"We had a couple of engineers, too, but they were scarcely to be classed with young Siddons. They were like a good many of us, useful, shop-soiled articles with plenty of the meretricious conventional sexuality which passes for passion when stimulated. But neither of them would have got a look from a modern, educated smart woman. The Third I didn't know very much about. He came and went, and the principal impression I have of him now is that he was married. The Second had what I should call an oppressively incondite mind. He had a cold avidity for facts. Unlike most seamen he never read fiction unless it was some book which had achieved notoriety for what is called frankness. He had a bookshelf in his cabin containing his shore-going boots and a derby hat, a Whittaker's Almanac, a Who's Who, several year-books, and a shilling encyclopedia. It was astonishing, the comfort he seemed to derive from knowing the census-returns of Bolivia, or the Republican majority in Oregon, or the number of microbes in a pint of milk. But it did no one any harm. I only mention it because he, too, in his way, fell in love with Artemisia and for a time neglected his familiar preoccupations.
"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.