"He enlightened me, moreover, concerning the mishap which had befallen him and thrown him so definitely out of the race. He had met M. Nikitos on his way up to keep his tryst. She was standing at the door above them, silhouetted against the light, when they met on the path below. In darkness, of course. The lieutenant of the Anglo-Hellenic Development Company had adopted an extremely truculent attitude. He did not allow, he said, people from the ship to seek interviews in that clandestine manner. Ordered young Siddons to depart. Which, of course, an Englishman couldn't tolerate from a beastly dago. Punched his head. M. Nikitos, familiar with the terrain, had flung a piece of rock, and young Siddons, stepping back quickly in the first agony of the blow, had fallen over the edge, where I had found him. This was illuminating. It explained a number of obscure points which had puzzled me. I wondered, as I heard it, whether the recital of this feat to Captain Macedoine and his daughter had made any difference in the latter's attitude toward the victor. She had not regarded him with any enthusiasm when I had talked with her on the cliff, I noticed. I wondered. For you must be prepared to hear that I was tremendously preoccupied with thoughts of her at that time. That is one of the inestimable privileges of being a mere super in the play. You haven't much to do and you can let your mind dwell upon the destiny of the leading lady. You can almost call it a hobby of mine, to dwell upon the fortunes of the men and women who pass across the great stage on which I have an obscure coign of vantage. Some prefer to find their interest in novels. They brood in secret upon the erotic exhalations which rise from the Temple of Art. But I am not much of a reader, and I prefer the larger freedom of individual choice.
"And there was much in young Siddons which helped me to visualize the personality which had suddenly irradiated his soul. Of course he was English, with all the disabilities of his race to express emotion. But the need for sympathy triumphed over these, and he would come along to my room in the dog-watch when I learned something of the tremendous experience which had befallen him. The Second Engineer, who had apparently suffered very slightly indeed, for I saw him in Renfield Street one night with two young ladies on his way to the theatre, assumed an air of dry detachment when he noticed these visits. The Chief, I heard him growling to the Third one day when he thought I was out of earshot, was nursing the mates nowadays. I knew the Second disapproved of friendship on principle. His ideal was to be more or less at loggerheads with everybody. He would wait until you had made some ordinary human remark, when he would retire into his formidable arsenal of facts and figures, and returning with a large and hard chunk of information, throw it at you and knock you down with it. His unreasonableness lay in his failure to realize that a man cannot be your friend and your enemy at the same time, that people are never grateful for being set right. He had a dry and creaking efficiency which made him silently detested. I for one rejoiced when I heard indirectly, at a later period, that a widow of forty, with seven children, had sued him for breach-of-promise.