g but darkness, nothing save an aching void.

Nevertheless, as he came up from the jetty and stood for a moment in the
road which followed the curve of the shore, and listened to the sounds
of the village that nestled in the valley like a few grains of light in
a great bowl of darkness, he was conscious of something which he could
not successfully analyze or separate from his tumultuous emotions. He
put it to himself, crudely enough, when he muttered: "I shall have to
take a hand." He was discovering himself in the act of submitting once
more to outside authority. Looking back over his life, he saw that as
his hitherto invincible habit of mind. He saw himself turning round to
call the captain. And now he was the captain. And Evanthia's enigmatic
gaze was perhaps the expression of her curiosity. She was above all
things in the world, stimulating. He found himself invigorated to an
extraordinary degree by his intimacy with that resourceful, courageous,
and lovable being, who would never speak of the future, waving it away
with a flick of her adorable hand and looking at him for an instant with
an intent, unfathomable stare. And as he started to climb the hillside,
setting the loose stones rolling in the gullies and rousing a dog to
give forth a series of deep ringing notes like a distant gong, he saw
that the initiative rested with himself. He would have to take a hand.
It would not do for him to imagine they could remain like this in almost
idyllic felicity. The ship would be unloaded in a week or so and nothing
would remain but to let the water into her after-hold and sink her,
according to the commandant's orders, in the fair way. But he could not
let himself sink back into a slothful obscurity. He had no interior
resources beyond his almost desperate passion for this girl who seemed
to accept him as an inevitable yet transient factor in her destiny, a
girl who conveyed to him in subtle nuances a chaotic impression of
sturdy fidelity and bizarre adventurousness. That was one of the secrets
of her personality--the maintenance of their relations upon a plane
above the filth and languor of the flesh, yet unsupported by the
conventional props of tradition and honour. For she had so just a
knowledge of the functions and possibilities of love in human life that
he could never presume upon the absence of those props. It amazed him
beyond his available powers of expression, that in giving him herself
she gave more than he had e