rm which for them contains the soul of the
whole world in all its beauty, perfection, variety and infinity. It
must be extremely pleasant. But felicity was denied to Roderick
Anthony's contemplation. He was not a common sort of lover; and he was
punished for it as if Nature (which it is said abhors a vacuum) were so
very conventional as to abhor every sort of exceptional conduct.
Roderick Anthony had begun already to suffer. That is why perhaps he
was so industrious in going about amongst his fellow-men who would have
been surprised and humiliated, had they known how little solidity and
even existence they had in his eyes. But they could not suspect
anything so queer. They saw nothing extraordinary in him during that
fortnight. The proof of this is that they were willing to transact
business with him. Obviously they were; since it is then that the offer
of chartering his ship for the special purpose of proceeding to the
Western Islands was put in his way by a firm of shipbrokers who had no
doubt of his sanity.

He probably looked sane enough for all the practical purposes of
commercial life. But I am not so certain that he really was quite sane
at that time.

However, he jumped at the offer. Providence itself was offering him
this opportunity to accustom the girl to sea-life by a comparatively
short trip. This was the time when everything that happened, everything
he heard, casual words, unrelated phrases, seemed a provocation or an
encouragement, confirmed him in his resolution. And indeed to be busy
with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection,
fears, doubts--all these things which stand in the way of achievement.
I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort
of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.

And Anthony was extremely careful in preparing for himself and for the
luckless Flora, an impossible existence. He went about it with no more
tremors than if he had been stuffed with rags or made of iron instead of
flesh and blood. An existence, mind you, which, on shore, in the thick
of mankind, of varied interests, of distractions, of infinite
opportunities to preserve your distance from each other, is hardly
conceivable; but on board ship, at sea, _en tete-a-tete_ for days and
weeks and months together, could mean nothing but mental torture, an
exquisite absurdity of torment. He was a simple soul. His hopelessly
masculine ingenuousness i