“Poor fellow—nice-looking fellow he is too—a woman, I suppose.”
Giles rose softly from his seat and went out of the room. He experienced a sudden feeling of shame, of disgust with himself. He told himself bitterly that he had no monopoly of trouble, that he should make himself a stock for the chatter of any casual bystander. Either of these two men, who had been talking, had more claim to compassion than himself.
He strode on angrily, till, on the outskirts of the town, a desolate expanse of sand and of brackish water confronted him in cheerless immensity. He stood there for a long time, while the hot wind swept past him.
A sense of his own insignificance was upon him. What did his emotions matter? What was he? A tiny fragment in the eternal scheme, which the scorching wind of life had dried and passed by, a fragment as hard, as unmingled, and as lonely as the grains of sand which he rubbed between his hands. After all, was he not himself a single grain in a wilderness of bitter sand?
Life was a weary business; he had made a mess of his, and nothing mattered much now! He hated himself for his lack of pluck. He turned on his heel presently, and went back through the town, and got on board.
A gentle grime was over everything, and they were cleaning down. He shut himself up in his cabin, and lay on his bunk trying to read. Two hours later the Rangoon got up steam and entered the canal.
He went in to dinner as usual. After all, there is a law that a man must eat, and another law that his emotions shall not stand still, but shift always back and forwards. He made spasmodic efforts to talk during dinner, but he felt both dull and reckless, and they were not a success.
When he went up, the decks were cleared for dancing, an awning was spread over them, Chinese lanterns swayed gently from poles, and, here and there, seats were placed cunningly in dark corners.
The ship glided smoothly along the narrow belt of water, with a slight list to port.
Giles, leaning over the rail, smoked, and watched the light of the summer evening slowly give way, and sink into the distant sand mountains of the West.