"Schopenhauer's right," he muttered; "they're hypocrites, every one of them. Night of it, Madeleine de Maupin, and now baby talk—don't go together the two. I've done with it, I know the sort: pose as fast and bite you if you say anything. I'll get some books and go on the upper deck. I shan't see her there."
He descended to his cabin, picked up a couple of books at random, and went above, where he sat down amongst the boats, and, ignoring the luncheon bugle, tried to concentrate his attention on Lombroso. "It's too hot for this stuff," he muttered, after reading the same paragraph half a dozen times without taking in a word. "I'll try the other, Shelley; I don't know why I bought the thing except for the short biography at the beginning." He read this through and lay back reflecting. "Woman, always woman in these fellows' lives," he murmured; "domestic unhappiness seems inseparable from genius." He began to turn over the pages. "Epipsychidion—now what does that mean I wonder?" He began to read, and, bored at first, soon became absorbed, the flaming passion in the lines stirring something within him that had been hitherto unawakened.
"We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames. Oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured: ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable."
Graeme laid down the volume. His eyes were shining, and his face had become very pale.
"Nothing banal about that," he murmured; "no married sameness, no dreary domesticity. It's all free and lawless, as it ought to be. God, the thing's maddened me; I can't keep still!" He sprang up, hesitated for a moment, and then hurrying below looked furtively up and down the decks. He searched the saloon, the music-room, the library, but all to no purpose; that which he sought was not there. Gradually he was seized with anger, then anxiety, and finally a sick longing. Restlessly he wandered about the ship, now trying to read, now pacing the decks, till at length the dinner-bugle sounded and he went below to dress.
"She shan't escape me afterwards," he thought, watching her across the crowded saloon; "we'll sit together away from the world, and the romance of our lives shall begin." Stara, nevertheless, did escape him, despite his vigilance, and, wait though he did till after the decks were in darkness, she appeared no more.
Sick with disappointment and a bitter sense of humiliation, he at length went down to his cabin, and, flinging himself on the bed, tried hard to sleep. But the bells clanged the hours away and sleep refused to come, till at last he rose from the tumbled bed and sat up, irresolution in his eyes.
"Sanders told me not to," he muttered; "he said for me it was fatal, but what am I to do? I shall go mad if I don't sleep. I don't care—I will," and Hector switched on the light, dragged out a dressing-case and took out a small phial containing tabloids.
"Thank heaven," he murmured drowsily, half an hour later; "better than all the natural sleep in the world. Stara..." His eyes closed, and he fell asleep at last.
CHAPTER XIII