sneer, `Waste time enough over it too,' followed perhaps by
the bitter retort from the other party, `You seemed to like it well
enough though, playing the fool with that chit of a girl.' Something of
that sort. Don't you see it--eh..."

Marlow looked at me with his dark penetrating glance. I was struck by
the absolute verisimilitude of this suggestion. But we were always
tilting at each other. I saw an opening and pushed my uncandid thrust.

"You have a ghastly imagination," I said with a cheerfully sceptical
smile.

"Well, and if I have," he returned unabashed. "But let me remind you
that this situation came to me unasked. I am like a puzzle-headed chief
mate we had once in the dear old _Samarcand_ when I was a youngster.
The fellow went gravely about trying to `account to himself'--his
favourite expression--for a lot of things no one would care to bother
one's head about. He was an old idiot but he was also an accomplished
practical seaman. I was quite a boy and he impressed me. I must have
caught the disposition from him."

"Well--go on with your accounting then," I said, assuming an air of
resignation.

"That's just it." Marlow fell into his stride at once. "That's just
it. Mere disappointed cupidity cannot account for the proceedings of
the next morning; proceedings which I shall not describe to you--but
which I shall tell you of presently, not as a matter of conjecture but
of actual fact. Meantime returning to that evening altercation in
deadened tones within the private apartment of Miss de Barral's
governess, what if I were to tell you that disappointment had most
likely made them touchy with each other, but that perhaps the secret of
his careless, railing behaviour, was in the thought, springing up within
him with an emphatic oath of relief. `Now there's nothing to prevent me
from breaking away from that old woman.' And that the secret of her
envenomed rage, not against this miserable and attractive wretch, but
against fate, accident and the whole course of human life, concentrating
its venom on de Barral and including the innocent girl herself, was in
the thought, in the fear crying within her, `Now I have nothing to hold
him with...'"

I couldn't refuse Marlow the tribute of a prolonged whistle "Phew! So
you suppose that..."

He waved his hand impatiently.

"I don't suppose. It was so. And anyhow why shouldn't you accept the
supposition. Do you look upon governesses as creatures