Jane Adeane.

She could remember her name. She could breathe its syllables, still, but she did not know how long the name would last. It seemed to her that it had begun to flicker and dim and that when at last her name went dark, then her life would be lost.

In the frozen world she now inhabited, she remembered thinking of herself as ‘her own lifeboat’ in her great tallness. Perhaps she had even boasted about this, that in some way, her height set her apart from everybody else and would never let her drown. Yet now she knew that the freezing water would soon close over her head.

Images of her past rose up like faithful ghosts, to keep her company for a while, and then faded away. She saw the beautiful symmetries of the Baths and herself as their Angel, keeping watch, as the trusting people – the smaller people – floundered in the sulphurous water, all their movements impotent and slow, but their faces turned upwards towards her, begging for mercy, trusting her to save them. Yet it seemed that she could not save them, for when next she saw them they were in the Paris Morgue, set out for show on marble slabs, with water pouring into their closed eyes and out of their mouths and from between their legs, to rush past their feet and be sucked into the vortex of a metal drain.

She saw Marco. The little boy was swimming in the Baths, swimming without fear, not asking anything of her, but travelling round and round merrily splashing, and she hoped that this vision would last and keep her company for a while. She tried to remain still, to stop herself from shivering, so that Marco would stay as he was, buoyant in his life, destined to go on and grow into a man. But then the vapour rising from the Hot Bath began to grow dense. It formed itself into a white cloud around Marco and though Jane searched and searched, she could no longer see him.

So then it seemed to her that if Marco was gone, and the cloud obscuring him appeared to be growing larger and larger, it would soon engulf her, too, and then her end would be reached at last. She remembered that, for most of her life, she had had the notion of some momentous Thing towards which she was travelling. She had thought of it as something which would bring her happiness and renown, but now she understood that the Thing was death. It was within her reach. In moments, it would come …

But she allowed herself one last thought, about her own foolishness, walking through life so tall and blithe, convinced that some grand destiny awaited her, when all the time she had merely been striding towards oblivion. It almost made her laugh: the Angel of the Baths, wearing her white robes, so convinced of her singularity and her power, obliterated by a white cloud, impotent to save herself from joining the manufacturer of glue and all the other flawed and decadent people on their journey to nothingness.