I bowed, took my hat, gloves, and stick, and attended her to her
carriage below.

Long after the blue-and-black victoria had whirled away down the
crowded quay I stood looking after it, mazed in the web of that
ancient enchantment whose spell fell over the first man in Eden, and
whose sorcery shall not fail till the last man returns his soul.




X


I lunched at my lodgings on the Quai Malthus, and I had but little
appetite, having fed upon such an unexpected variety of emotions
during the morning.

Now, although I was already heels over head in love, I do not believe
that loss of appetite was the result of that alone. I was slowly
beginning to realize what my recent attitude might cost me, not only
in an utter collapse of my scientific career, and the consequent
material ruin which was likely to follow, but in the loss of all my
friends at home. The Zoological Society of Bronx Park and the
Smithsonian Institution of Washington had sent me as their trusted
delegate, leaving it entirely to me to choose the subject on which I
was to speak before the International Congress. What, then, would be
their attitude when they learned that I had chosen to uphold the
dangerous theory of the existence of the ux.