h ruby gleams all along its shaft. That jewelled ornament, which
I remember often telling Rita was of a very Philistinish conception (it
was in some way connected with a tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue
place in my memory, tried to come into some sort of significance even in
my sleep. Often I dreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in the
gloom like a nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect
round arm to take an arrow of gold out of her hair to throw it at me by
hand, like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always
woke up before it struck. Always. Invariably. It never had a chance.
A volley of small arms was much more likely to do the business some
day--or night.

* * * * *

At last came the day when everything slipped out of my grasp. The little
vessel, broken and gone like the only toy of a lonely child, the sea
itself, which had swallowed it, throwing me on shore after a shipwreck
that instead of a fair fight left in me the memory of a suicide. It took
away all that there was in me of independent life, but just failed to
take me out of the world, which looked then indeed like Another World fit
for no one else but unrepentant sinners. Even Dominic failed me, his
moral entity destroyed by what to him was a most tragic ending of our
common enterprise. The lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning
thunder-clap--and, one evening, I found myself weary, heartsore, my brain
still dazed and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the
railway station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable than
another, involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties
with all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a
discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a
respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel of
his own. I must confess that I slunk out of the railway station shunning
its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast of a man. I
hadn't any money in my pocket. I hadn't even the bundle and the stick of
a destitute wayfarer. I was unshaven and unwashed, and my heart was
faint within me. My attire was such that I daren't approach the rank of
fiacres, where indeed I could perceive only two pairs of lamps, of which
one suddenly drove away while I looked. The other I gave up to the
fortunate of this earth. I didn't believe in my power of persuasion.