ow I had never been in love before, and I took the disease pretty
severely. And I should say that I took it rather curiously: but you
shall judge, for I'll set out the credit side of the account just as
plainly as the other.

"I hated the man, as you know: I loved the woman, as I've told you.
But--here's the puzzle--strange to say, at that time, and for a long
while, these two passions did not conflict or even contend at all, as
neither did they help. I couldn't hate Farrell any worse than I did
already. If I'd hated him just a little less, I might have killed
him, to get him out of the way. But I give you my word, I never
thought of shortening the chase in that way. Farrell, you may say,
had become necessary to me: by this time I couldn't think of living
without him. . . . Now I know what's crossing your mind. I might
have piled up the torture on Farrell, and at the same time have
played on that other passion, by setting myself to debauch Santa.
No, I'm not complaining. You shall have as bad to condemn before
I've done, so you needn't apologise. But, as it happens, I wasn't
that sort of blackguard. Moreover, it wouldn't have worked, anyhow.
Santa was as good as her name--

"No, damn it! I will clear myself of _that_! . . . You'll understand
that I loved the woman, and--well, in the old days, as you'll do me
the justice to remember, I hated men who played loose among women.
As for 'making love' to Santa--oh, I can't explain to you, who never
saw her, how utterly that was beyond question on either side. . . .
Almost white she was, with the blood of the Incas in her--blood of
Castile, too, belike--and yet all of a woman, with funny rustic ways
that turned at any moment to royal. . . . And she loved Farrell--my
God!

"I wonder now if she guessed--guessed at the time, I mean. They say
that women always guess; which in these matters is as good as
knowing. . . . But I'm holding up my story."

"The _Eurotas_ went down in something like 36, south latitude,
longitude 105 and a half west. That's as near as I make it: that is
to say, some three or four hundred miles from any known land save
Easter Island, which lay well away north and to windward, for we were
down where the main winds set between W. and N. That's as close as I
can give it to you. In seafaring matters I leave seamen to their own
job, and don't worry about reckonings and day's runs. It's their
business to take me, mine to trust their skill. You