“Very well, then; I very often don’t leave my cabin.”
I was holding the hand she had extended to say good-by, but she slipped it away and was going.
“Then tell me this—just this,” I begged. “How is it that we’re both on the same ship? That didn’t happen by accident?”
Whether she refused to answer my question or whether it didn’t reach her I couldn’t tell. All I got in response was a long, oblique regard—the fleeing farewell look of Beatrice Cenci—as she carried her secrets and mysteries away with her.
CHAPTER XXI
So my celibacy of the will was threatened. I mean by that that I found myself with two main objects of thought instead of one. Having vowed myself to a cause, a woman had supervened with that pervasiveness of presence with which a perfume fills a room. I might still vow myself to the cause, but I shouldn’t serve it as I had meant to, with heart and senses free.
Or should I?
The question fundamentally was that. Could I at a time like this divide my allegiance as I should be obliged to divide it by falling in love and being married? Or ought I, in deference to the work I was to do, suppress this old passion and smother the problems and curiosities it had begun to rouse in me?