he same time that my own attitude toward this girl was
assuming an intensely personal character. My soul, or that fugitive and
ineluctable entity which does duty for a sailorman's soul, was stamping
up and down inside of me, waving its arms, protesting with all its
suddenly released energy against this man, denying him any knowledge of
what we call love, at all. I wanted to assail him with denunciations for
the monstrous self-esteem which sentenced those delicate creatures to a
shadowy and volitionless stagnation. I accused him of the destruction of
their immortal souls, forgetting in my romantic warmth that in all
probability he didn't believe they had any. But of course, being an
Englishman, I remained perfectly quiescent and inarticulate. I believe I
reached for another cigarette before picking up my hat. And I dare say I
smiled. We have peculiar ways of defending ourselves in such crises. He
assumed a puzzled air as he held out his hand.

"'Englishmen are ice,' he remarked, 'where women are concerned. I have
frequently observed it. _Sang froid_ as we say in French. The phrase
must have been inspired by the contemplation of an Englishman....'

"'And we shook hands. I said nothing, which doubtless confirmed him in
his illusions about us. But the point is, I was equally mistaken about
him, I could not believe him capable of what we call love. I was, as I
say, mistaken. But as I followed him out to the front of his house,
where his patient minions waited with lanterns which shed flickering
rays over enormous shrubs and about the trunks of tall cypresses, and
stood at length beside a fantastic barouche, with a sleepy driver on the
box, I had a moment of illumination. I asked myself why I applied this
test of love to a man like him, a man in the midst of extraordinary
predicaments--a man who perhaps had suffered the pangs of hell for love
and had recovered, who quite possibly had run up and down the whole
gamut of human emotions while I was idiotically spending my years
tinkling on a couple of notes. The stupid injustice of my interior anger
came home to me, and I sought again for the reason why I demanded of him
my own occidental idealism. The answer struck me as unexpectedly as a
sudden blow. It was because of my own attitude toward the girl. As I
took my seat in the carriage and reached out mechanically to shake hands
once more, I saw her as clearly as though she were there before me, the
bought chattel of a cultivated