ces. `Sensation at
any cost,' is their secret device. All the virtues are not enough for
them; they want also all the crimes for their own. And why? Because in
such completeness there is power--the kind of thrill they love most..."

"Do you expect me to agree to all this?" I interrupted.

"No, it isn't necessary," said Marlow, feeling the check to his
eloquence but with a great effort at amiability. "You need not even
understand it. I continue: with such disposition what prevents women--
to use the phrase an old boatswain of my acquaintance applied
descriptively to his captain--what prevents them from `coming on deck
and playing hell with the ship' generally, is that something in them
precise and mysterious, acting both as restraint and as inspiration;
their femininity in short which they think they can get rid of by trying
hard, but can't, and never will. Therefore we may conclude that, for
all their enterprises, the world is and remains safe enough. Feeling,
in my character of a lover of peace, soothed by that conclusion I
prepared myself to enjoy a fine day."

And it was a fine day; a delicious day, with the horror of the Infinite
veiled by the splendid tent of blue; a day innocently bright like a
child with a washed face, fresh like an innocent young girl, suave in
welcoming one's respects like--like a Roman prelate. I love such days.
They are perfection for remaining indoors. And I enjoyed it
temperamentally in a chair, my feet up on the sill of the open window, a
book in my hands and the murmured harmonies of wind and sun in my heart
making an accompaniment to the rhythms of my author. Then looking up
from the page I saw outside a pair of grey eyes thatched by ragged
yellowy-white eyebrows gazing at me solemnly over the toes of my
slippers. There was a grave, furrowed brow surmounting that portentous
gaze, a brown tweed cap set far back on the perspiring head.

"Come inside," I cried as heartily as my sinking heart would permit.

After a short but severe scuffle with his dog at the outer door, Fyne
entered. I treated him without ceremony and only waved my hand towards
a chair. Even before he sat down he gasped out:

"We've heard--midday post."

Gasped out! The grave, immovable Fyne of the Civil Service, gasped!
This was enough, you'll admit, to cause me to put my feet to the ground
swiftly. That fellow was always making me do things in subtle discord
with my meditative temperament. No wond