blinded me to her
identity. Perhaps, on the other hand, she had really changed, for she
was now twenty-five instead of twenty-one--ominous years in a woman's
life. At any rate, I had changed for a certainty. While I still
struggled against the bondage her personality imposed upon me, I no
longer struggled in vain. I had been drawing stores of strength from
toil, from the sea, from the bizarre phantasmagoria which the countries
of the East had unrolled before my eyes. And I think she saw this at
once, for she had no sooner introduced me to her companion, an actor who
had recently married an eminent actress twice his own age, than she made
our excuses and proposed an immediate departure.

But it was too late. As we drove in a swiftly moving taxi-cab through
the gay streets of West London, and on out to Richmond, where she was
staying with friends, I knew that in the end I should be free. She was
soon to be married, and in her satirical gray eyes I saw a desire to
hold me permanently in a condition of chivalrous abnegation. On these
terms I might achieve some sort of destiny without endangering her
dominion. But I felt the winds of freedom blowing from the future on my
face. I did not see then how it would come about: I did not even
imagine the long years of moody and unprofitable voyaging which lay
before me. But she saw that her own ideal of masculine modern womanhood
no longer appeared to me the supremely evocative thing she claimed it to
be, so that in time, in time, her power would depart. I can see her now,
turned slightly away from me in the cab, regarding me over her shoulder
from beneath that enormous hat, studying even then how she could keep me
true to that worn-out creed, weighing who knows what reckless plans in
her cool, clever brain....

But it was a long time! For years yet I saw her before me whenever I
thought of other women, and her disparaging, slightly satirical smile
would interpose itself and hold me back from experimenting with fresh
emotions. Even when war came and our spiritual and emotional worlds came
crashing about our ears, her power waned but did not depart. I had no
choice between this shadowy, reluctant fidelity and a descent into
regions where I had neither the means nor the temperament to prosper.
And so it went, until suddenly one day the whole thing came to an end.
You will remember how I abruptly abandoned the story upon which I was
engaged, and told you I had begun upon a tale you ha