I was not jaded, nor was I exactly bored. But
the zest had gone out of things. I had lost taste for my fellow-men
and all their foolish, little, serious endeavours. For a far longer
period I had been dissatisfied with women. I had endured them, but I
had been too analytic of the faults of their primitiveness, of their
almost ferocious devotion to the destiny of sex, to be enchanted with
them. And I had come to be oppressed by what seemed to me the
futility of art--a pompous legerdemain, a consummate charlatanry that
deceived not only its devotees but its practitioners.
In short, I was embarking on the Elsinore because it was easier to
than not; yet everything else was as equally and perilously easy.
That was the curse of the condition into which I had fallen. That
was why, as I stepped upon the deck of the Elsinore, I was half of a
mind to tell them to keep my luggage where it was and bid Captain
West and his daughter good-day.
I almost think what decided me was the welcoming, hospitable smile
Miss West gave me as she started directly across the deck for the
cabin, and the knowledge that it must be quite warm in the cabin.
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