"Because I knew that if I went to see that girl next day I could no longer maintain a detached air of being a kind of benevolent and irresponsible guardian. All the unusual and melodramatic happenings of the evening were unable to blind me to the basic fact that our relations had changed, and I dared not follow them, even in thought, to their logical consequences. And yet I dared not retreat. I had that much imaginative manhood! I could not face a future haunted by her questing, derisive, contemptuous smile. As I lay down and watched the lamp giving out its last spasmodic flickers before it left me in darkness, I thought I saw her, say a year hence, in a vague yet dreadful environment, halting her racing thoughts to remember for a moment the man who had failed her in a time of need. I saw the shrug and the sudden turn of the shoulders, the curl of the lip, the evanescent flash of the eyes.... No, I couldn't do it. And I couldn't forego the exquisite seduction of a future glowing with the iridescent colours of romantic folly.... "And so," said Mr. Spenlove, after one of his pauses, "I went." CHAPTER VIII And for those who make a hobby of the irony of fate, I remember that but for the innocent and haphazard intervention of a perfectly irrelevant individual, I shouldn't have been able to get ashore at all. I woke early. For some mysterious reason connected with tonnage, the old _Manola_ had a small bathroom at the after end of the bridge deck, a most unusual appurtenance in a tramp steamer of her day, as some of you fellows know well enough. I had fixed up a contraption by which I could pump sea water through a home-made shower. I was in this place having a wash down and towelling vigorously when I heard the steward talking to the cook outside the porthole. He was saying that he was going ashore to the market to get some fresh green stuff and the cook was to tell the old man that he would be back by eight o'clock. The steward, an extremely quiet and modest creature with the ferocious name of Tonderbeg, was standing close by, and the blue wreathes from his cigarette curled into the port. He looked up and saw me, making a slight bow and smile, and raising his hand in an automatic way to the salute. "'Goot morning, Mister Chief,' he said. 'A fine morning, Sir.' I conceded this and asked him if it was far to the market. "'Not far. Just a nice walk for a morning like dis, Sir. A very interesting place, the market. In the Old Town.' "'Well', I said, 'if you'll wait a few minutes, I'll take a walk up there with you.' "His good-looking blond features became suffused with a warm gratification and his Teutonic voice went back into his throat, as it were. "'W'y,' he announced, impressively, 'it would be a pleasure, Mister Chief. I'll chust get de sailor wid de bag.' And he disappeared.