Nothing of
the kind. He was an army doctor, and he left the service in order
to take this very eligible appointment, where one lived free, and
could spend nothing except a little for claret. He proposed to stay
there for a few years in order to make a little money by means of
which he might become a specialist. This was his ambition. As for
that love-business seven years past, he had clean forgotten it,
girl and all. Perhaps there had been other tender passages. Shall
a man, wasting in despair, die because a girl throws him over?
Never! Let him straightway forget her. Let him tackle his work; let
him put off the business of love--which can always wait--until he
can approach it once more in the proper spirit of illusion, and
once more fall to worshipping an angel.
Neither nature nor civilisation ever designed a man's life to be
spent in monotony. Most of us have to work for our daily bread,
which is always an episode, and sometimes a pretty dismal episode,
to break and mark the day. One day there came such a break in the
monotonous round of the doctor's life. It came in the shape of a
ship. She was a large steamer, and she steamed slowly.
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