For a far longer period I had been dissatisfied with women.

I had endured them, but I had been too analytic of the faults of their primitiveness, of their almost ferocious devotion to the destiny of sex, to be enchanted with them.

And I had come to be oppressed by what seemed to me the futility of art--a pompous legerdemain, a consummate charlatanry that deceived not only its devotees but its practitioners.
In short, I was embarking on the _Elsinore_ because it was easier to than not; yet everything else was as equally and perilously easy.

That was the curse of the condition into which I had fallen.

That was why, as I stepped upon the deck of the _Elsinore_, I was half of a mind to tell them to keep my luggage where it was and bid Captain West and his daughter good-day.
I almost think what decided me was the welcoming, hospitable smile Miss West gave me as she started directly across the deck for the cabin, and the knowledge that it must be quite warm in the cabin.
Mr.Pike, the mate, I had already met, when I visited the ship in Erie Basin.