the water, but his gaze swept by like a lighthouse beam — he did not see anyone. He turned back to the woman below him, his chin down to his chest, and touched the top of her head, guiding it. The head had begun to move.

She turned and swam back to her family, feeling something close to hope within her.

Look at you, said Mrs. Glover, observing Lilian’s dripping form. I should learn to go in. You look positively glowing.

Lilian went into the woods to change. As she toweled off, her skin white in the dappled pine shadow, she heard a woman’s scream coming from the direction of the white boat. Then she heard a splash. It was not as large a splash as the one the man had made. Its effect was to stun Lilian. It was the woman’s splash.