The strangeness of the thing clutched at my heart, for here was the voice which had never been out of my ears singing again in a land far from the wet heather and the driving mists of home.
As I sat dazed and dreaming, I knew that a great thing had befallen me.
For me, Andrew Garvald, the prosaic trader, coming out of the darkness into this strange company, the foundations of the world had been upset.
All my cares and hopes, my gains and losses, seemed in that moment no better than dust.

Love had come to me like a hurricane.

From now I had but the one ambition, to hear that voice say to me and to mean it truly, "My dear and only love." I knew it was folly and a madman's dream, for I felt most deeply my common clay.

What had I to offer for the heart of that proud lady?
A dingy and battered merchant might as well enter a court of steel-clad heroes and contend for the love of a queen.

But I was not downcast.