"And did you set him going?" I asked.

"I did," said Marlow, composing his features into an impenetrable

expression which somehow assured me of his success better than an air of

triumph could have done.

* * * * *

"You made him talk?" I said after a silence.

"Yes, I made him . . . about himself."

"And to the point?"

"If you mean by this," said Marlow, "that it was about the voyage of the

Ferndale, then again, yes. I brought him to talk about that voyage,

which, by the by, was not the first voyage of Flora de Barral. The man

himself, as I told you, is simple, and his faculty of wonder not very

great. He's one of those people who form no theories about facts.

Straightforward people seldom do. Neither have they much penetration.

But in this case it did not matter. I--we--have already the inner

knowledge. We know the history of Flora de Barral. We know something of

Captain Anthony. We have the secret of the situation. The man was

intoxicated with the pity and tenderness of his part. Oh yes!

Intoxicated is not too strong a word; for you know that love and desire

take many disguises. I believe that the girl had been frank with him,

with the frankness of women to whom perfect frankness is impossible,

because so much of their safety depends on judicious reticences. I am

not indulging in cheap sneers. There is necessity in these things. And

moreover she could not have spoken with a certain voice in the face of

his impetuosity, because she did not have time to understand either the

state of her feelings, or the precise nature of what she was doing.

Had she spoken ever so clearly he was, I take it, too elated to hear her

distinctly. I don't mean to imply that he was a fool. Oh dear no! But

he had no training in the usual conventions, and we must remember that he

had no experience whatever of women. He could only have an ideal

conception of his position. An ideal is often but a flaming vision of

reality.

To him enters Fyne, wound up, if I may express myself so irreverently,

wound up to a high pitch by his wife's interpretation of the girl's

letter. He enters with his talk of meanness and cruelty, like a bucket

of water on the flame. Clearly a shock. But the effects of a bucket of

water are diverse. They depend on the kind of flame. A mere blaze of

dry straw, of course . . . but there can be no question of straw there.

Anthony of the Ferndale was not, could not have been, a straw-stuffed

specimen of a man. There are flames a bucket of water sends leaping sky-

high.




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