At this momentous declaration Mr. Spenlove suddenly relapsed into a pause that became a silence, as though he were still under the influence of that illumination of which he spoke, and were pondering it to the extent of forgetting his audience altogether. And it was a suspicion of this amiable idiosyncrasy which caused the surgeon to make a remark. Mr. Spenlove gave a grunt of assent.
"Yes," he said. "You are right. But this is not a supreme secret. I can only offer you the suggestion that what you call a love affair is really only a sequence of innumerable small passions. Yes, for a moment, you know, I saw them plainly enough--a procession of tiny, perfect things, moments, gestures, glances, and silences each complete and utterly beautiful in itself, preoccupied with its own perfection. Scientific? Not at all. Intuition and nothing else. One did not indulge in science with that magical girl holding one's hand. Science is only a sort of decorous guesswork at the best, guesswork corroborated by facts. In the presence of a woman like that, you know! At this distance of time, my friends, I can tell you that this girl, the chance acquaintance of a chance evening, imposed her personality upon me as the very genius of the tender passion. Yet I had but that one rhythmical moment by which to judge--and the boat, a long and elegantly carved affair of cedar wood decorated with brass bulbs, slid softly alongside, a tiny lantern glowing between the thwarts; like some perilous bark of destiny, and she a charming, enigmatic spirit watching with gracious care my departure for an alluring yet unknown shore.
"For that is what it was. I stepped into that long, narrow affair, with its tall, gondola-like prow and absurd brass balls, and I left my youth behind on the hollow-sounding boards of that jetty. No, there is nothing to laugh at in a man of thirty-five leaving his youth behind. There are men who have seen their own daughters married, and retain for themselves the hearts of adventurous boys. From the formidable ramparts of half a century they can leap down and frolic with the young fellows who for the first time are in love, or seeing the world, or holding down a job, or reading Balzac. I cannot compete with such men. Youth fills me with awe. It is something I believe I had once, but I am not sure. I watch them nowadays, with their unerring cruelty of instinct, their clear egotism, their uncanny intuition and sophistication, and I wonder if I were ever like that, a sort of callow and clever young god! I wonder, too, whether a good deal of the modern misery and unhappiness isn't simply due to women being at a loss, as it were, to know just what the new and improved breed of young men want. All this talk of women themselves becoming modern is so much flub-dub. Look at Mrs. Evans. She was, and is, coeval with the Jurassic Period. And women are continually trying to get back there. You may ask me how I know this, and I can only tell you that I have an emotional conviction--the strongest conviction in the world, born of the tremendous experience which was coming upon me.