and manly part? A red-blooded story, as they say? A story
in which I rescue a virtuous maiden from a gross plutocrat and marry
her, the light dying away on a close-up picture of me bending over her
while she holds up a replica of Jack's angel child? Why, even Jack would
not endorse a yarn like that. I have a very clear memory of him suddenly
spoiling the idyllic peace of a summer afternoon in the Mediterranean by
dashing his magazine down on the deck and uttering a profane objurgation
against what he called 'muck.' We were sliding blissfully along a
cobalt-blue floor, a floor without a ripple as far as the eye could see.
And there wasn't a woman or a baby, that we were aware of, within three
or four hundred miles. Peace, perfect peace. And Jack, instead of
realizing the extreme felicity of the actual moment, had been devouring
a red-blooded story in which one of these dashing, daring, clean-cut
merchant-captains had saved a beautiful virgin from a rascally
foreigner. There was a picture of her being saved. Splendid! Specially
written for people who love the sea!

"No, I am confessing myself before you. Truth can be served in many
ways, and this is mine. The fortunate being whose characters consist of
homogeneous heroism and are compact of courage seem to elude my
scrutiny. And even when I meet a clever and sensible genius like Florian
Kelly, I cannot honestly say I admire him unreservedly. He gets on. He
succeeds. He arrives. But people who arrive with the convenient
punctuality of a railway timetable do not interest me. They lack the
weaknesses which make men fascinating to my amateur fancy.

"And so I am prepared to admit that she did what, in a previous moment
of softness, I had asked her to do. She used me. She used me to feed her
craving for influence over men, her inherited and insatiable desire for
building up romantic and glamorous memories. Florian Kelly regarded her
efforts with admiring exasperation, regretting their interference with
his own designs upon our susceptibilities. Mrs. Evans had made a
commotion like a bird defending her nest. Young Siddons had been bowled
over, as he phrased it, and offered her something of no real value to an
artist--a tender and inexperienced loyalty. Such women are episodic.
Their lives are a string of jewels of varying value connected by a
thread of no value at all. And I confess that to me the shame of being
used by her was not apparent. She, the leading lady, selected me