ck 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 fellowmen 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 is displayed in a touching way by his care to
procure some woman to attend on Flora. The condition of guaranteed
perfect respectability gave him moments of anxious thought. W