Fautes de mieux, why should he not send Aura a valentine? He had not written to her, he had virtually said he would not; but a valentine--especially a valentine by wire as this must be--was a very impersonal affair.
He strolled over to the rocky point, behind which, in a natural harbour, lay a fair-sized English sailing-boat. Beyond, at anchor, rode a steam yacht; but its fires were out--its crew had gone off that morning in a double lateen-sailed felucca to Rhodes for some festival--St. Valentine's day, no doubt.
But for this it would have been easy to steam over to the telegraph office.
There was the sailing-boat, however, and the weather was perfect. He looked out seawards critically. There was a certain hardness of outline in that deep blue horizon; otherwise the calm of fourteen days might well be beginning.
It would be a lovely sail. Twenty miles or so over these ripples, with just enough warm southerly wind behind one to blow the boat straight to the telegraph office without a tack! As for the return journey the felucca's crew would have to make that, and bring the yacht for him next morning. He liked Rhodes; it was a quaint old town full of memories, pagan and Christian.
Five minutes afterwards he was afloat, the sheet looped within reach, the tiller set steady towards a pale-blue cloud which lay upon the north-west horizon.
It was the most perfect of mornings. The boat lay over a trifle to the wind, which was stronger beyond the lee of the island, and sent a little half-apologetic tinkling, bubbling laugh of water along the side as it slid through the waving lines of ripple.
"Let me pass! good people," it seemed to say. "Let me laugh! I have a purpose--you have none. Ha--ha--ha!"
So, unheeding of the ripples, might the unchanging Purpose behind all things break through the little waves of the world and laugh at their disturbance.
Ned Blackborough lit a cigarette--a good sound, opium-soddened Egyptian cigarette such as his soul loved--and set himself deliberately to day-dreams. It was becoming more and more a temptation for him to do this, for he was only just beginning to realise the intense pleasure he derived from it! A sensual, purely Esthetic pleasure for the most part, though every now and again.... Yes! every now and again he left even the super-sensual part of him behind, and lost himself utterly. In what, he did not know. He only knew that It was there, and He was forgotten.