The plain
fact of the situation is that we're being hustled toward an
amphibious thing with paddle-wheels named _The Skylark_, and I
haven't said good-bye to you.
"Ailsa, it isn't likely that anything is going to knock my head off
or puncture vital sections of me. But in case the ludicrous should
happen, I want you to know that a cleaner man goes before the last
Court Marshal than would have stood trial there before he met you.
"You are every inch my ideal of a woman--every fibre in you is
utterly feminine. I adore your acquired courage, I worship your
heavenly inconsistencies. The mental pleasure I experienced with
you was measured and limited only by my own perversity and morbid
self-absorption; the splendour of the passion I divine in you,
unawakened, awes me, leaves me in wonder. The spiritual tonic,
even against my own sickly will has freshened me by mere contact
with the world you live in; the touch of your lips and hands--ah,
Ailsa--has taught me at last the language that I sneered at.
"Well--we can never marry. How it will be with us, how end, He
who, after all is said and done, _did_ construct us, knows now.
And we will know some day, when life is burned out in us.
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