e more, as yet, than a placing of facts. To trade upon her
magnificent generosity of affection, and seek refuge in those
outstretched arms now, with the mark of the branding-iron so sensibly
upon him, appeared to him of all contemptible doings the most radically
contemptible. Obviously it was impossible to go back. He must go on
rather--out of sight, out of mind. Fantastic schemes of disappearing,
of losing himself, far away, in remote and nameless places, among the
coral islands of the Pacific or the chill majesty of the Antarctic
seas, offered themselves to his imagination. The practical difficulties
presented by such schemes, their infeasibility, did not trouble him. He
would sever all connection with that which had been, with that which
had made for good equally with that which had made for evil. By his own
voluntary act and choice he would become as a man dead, the disgrace of
his malformed body, the closer and more hideous disgrace of his defiled
and prostituted soul, surviving in legend merely, as might some ugly,
old-time fable useful for the frightening of unruly babies.

And to that end of self-obliteration he instantly applied himself, with
outward calm, but with the mental hurry and restlessness of increasing
illness. His first duty was to end the whole matter of his relation to
Helen,--Helen shorn of her divinity, convicted liar and wanton, yet
mistress still for him, as he feared, of mighty enchantments. So he
wrote to her very briefly. The note should be given her later in the
day. In it he stated that he should have left the villa before this
announcement reached her, left it finally and without remotest prospect
of return, since he could not doubt that she recognised, as he did, how
impossible it had become that he and she should meet again. He added
that he would communicate with her shortly as to business arrangements.
That done, he summoned Powell, his valet, bidding him pack. He would go
down to the yacht at once. He had received information which made it
imperative that he should quit Naples immediately.

To be out of all this, rid of it, fairly started on the road of
negation of social being, negation of recognised existence, infected
him like a madness. But even the most forceful human will must bend to
stupidities of detail and of material fact. Unexpected delays had
occurred. The yacht was not ready for sea, neither coaled, nor
provisioned, nor sound of certain small damages to her machinery.