The image of Edith Croyden filled my mind. In vain I told myself that she was a stranger to me: that—beyond her longitude—I knew nothing of her. In some strange way this girl had seized hold of me and dominated my senses.
The night was very calm and still, with great stars in a velvet sky. In the darkness I could hear the water lapping the edge of the raft.
I remained thus in deep thought, sinking further and further into the tar-bucket. By the time I reached the bottom of it I realized that I was in love with Edith Croyden.
Then the thought of my wife occurred to me and perplexed me. Our unhappy marriage had taken place three years before. We brought to one another youth, wealth and position. Yet our marriage was a failure. My wife—for what reason I cannot guess—seemed to find my society irksome. In vain I tried to interest her with narratives of my travels. They seemed—in some way that I could not divine—to fatigue her. "Leave me for a little, Harold," she would say (I forgot to mention that my name is Harold Borus), "I have a pain in my neck." At her own suggestion I had taken a trip around the world. On my return she urged me to go round again. I was going round for the third time when the wrecking of the steamer had interrupted my trip.
On my own part, too, I am free to confess that my wife's attitude had aroused in me a sense of pique, not to say injustice. I am not in any way a vain man. Yet her attitude wounded me. I would no sooner begin, "When I was in the Himalayas hunting the humpo or humped buffalo," than she would interrupt and say, "Oh, Harold, would you mind going down to the billiard-room and seeing if I left my cigarettes under the billiard-table?" When I returned, she was gone.
By agreement we had arranged for a divorce. On my completion of my third voyage we were to meet in New Orleans. Clara was to go there on a separate ship, giving me the choice of oceans.
Had I met Edith Croyden three months later I should have been a man free to woo and win her. As it was I was bound. I must put a clasp of iron on my feelings. I must wear a mask. Cheerful, helpful, and full of narrative, I must yet let fall no word of love to this defenceless girl.
After a great struggle I rose at last from the tar-bucket, feeling, if not a brighter, at least a cleaner man.
Dawn was already breaking. I looked about me. As the sudden beams of the tropic sun illumined the placid sea, I saw immediately before me, only a hundred yards away, an island. A sandy beach sloped back to a rocky eminence, broken with scrub and jungle. I could see a little stream leaping among the rocks. With eager haste I paddled the raft close to the shore till it ground in about ten inches of water.
I leaped into the water.