invested it not only with an air of reality but with the absolute truth
of primitive passion.

"It is true just as much as you are able to make it; and exactly in the
way you like to make it. For my part, when I hear you clamouring about
it, I don't believe it is true at all."

And I left him pondering. The men in my boat lying at the foot of
Diana's side ladder told me that the captain of the tug had gone away in
his gig some time ago.

I let my fellows pull an easy stroke; because of the heavy dew the clear
sparkle of the stars seemed to fall on me cold and wetting. There was
a sense of lurking gruesome horror somewhere in my mind, and it was
mingled with clear and grotesque images. Schomberg's gastronomic
tittle-tattle was responsible for these; and I half hoped I should never
see Falk again. But the first thing my anchor-watchman told me was that
the captain of the tug was on board. He had sent his boat away and was
now waiting for me in the cuddy.

He was lying full length on the stern settee, his face buried in the
cushions. I had expected to see it discomposed, contorted, despairing.
It was nothing of the kind; it was just as I had seen it twenty times,
steady and glaring from the bridge of the tug. It was immovably set and
hungry, dominated like the whole man by the singleness of one instinct.

He wanted to live. He had always wanted to live. So we all do--but in
us the instinct serves a complex conception, and in him this instinct
existed alone. There is in such simple development a gigantic force,
and like the pathos of a child's naive and uncontrolled desire. He wanted