"It is difficult to convey the sense of overwhelming vastness which oppresses men in such chambers. You might not feel it so. My quarters are limited, as you may imagine. Even a millionaire-passenger gets no more than a cottager ashore. And Rebecca's place had small rooms full of plush furniture and ship-models in bottles and catamarans in glass-cases, assegais and Japanese junk. Ugly and comfortable. But this room of Doctor West's was terrifying to me. I couldn't see the ceiling at all save that, just above where his reading lamp glowed green on an immense table, there floated some far-off drapery and a plunging knee—a fresco lost in the gloom. The walls were painted, on stucco, into panels and each panel had a bunch of flowers tied with interminable ribbons in the centre. You don't like that sort of thing? Well, it is indigenous there, anyway, and you can't put shiny dadoes and humorous borders on a forty-foot wall, can you?
"And yet, you know, I saw in a moment, before I had opened my mouth, what lay at the back of all this. I could see that was only a variation of the traditional hermit's cave, a modern hole in a marble cliff. This tall, high-shouldered man with his spade-shaped beard and ragged smoking jacket, the cotton wool oozing from the quilting and the pockets burst at the corners, had recluse written all over him. He walked over the half dozen rugs that lay between the door and his encampment behind the table and left me forlorn, twiddling my hat and pulling at my coat, somewhere in outer darkness. He was nervous, yet anxious to show he was at ease. I had disturbed him. Once he looked behind him at a door with a black curtain before it, as though he contemplated flight to his bedroom. Suddenly he started off on a journey into the darkness and returned with a chair, a gilt thing with a rounded knob of upholstery for a seat. And he asked me gently to sit down.
"A recluse! I had that idea in my mind all the time I was telling him my story, as I am telling it to you, as far as it concerned my girl, and I watched him with a certain abstract curiosity, as well as a very lively anxiety. For I couldn't think how he came into it. In rapid succession I thought of the possibilities. In a novel, no doubt, he would be her father or a wicked uncle. Or perhaps he had, in a professional capacity, we may say, concocted some villainy! But then his flag wouldn't be P or any other letter. Villains don't carry on the humdrum business of attending ships in port for a lump sum down. Yes, as I told him my story I was wondering what his was. And I was conscious also that I was increasing my experience. Here was a recluse. They do not grow on bushes. It stands to reason a young man will not come across many. A young man grows so accustomed to reading about things nowadays that he may quite possibly never miss the actual experience. I could not do that. I have always had some sort of touchstone by which I could keep a hold on the difference between reality and mere imagination. There were many things, common things if you like, which I had never experienced, and I meant to experience them. Nothing dismayed me. I had in me at that time a singular passion for life. No doubt this showed in my face, as I have seen it in others—a thirsty look, with a rather over-confident manner. And Doctor West seemed almost to draw back from me as though I were dangerous, explosive. I dare say I was to him. He had left all that, had sunk into a sort of intellectual torpor, insulated, as one may say, from the great dynamos of human life.
"'But why,' he repeated, after looking at me nervously for a long time and listening to my words. 'Why do you wish to marry her?'
"'Well,' I said, 'I suppose it's because we are in love.'
"'But do you realize the risks?' he asked gently, moving his papers and books about. 'I'm assuming, of course, that you are a gentleman,' he went on. 'Always best to marry in one's own class, don't you think?' He studied my card for a while and looked up suddenly.
"'But suppose I've considered all that,' I suggested. 'Suppose it isn't so easy to know one's class, as you call it.'
"'Oh,' said he, getting up and walking off into the darkness. 'Oh, if one is a gentleman ...' His voice tailed off.
"'But,' I persisted, 'I'm not sure I am a gentleman. Really I'm not.'
"'What!' The solitary word came to me out of the shadows with startling distinctness. I nodded. I sat there on that spindley, gim-crack chair and stared contemptuously at the paraphernalia of learning and refinement on the great table, at the silver cigarette box, the bronze inkstand, the sphinxes and scarabs and cenotaphs, the bits of papyrus under glass, the books and magnifying glasses. Stared at them and defied them. I nodded.