"For that is what it amounted to--that we all fell in love. Each of us had to measure ourselves by this standard. At certain times in our lives we all have to drop what we are doing and submit ourselves to the test. I'm afraid most of us don't cut a very brilliant figure. It is fortunate for us that one can achieve success in a lower class, and can pass muster as human beings because we are honest or sober or clever, and not simply because we are worthy of love. All the same, I fancy the contempt which some of us pour upon the lucky ones is born of envy. We wish to be like them in our heart of hearts. I used to have the most preposterous dreams of being the lover of some proud, beautiful girl I had read about or seen in the street. "Artemisia was like that. She was one of those beings who inspire love, who are the living embodiments of that tender philosophy which makes every adjustment of our lives by sentiment alone, and who convince us, by a gesture, a glance, a timbre in their voices, that our lightest fancy is a grave resolution of the soul. "It would be easy, of course, to jeer at a crowd of simple, half-educated shell-backs losing their hearts to a lady-passenger's maid, but that would not be a fair account of it. We were not simple in that sense. My experience is that contact with the great elemental realities does not breed simplicity so much as a sort of cunning. We live deprived of so many of the amenities of culture and wealth that we cannot credit our good fortune when anything really fine comes in our way. We are not to be had. We are cautious. These good things are for shore people. And we get into the habit of good-humoured humility, discounting ourselves and our shipmates beyond recall. We say, 'only fools and drunkards go to sea,' and that indicates pretty accurately the value we place upon our hopes and aspirations. "And so you must not expect me to give you vivid accounts of passionate declarations of love under the Mediterranean moon, or of desperate knife-work in the dark with Artemisia bending over the dying man and kissing his death-dewed forehead in a last farewell. The voyage went on much as usual outwardly. The days are gone, if they ever existed, when love ruled the camp or the quarter deck. Yet there was a subtle change. Men went about their various tasks with an air of charged expectancy. Now and again a couple could be seen talking earnestly together. The weather, until we passed Gibraltar, was against any dramatic developments. Mrs. Evans and Angelina kept below. Only once, at dusk, while we were passing the Burlings, off Portugal, I looked over the rail of the bridge-deck and saw young Siddons leaning on the bulwarks below, his head turned toward someone I could not see. He was laughing as happily as a child. Leaning over a little further I saw a girl's finely articulated hand and a corner of a white apron.