f disaster? It may be, of course, that what we call love
is only the bright shadow on earth of some ulterior celestial passion;
but life is too short and too unsatisfactory for one to cultivate such
an exalted faith. And we crave a little logic of Fate when we suffer.
If, for example, the crazy Nikitos, true to his word, had suddenly
appeared before us in that narrow street off the _Via Egnatia_, and
destroyed her as many were destroyed that day, one could submit as to a
sinister but tangible manifestation of human folly. But to have happened
as it did ... there was no sense in it. It was as though that girl, who
had been from her birth a waif, the unhappy sport of spurious emotions,
had angered Fate by stumbling upon something genuine after all, and was
dismissed into the darkness in a moment of irascible petulance. And I
suppose that I, if a man had any inherited right to expect that the law
of compensation should be put in operation in his favour, should feel a
grievance. But as I have remarked more than once, my attempts to be
anything more than a super in the play have not been a shining success.
So we can leave that out. There is no need to lose faith in Compensation
because it is somewhat delayed....

"But even from the standpoint of a detached and isolated event, there
was nothing about it that a rational being could lay hold of for
comfort. It was just one blind evil chance out of a million possible
ones. I did not even see it happen. I was doing something which has no
connection with my past or following existence--watching an Ottoman
soldier, probably an Anatolian, crumple up and expire in the gutter of
the _Via Egnatia_. I was watching with the close attention one
inevitably bestows upon one's first violent death--as a matter of fact,
I had never seen any one die, even in bed--and remaining securely wedged
in a doorway a few yards up the street. I remember him as he paused for
an instant in a sort of ecstasy, his face turned up toward the harsh
bright glare of a naked electric bulb that hung from a trolley pole, his
body momentarily poised as though defying his destiny. And then he
twisted about in an extraordinarily complicated manner and fell, all of
a piece, while a number of extremely active persons tore past him
without any sound save a popping noise far down the street. That would
be near the market, I reflected in my doorway. And as we should have to
go that way in order to reach the ship, it struck me