“. . . folly.  Worse than folly.”  He was holding his gloves now, and was lightly flicking the edge of the table with them in place of verbal emphasis.  He suddenly regarded me again as if he strongly suspected me of being his antipathy.  “Who but a fool would take a woman to such a country as that?  Any romantic sentimentalist, I suppose.  I forget the name of the ship.  There was, you might say, hardly sufficient room to paint a name on her.  She was no more than a tug.  It was a miracle she survived to get there at all, for she had crossed from England.  Crossed the Western ocean in such a craft, and brought a woman with him.  Did ever you hear of such folly?”

Now I was certain of our whereabouts, and felt a weak inclination to show an elder that I, too, knew something about it; but when I leaned forward eagerly and was about to speak, the doctor screwed in that devastating monocle, and I felt I was only a curious example of the sort of thing he especially disliked.  For a minute, in which I wondered if I had quite stopped his guarded flow, he said no more.  Then he addressed his eyeglass to a panel of the partition, and flicked his gloves at that.

“I had noticed for some days that little craft lying near us, but gave her no attention.  I had sixteen men to attend to with complexions like lemons, and one died.  There was no time to bother with other folk’s troubles.  Our skipper, one breakfast-time, told me there was a woman aboard that little thing, and he’d been asked whether I’d go over.  She was ill.

“I’ve seen some queer packets of misery at sea, but never one that touched that ship.  Her skipper seemed a regular fool.  I had to ask him to speak up, for he mumbled like a boy who has been caught out, and knows it is useless to pretend.  I learned from him that he was only just beginning his voyage.  You understand?  He was just beginning it, there.  He was going up-river, to a point not on the chart.  I cannot make out now whether he wanted to put that woman ashore to get home in comfort at the first opportunity, or whether . . . it’s impossible to say.  One would sooner believe the best of another man, with half a chance.  After all,” said the doctor bitterly, “as long as the woman survived I suppose she was some consolation in misery.

“I scrambled over the deck lumber.  There was hardly room to move.  I found her in a cabin where she could get little seclusion from the crew.  Hardly any privacy at all, I should say.  As soon as I saw her I could make a guess . . . however, I told the fellow afterwards what I thought, and he gave me no answer.  He even turned his back on me.  He must have known well enough that that river was no place for any sort of white woman.  He was condemning her perhaps to death just to make an ugly job more attractive.

“I admit,” said the doctor, with a sly glance, “that she could make it attractive, for a sort of man.  She was wrapped in a rosy dressing-gown.  She held it together with her hands.  I noticed them . . . anybody might . . . they were covered with rings.  She had character, too.  She made me feel, the way she looked at me, that I was indiscreet in asking personal questions.  I could see what was wrong with her.  It was debility, but all the same the beginning of an end not far off, in that country.