nsmigrations.
One arrived at conclusions by a species of intuition. Life ceased to be
an irritating infliction and became a grand panorama.

And yet in the present situation what did it all amount to? With its
well-known but inexplicable rapidity, rumour had already gone round the
ship hinting at a trip to the Persian Gulf. If that were so, Mr.
Spokesly, by all the laws of probability, would never be in Saloniki
again. Yet he was quite confident that he would be in Saloniki again. He
had no clear notion of what he proposed to do when he reached
Alexandria, but he was determined to manage it somehow. He had a feeling
that he was matched against fate and that he would win. He did not yet
comprehend the full significance of what he called fate. He was unaware
that it is just when the gods appear to be striving against us that they
need the most careful watching lest they lure us to destroy ourselves.
He was preoccupied with the immediate past; which he did not suspect is
the opiate the gods use when they are preparing our destinies. And while
he was sure enough in his private mind that he would get back to
Saloniki somehow, the slow movement of the _Tanganyika_ as she came up
on her anchor gave the episode an appearance of irrevocable
completeness. He was departing. Somewhere among those trees beyond the
White Tower, trees that shared with everything else in Saloniki an
appearance of shabby and meretricious glamour, like a tarnished and
neglected throne, was Evanthia Solaris. And the ship was moving. The
anchor was coming up and the ship was going slow ahead. Mr. Spokesly
looked down at the water that was gushing through the hawse-pipe and
washing away the caked mud from the links and shackles. As far as he
could see he was going back to Alexandria, back by devious ways to
London, and Evanthia Solaris, with her amber eyes, her high-piled glossy
black hair and swift, menacing movements, would be no more than an
alluring memory. And as the anchor appeared and the windlass stopped
heaving while the men hosed the mud from the flukes, Mr. Spokesly began
to realize, with his new-found perception, that what he took to be
confidence was only desire. He was imagining himself back there in
Saloniki; a man without ties or obligations. He saw an imaginary
Spokesly seizing Evanthia and riding off into the night with her, riding
into the interior, regardless of French sentries with their stolid faces
and extremely long bayonets. As he r