"'Yes, that's right. But what you really need, you know, is what old-fashioned people in England call the consolation of religion.'
"'That is a novel prescription for a doctor,' I retorted.
"'Perhaps it is,' he admitted, holding out his hand, 'but depend upon it, nothing else will do.'
"'You know the usual stereotyped advice is to get married?'
"'You would still need the consolation of religion,' he remarked, dryly. 'No, the fact is, real love is too uncertain, too uncommon.'
"'Surely,' I protested.
"'A fact,' he insisted, simply. 'I once picked up the works of a young Arab poetess who afterward slew herself in her lover's arms. And the burden of all her songs was that the only logical culmination of love, if it be genuine, is death. I offer you that for your Western mind to ponder. Good-bye and good luck.'
"And there I was," said Mr. Spenlove, lighting a fresh cigarette, "with a whole brand-new set of consolatory impressions to brood upon, left to pursue my way back to the ship and take up a safe and humdrum existence once more. The episode was over, and it would be unwise to try and make it anything else. And I had been presented with a novel and extremely impracticable test of love which preoccupied by its stark beauty. I had the sudden fancy, as I climbed the ruined wall that runs down from the Citadel and started to thread the narrow streets toward the port, of that Arab poetess, buried in a fragrant and silent garden among cypresses, and her lover, whom I pictured an infidel, keeping her in memory by a bronze statuette. I saw it on a table in his room, a tiny thing of delicate art, the exquisite creature depicted at the supreme moment of death and passion. For of course the lover would not adopt that extreme view of his obligations toward love. Full of regret he would continue a mediocre existence....
"And yet," said Mr. Spenlove, standing up and looking out from under bent brows at the faint lifting of the darkness beyond the headland, "and yet, my friends, as I picked my way down toward the port, it occurred to me to wonder whether our Western views are so full of ultimate wisdom as we imagine; whether there may not be something in life which we miss because we are so careful of life. At this moment we are vigorously striving to impose our Occidental conceptions of happiness and justice and government upon a good many millions to whom our arrogant assumptions of the Almighty's prerogatives is becoming an incomprehensible infliction. It wouldn't do, I suppose, to suggest that so far from being a matter of mathematical progression, life has a secret rhythm of its own. And while I was working away at this alarming line of thought, I was passing along narrow streets crammed with evidences of desires other than ours. I passed women veiled save for their sombre, enigmatic eyes. I passed the doors of temples where men lay prostrate upon strips of carpet, the saffron-coloured soles of their bare feet gleaming distinct in the sunlight. I was assailed by troops of children whose tremendous vitality and unabashed enterprise made me tremble with forebodings for the future. Was it possible, I wondered, if our system didn't give the less admirable and the cunning among us a long advantage? Which they were beginning to take, I added. I found myself endeavouring to take soundings and find out, so to speak, how far we were off shore. Mind you, it wasn't simply that as far as I could see we were busily producing an inferior social order. I was trying to think out what the ultimate consequences would be if we continued to dilute and rectify and sterilize our emotions. I wanted to see beyond that point, but I found I couldn't. I hadn't the power, and I'm afraid that nowadays I lack the courage as well.
"And then I lost myself awhile in a bazaar where I saw sundry gentlemen from the country hurriedly disposing of short, blunt rifles at a reckless discount for cash, and eventually I came out into a steep street which led down to the sea, a street full of an advancing swarm of armed men and banners and carriages and the shrill blare of trumpets pulsed by the thudding of drums. A squad of motley individuals in civilian garb with red sashes across their bosoms and rifles in their hands marched ahead of a brass band and breasted the slope. At intervals came carriages containing the leaders of this new régime. I observed the burly person in the fez and wearing a silver star. He sat alone in an open landau, his frock coat gathered up so that his muscular haunches could be seen crushing the salmon-coloured upholstery, his massive calves almost bursting out of the cashmere trousers. He held himself rigidly upright, his hand at the salute, his big black eyes swivelling from side to side as the crowd surged up and applauded. He had been a driver on the railroad, I read later on, when his photo, with the silver star, appeared in our illustrated papers at home as one of the leaders of the Party of Liberty and Progress. Still an engine-driver, I should say, recalling him as he rode past that morning, not particularly attentive to signals or pressure gauges either, if what we hear be true. Broad-based he sat there, leaning slightly forward, the tight blue tunic creasing across the small of his strong, curved back, his short, thick feet encased in elastic side boots, his long nails curving over the ends of his fingers like claws. And it occurred to me, as I stood on the marble steps of that office building and watched him being borne upward to the Citadel where no doubt he rendered substantial aid to the cause of Liberty and Progress, that it is to the credit of the despots and cut-throats of history that they were perfectly honest in their behaviour. They sought dominion and got it. They sought gold and got it. They sought the blood and the concubines of their enemies and got them. And they rarely deemed it worth while to pretend that they were apostles of liberty and progress. That is one of our modern improvements.... I was musing thus as the platoons of ragged revolutionaries shuffled past, when I found myself gazing at M. Nikitos, seated with crossed legs in the corner of a shabby one-horse carriage, and raising an unpleasant-looking silk hat. He was, I take it, one of the secretaries of the Committee of Liberty and Progress, possibly their future international expert. It suddenly occurred to me that there is a gigantic brotherhood in the world, a brotherhood of those who have never willingly done a day's work in their lives and never intend to. We have been so mesmerized by the phrase the Idle Rich, that we have completely forgotten that sinister and perilous pestilence, the Idle Poor. Looking at M. Nikitos, with his hair standing straight up on the lower slopes of his head like fir trees on the sides of a mountain and his opaque black eyes staring with fanatical intensity at nothing in particular, one was irresistibly reminded of a fungus. The incipient black beard, which was making its appearance in patches on his chin and jaws, lent a certain strength to the impression of fungoid growth, and encouraged a dreadful sort of notion that he was beyond the normal and lovable passions of men. He was, you will remember, a pure man. He sat there, raising that horrible silk hat, exposing, with the mechanical regularity of an automaton his extraordinary frontal configuration, the apotheosis of undesirable chastity. And he had formed a resolution 'which nothing could kill.' I don't doubt it. The resolutions of an individual like that are as substantial and indestructible as he. They persist, in obedience to a melancholy law of human development, from one generation to another. They are as numerously busy just now, under the 'drums and tramplings' of the conflict, as maggots in a cheese. They have the elusive and impersonal mobility of a cloud of poisonous gases. They restore one's belief in a principle of evil, and they may scare us, ultimately, back from their wonderful Liberty and Progress, into an authentic faith in God.