Then I saw Mrs. Falchion’s face at the port-hole opposite. Her eyes were on me. An instant before, I had intended following Miss Treherne and her father; now some spirit of defiance, some unaccountable revolution, took possession of me, so that I flashed back to her a warm recognition. I could not have believed it possible, if it had been told of me, that, one minute affected by beautiful and sacred remembrances, the next I should be yielding to the unimpassioned tyranny of a woman who could never be anything but a stumbling-block and an evil influence. I had yet to learn that in times of mental and moral struggle the mixed fighting forces in us resolve themselves into two cohesive powers, and strive for mastery; that no past thought or act goes for nothing at such a time, but creeps out from the darkness where we thought it had gone for ever, and does battle with its kind against the common foe. There moved before my sight three women: one, sweet and unsubstantial, wistful and mute and very young, not of the earth earthy; one, lissom, grave, with gracious body and warm abstracted eyes, all delicacy, strength, reserve; the other and last, daring, cold, beautiful, with irresistible charm, silent and compelling. And these are the three women who have influenced my life, who fought in me then for mastery; one from out the unchangeable past, the others in the tangible and delible present. Most of us have to pass through such ordeals before character and conviction receive their final bias; before human nature has its wild trouble, and then settles into “cold rock and quiet world;” which any lesser after-shocks may modify, but cannot radically change. I tried to think. I felt that to be wholly a man I should turn from those eyes drawing me on. I recalled the words of Clovelly, who had said to me that afternoon, half laughingly: “Dr. Marmion, I wonder how many of us wish ourselves transported permanently to that time when we didn’t know champagne from ‘alter feiner madeira’ or dry hock from sweet sauterne; when a pretty face made us feel ready to abjure all the sinful lusts of the flesh and become inheritors of the kingdom of heaven? Egad! I should like to feel it once again. But how can we, when we have been intoxicated with many things; when we are drunk with success and experience; have hung on the fringe of unrighteousness; and know the world backward, and ourselves mercilessly?” Was I, like the drunkard, coming surely to the time when I could no longer say yes to my wisdom, or no to my weakness? I knew that, an hour before, in filling a phial with medicine, I found I was doing it mechanically, and had to begin over again, making an effort to keep my mind to my task. I think it is an axiom that no man can properly perform the business of life who indulges in emotional preoccupation.