The vision seemed to enter the house with me—the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter

Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets.

And, don’t you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head—though I had a very lively sense of that danger too—

I had cut him off cleverly; but when actually confronting him I seemed to come to my senses, I saw the danger in its right proportion.

‘Save me!—save the ivory, you mean. Don’t tell me. Save me! Why, I’ve had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick!

Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.

I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving.

‘Ah, he talked to you of love!’ I said, much amused. ‘It isn’t what you think,’ he cried, almost passionately. ‘It was in general. He made me see things—things.’

His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem.