"'Well, not on such a lavish scale,' I admitted. 'Then there would be no harm in my going to see her where she lives?'
"'Oh, sure! She wants you to. I'll go to-morrow, eh? And tell her you will come? What time?'
"'What about the afternoon?'
"'Yes. And now I'll tell you how to get there.'
"'You'd better write it down,' I said, 'when we come to a light.'
"As we approached the road running parallel to the curve of the Gulf the air became heavy and moist. It was October, with a chill in the midnight air. And for another thing, it was as quiet as any country road of an autumn night at home. Our feet padded softly on the matted leaves lying wet on the path when we turned into the main road, and through the gardens of the villas came a faint breath of air laden with salt and the dead odours of the river delta. We seemed to be alone in the world, we two, as we hurried along in the darkness, and the girl pressed more closely to me as though for protection against unseen dangers. And yet, so crystal clear was her soul, that there lay on my mind a delicious fancy that she was deliberately impersonating the woman who had talked to her of me, that she was offering herself as a chaste and temporary substitute for the being whom, so she assumed, we both loved.
"And I," said Mr. Spenlove, after some business with a reluctant match, "was not prepared, just then, to deny it. It would be absurd and misleading to speak of a community of interest as love, yet we are driven to discover some reason for what we call love apart from the appeal of sex. Otherwise a pretty promiscuous kettle of fish! Where does it begin and out of what does it grow? I'm not asking because I imagine I shall get any answer. I'm inclined to believe the origin of love is as obscure as that of life itself. I put the thought into words, because at that moment, with that girl beside me, with the whole mundane contraption of existence obliterated by a damp, foggy darkness, with the moisture dripping hurriedly from invisible trees, and the immediate future rendered ominous by Captain Macedoine's remarks, I felt a conviction that I was closer to the solution of the problem than I had ever been before. Or since, for that matter. Closer, I say. I was aware of it without being actually able to take hold of it. Nor did I try to take hold of it. I was still in that condition of mucilaginous uncertainty toward my emotions in which most of us English seem to pass our days. Foreigners are led to imagine we really take no interest in the subject of love, for example, we are so scared of any approach to the flames of desire. We compromise by floating down some economic current into the broad river of matrimony. We have a genius for emotional relinquishment. We—you—are born compromisers. We are so sure that we shall never know the supreme raptures of passion that most of us never do know them. And in any case we are so rattled by the mere proximity of love that we never seem to get any coherent conception of its nature. And I was not much of an exception. I have no supreme secret to impart to you. As I have said, I am par excellence a super in the play. For a few memorable moments I was entrusted with the part of a principal. It was not my fault, after all, that nothing came of it. I sometimes wonder what would have come of it, had not her sinister destiny intervened....
"And then suddenly our feet struck timber that rang hollow and I made out a slender jetty running into the fog. The girl moved ahead, drawing me after her as she scanned the water with her other hand shading her eyes. For a moment she stood listening and then she uttered a melodious contralto shout for someone named 'Makri!' I can recall, as I repeat the word, the name of that obscure and unknown boatman, the very timbre of her voice, the poise of her form, and the firm flexure of her fingers on mine. And for that moment, as we stood waiting and the boat came slowly and silently toward us with the standing figure of the oarsman lost in the higher fog, I had an extraordinary impression, clear and diminutive as a vignette, that I loved her and that she, in some mysterious fashion, could love me without jeopardizing her own destiny. A folly, of course; but I insist it gave me an inkling, that brief illumination, of the actual nature of love."
At this momentous declaration Mr. Spenlove suddenly relapsed into a pause that became a silence, as though he were still under the influence of that illumination of which he spoke, and were pondering it to the extent of forgetting his audience altogether. And it was a suspicion of this amiable idiosyncrasy which caused the surgeon to make a remark. Mr. Spenlove gave a grunt of assent.
"Yes," he said. "You are right. But this is not a supreme secret. I can only offer you the suggestion that what you call a love affair is really only a sequence of innumerable small passions. Yes, for a moment, you know, I saw them plainly enough—a procession of tiny, perfect things, moments, gestures, glances, and silences each complete and utterly beautiful in itself, preoccupied with its own perfection. Scientific? Not at all. Intuition and nothing else. One did not indulge in science with that magical girl holding one's hand. Science is only a sort of decorous guesswork at the best, guesswork corroborated by facts. In the presence of a woman like that, you know! At this distance of time, my friends, I can tell you that this girl, the chance acquaintance of a chance evening, imposed her personality upon me as the very genius of the tender passion. Yet I had but that one rhythmical moment by which to judge—and the boat, a long and elegantly carved affair of cedar wood decorated with brass bulbs, slid softly alongside, a tiny lantern glowing between the thwarts; like some perilous bark of destiny, and she a charming, enigmatic spirit watching with gracious care my departure for an alluring yet unknown shore.