’Then he got up and began to walk about in some agitation.  “I—­I love her dearly.  More than I can tell.  Of course one cannot tell.  You take a different view of your actions when you come to understand, when you are made to understand every day that your existence is necessary—­you see, absolutely necessary—­to another person.  I am made to feel that.  Wonderful!  But only try to think what her life has been.  It is too extravagantly awful!  Isn’t it?  And me finding her here like this—­as you may go out for a stroll and come suddenly upon somebody drowning in a lonely dark place.  Jove!  No time to lose.  Well, it is a trust too . . .  I believe I am equal to it . . .”

’I must tell you the girl had left us to ourselves some time before.  He slapped his chest.  “Yes!  I feel that, but I believe I am equal to all my luck!” He had the gift of finding a special meaning in everything that happened to him.  This was the view he took of his love affair; it was idyllic, a little solemn, and also true, since his belief had all the unshakable seriousness of youth.  Some time after, on another occasion, he said to me, “I’ve been only two years here, and now, upon my word, I can’t conceive being able to live anywhere else.  The very thought of the world outside is enough to give me a fright; because, don’t you see,” he continued, with downcast eyes watching the action of his boot busied in squashing thoroughly a tiny bit of dried mud (we were strolling on the river-bank)—­“because I have not forgotten why I came here.  Not yet!”

’I refrained from looking at him, but I think I heard a short sigh; we took a turn or two in silence.  “Upon my soul and conscience,” he began again, “if such a thing can be forgotten, then I think I have a right to dismiss it from my mind.  Ask any man here” . . . his voice changed.  “Is it not strange,” he went on in a gentle, almost yearning tone, “that all these people, all these people who would do anything for me, can never be made to understand?  Never!  If you disbelieved me I could not call them up.  It seems hard, somehow.  I am stupid, am I not?  What more can I want?  If you ask them who is brave—­who is true—­who is just—­who is it they would trust with their lives?—­they would say, Tuan Jim.  And yet they can never know the real, real truth . . .”

’That’s what he said to me on my last day with him.  I did not let a murmur escape me:  I felt he was going to say more, and come no nearer to the root of the matter.  The sun, whose concentrated glare dwarfs the earth into a restless mote of dust, had sunk behind the forest, and the diffused light from an opal sky seemed to cast upon a world without shadows and without brilliance the illusion of a calm and pensive greatness.  I don’t know why, listening to him, I should have noted so distinctly the gradual darkening of the river, of the air; the irresistible slow work of the night settling silently on all the visible forms, effacing the outlines, burying the shapes deeper and deeper, like a steady fall of impalpable black dust.