I did my best to stop the torrent of his tears and protestations
by persisting in treating the whole adventure as a good subject
for a joke; and succeeded at last, as I imagined, in lessening
Pesca's overwhelming sense of obligation to me. Little did I
think then--little did I think afterwards when our pleasant
holiday had drawn to an end--that the opportunity of serving me
for which my grateful companion so ardently longed was soon to
come; that he was eagerly to seize it on the instant; and that by
so doing he was to turn the whole current of my existence into a
new channel, and to alter me to myself almost past recognition.
Yet so it was. If I had not dived for Professor Pesca when he lay
under water on his shingle bed, I should in all human probability
never have been connected with the story which these pages will
relate--I should never, perhaps, have heard even the name of the
woman who has lived in all my thoughts, who has possessed herself
of all my energies, who has become the one guiding influence that
now directs the purpose of my life.
III
Pesca's face and manner, on the evening when we confronted each
other at my mother's gate, were more than sufficient to inform me
that something extraordinary had happened.
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