"You think you're like the wise Uncle in the Sunday School books, don't you ?" "I know I am," I said.
Whereupon she laughed again, finished the strawberry, and changed the conversation.
There seemed to be no foreshadowing of tragedy in that.

I had known her (like many of her kind) to proclaim the rottenness of the Universe when she was off her stroke at golf, or when a favourite young man did not appear at a dance.

I attributed no importance to it.

But the next day I remembered.

What was she doing after half-past ten o'clock, when she had bidden her father and mother goodnight, on the steep and lonely bank of the canal, about a mile and a half away?
No one had seen her leave the house.