ng herself as a chaste and temporary
substitute for the being whom, so she assumed, we both loved.

"And I," said Mr. Spenlove, after some business with a reluctant match,
"was not prepared, just then, to deny it. It would be absurd and
misleading to speak of a community of interest as love, yet we are
driven to discover some reason for what we call love apart from the
appeal of sex. Otherwise a pretty promiscuous kettle of fish! Where does
it begin and out of what does it grow? I'm not asking because I imagine
I shall get any answer. I'm inclined to believe the origin of love is
as obscure as that of life itself. I put the thought into words, because
at that moment, with that girl beside me, with the whole mundane
contraption of existence obliterated by a damp, foggy darkness, with the
moisture dripping hurriedly from invisible trees, and the immediate
future rendered ominous by Captain Macedoine's remarks, I felt a
conviction that I was closer to the solution of the problem than I had
ever been before. Or since, for that matter. Closer, I say. I was aware
of it without being actually able to take hold of it. Nor did I try to
take hold of it. I was still in that condition of mucilaginous
uncertainty toward my emotions in which most of us English seem to pass
our days. Foreigners are led to imagine we really take no interest in
the subject of love, for example, we are so scared of any approach to
the flames of desire. We compromise by floating down some economic
current into the broad river of matrimony. We have a genius for
emotional relinquishment. We--you--are born compromisers. We are so sure
that we shall never know the supreme raptures of passion that most of us
never do know them. And in any case we are so rattled by the mere
proximity of love that we never seem to get any coherent conception of
its nature. And I was not much of an exception. I have no supreme
secret to impart to you. As I have said, I am _par excellence_ a super
in the play. For a few memorable moments I was entrusted with the part
of a principal. It was not my fault, after all, that nothing came of it.
I sometimes wonder what _would_ have come of it, had not her sinister
destiny intervened....

"And then suddenly our feet struck timber that rang hollow and I made
out a slender jetty running into the fog. The girl moved ahead, drawing
me after her as she scanned the water with her other hand shading her
eyes. For a moment she stood listening an