leads people astray as far as passion sometimes. I know
you are not a cynic."

Marlow smiled his retrospective smile which was kind as though he bore
no grudge against people he used to know.

"Little Fyne's marriage was quite successful. There was no design at
all in it. Fyne, you must know, was an enthusiastic pedestrian. He
spent his holidays tramping all over our native land. His tastes were
simple. He put infinite conviction and perseverance into his holidays.
At the proper season you would meet in the fields, Fyne, a
serious-faced, broad-chested, little man, with a shabby knap-sack on his
back, making for some church steeple. He had a horror of roads. He
wrote once a little book called the `Tramp's Itinerary,' and was
recognised as an authority on the footpaths of England. So one year, in
his favourite over-the-fields, back-way fashion he entered a pretty
Surrey village where he met Miss Anthony. Pure accident, you see. They
came to an understanding, across some stile, most likely. Little Fyne
held very solemn views as to the destiny of women on this earth, the
nature of our sublunary love, the obligations of this transient life and
so on. He probably disclosed them to his future wife. Miss Anthony's
views of life were very decided too but in a different way. I don't
know the story of their wooing. I imagine it was carried on
clandestinely and, I am certain, with portentous gravity, at the back of
copses, behind hedges..."

"Why was it carried on clandestinely?" I inquired.

"Because of the lady's father. He was a savage sentimentalist who had
his own decided views of his paternal prerogatives. He was a terror;
but the only evidence of imaginative faculty about Fyne was his pride in
his wife's parentage. It stimulated his ingenuity too. Difficult--is
it not?--to introduce one's wife's maiden name into general
conversation. But my simple Fyne made use of Captain Anthony for that
purpose, or else I would never even have heard of the man. `My wife's
sailor-brother' was the phrase. He trotted out the sailor-brother in a
pretty wide range of subjects: Indian and colonial affairs, matters of
trade, talk of travels, of seaside holidays and so on. Once I remember
`My wife's sailor-brother Captain Anthony' being produced in connection
with nothing less recondite than a sunset. And little Fyne never failed
to add: `The son of Carleon Anthony, the poet--you know.' He used to
lower his voice for