"And then suddenly our feet struck timber that rang hollow and I made out a slender jetty running into the fog. The girl moved ahead, drawing me after her as she scanned the water with her other hand shading her eyes. For a moment she stood listening and then she uttered a melodious contralto shout for someone named '_Makri!_' I can recall, as I repeat the word, the name of that obscure and unknown boatman, the very timbre of her voice, the poise of her form, and the firm flexure of her fingers on mine. And for that moment, as we stood waiting and the boat came slowly and silently toward us with the standing figure of the oarsman lost in the higher fog, I had an extraordinary impression, clear and diminutive as a vignette, that I loved her and that she, in some mysterious fashion, could love me without jeopardizing her own destiny. A folly, of course; but I insist it gave me an inkling, that brief illumination, of the actual nature of love." At this momentous declaration Mr. Spenlove suddenly relapsed into a pause that became a silence, as though he were still under the influence of that illumination of which he spoke, and were pondering it to the extent of forgetting his audience altogether. And it was a suspicion of this amiable idiosyncrasy which caused the surgeon to make a remark. Mr. Spenlove gave a grunt of assent. "Yes," he said. "You are right. But this is not a supreme secret. I can only offer you the suggestion that what you call a love affair is really only a sequence of innumerable small passions. Yes, for a moment, you know, I saw them plainly enough--a procession of tiny, perfect things, moments, gestures, glances, and silences each complete and utterly beautiful in itself, preoccupied with its own perfection. Scientific? Not at all. Intuition and nothing else. One did not indulge in science with that magical girl holding one's hand. Science is only a sort of decorous guesswork at the best, guesswork corroborated by facts. In the presence of a woman like that, you know! At this distance of time, my friends, I can tell you that this girl, the chance acquaintance of a chance evening, imposed her personality upon me as the very genius of the tender passion. Yet I had but that one rhythmical moment by which to judge--and the boat, a long and elegantly carved affair of cedar wood decorated with brass bulbs, slid softly alongside, a tiny lantern glowing between the thwarts; like some perilous bark of destiny, and she a charming, enigmatic spirit watching with gracious care my departure for an alluring yet unknown shore.