"And she became extraordinarily light-hearted when I said I would. She ran in and got her hat and parasol. She came out prinking and clicking her high-heeled shoes, and she placed her hand as lightly as a feather upon my arm. Perhaps she really needed my support down that steep, narrow street, but I read into that delicate gesture a profound moral significance. And I can tell you another thing," added Mr. Spenlove with some vehemence. "I found myself regarding the whole sum of human grief with moody suspicion. I recalled a fine phrase I had once read of 'the great stream of human tears falling always through the shadows of the world,' and I dismissed it as fudge. I was half tempted to wonder whether the world, which had grown out of stage coaches and sailing ships and Italian opera, had not grown out of grief at the same time. And by heavens, what has happened during the past two or three years has only solidified that grisly conviction. We seem to have been born just in time to see the end of the spiritual world, the final disintegration of the grand passions of the human soul. Oh, we keep up a certain pretence from force of habit, but we are being forced to realize that the philosophers were on the right track when they foretold the subjugation of man by the instruments of civilization. Or you can say that the tempo of our modern life is too fast to permit our accepted notions of the elemental comedy and tragedy of existence to register with any permanence. The newspaper scribbler talks incessantly of Armageddon, heroism, patriotism, sacrifice, and so on, and we wait in vain for our hearts to respond to their invocations. We discover with surprise that we are as incapable of profound sorrow as of a high resolve. We are swept on out of sight. We forget, or we die and are forgotten. We are beginning to wonder now and again whether all our boasted science and mechanical discoveries are not evil after all, whether the old monks were such bigoted fools as we have been taught to believe when they denounced knowledge as a danger to the soul. But we have very little time in which to reflect. We rush on to fresh improvements, and we find ourselves less admirable than before.
"And so, as we went down that cold, remorseless street of shuttered houses, away from the chamber of death, we were silent, but we thought not at all of death. Perhaps we did at the turning into the Via Egnatia, for the dead soldier was still lying where he had fallen in the shallow channel that ran just there by an orchard wall. He was lying on his face, with his hands close to his head, and his pose gave one a peculiar impression that he was looking with intense curiosity into some subterranean chamber. His attitude was not at all suggestive of death. It was quite easy, looking across at him, to imagine him suddenly leaping to his feet, beckoning us to come and have a peep through his newly found hole. The soldiers we encountered hurriedly descending the street from the Citadel and running across to vanish into the White Tower were much more like dead men, strange to say. Their faces were pallid with lack of sleep, and they bore the hard-lipped stare of disciplined men who have suddenly lost faith in their commanders. They paid no more attention to us than to the stones of the roadway. They ran past us laden with bread and vegetables, hastily corralled from friendly houses built about the Citadel, for these were mostly families with military traditions. One carried on his curved back a newly slaughtered sheep, the bright red blood dribbling from the gashed gullets, and the animal's eyes looking back at us with an expression of intelligent comprehension, as though it were fully aware of the whole business. In the clear light of early morning there was a good deal of the automaton about all of us. And as we crossed the road where it debouched upon the quays and started to walk out of the city by the deserted barrier, a short and determined-looking person in a tight-fitting blue tunic looked out of the door of the Tower and eyed us critically. And I really believe the only reason why he neglected to tell one of his men to put an experimental bullet into us was the fact that the girl still had her hand on my arm. And she carried her parasol. We walked on and presently we were out of sight of the sea and the Tower. Across the blue sky large companies of billowing white clouds were gathering from the mouth of the Gulf. Suddenly Miss Sarafov murmured without taking her eyes from the ground.
"'Was that man dead?'
"Now," said Mr. Spenlove, "you may call me fanciful and overwrought, but I read into that simple question a secret desire to accustom my mind to the idea of death as a frequent and common sort of affair. I looked at her suspiciously and she raised her eyes to mine full of a clear feminine candour. She may have known that my morose taciturnity came from a consciousness that she had divined the fundamental flaw in my emotional equipment and was using it for her own purposes, but she did not show it. And while I was debating the question with myself, I heard her add, in a shy, delicate tone, 'There is a little garden just here, on the water.'
"And from that moment I let her have her way and followed her lead. We crossed the street. I heard her say it was too early to go to the Rue Paleologue, which might be true, but struck me as irrelevant. And then my attention was drawn to a high square house standing in a dusty yard and decorated with a long board bearing the words École Universelle.
"'I was at school there before we went to America,' Miss Saratov remarked, poking at the place with her parasol. 'It was a good school then, very solid instruction,' she added, 'but now it isn't any good.'
"'Is the instruction no longer sufficiently solid?' I asked.
"'The mistresses are all progressives,' she returned. 'Here is the little garden,' and we came out upon a small place of grass and shrubs, flanked by a pair of kiosques joined by a wooden balustrade. It was deserted, as one might expect at that hour; but Miss Sarafov remarked that we might have coffee and rusks if I liked, and walked across the sward to a door in a neighbouring house. I went into one of the kiosques and sat facing the calm waters of the Gulf. Facing something else, too, which was anything but calm. For I was unable to rid myself of a fear that when this episode was completed I should be in a very difficult position. I should be like a man who had been struggling in the waves, only to find himself suddenly flung up high and dry upon a desolate and inhospitable shore, where he would in all probability perish of privation. And then, if you like to carry the parable a little further, this man becomes aware of a siren calling him back into the watery tumult.... And you know, I doubted my ability to manage the situation if I were to go back. One needs a special education, or let us say, temperament, to deal successfully with sirens. And as Miss Sarafov came into the kiosque and sat down beside me, I felt the immediate necessity of making my position clear. I began at once to tell her that the events of the previous day had changed everything. I should in all probability never come to Saloniki again. And while I felt it my duty to see Captain Macedoine and also to return Miss Sarafov herself to her mother, I should then go back to the ship for good.
"'And I shall never see you again,' she exclaimed, looking out across the Gulf, in a kind of magical abstraction.
"'A small privation,' I murmured. She rose suddenly and stood by the door of the kiosque, her sturdy and extraordinarily vital figure silhouetted against the shining water.