He blinked two or three times, then stared at me again. He understood I was distressed and hesitated to use our usual weapons: laughter, smiles and chaff.

"Very well," he said. "Give me your hand. If ever one of us finds himself in danger of death…"

He stopped, as if ashamed. We who had, for so many years, made fun of metaphysical "flights" and lumped together vegetarians, spiritualists, theosophists and ectoplasm…

"Well?" I asked, trying to guess.

"Let's think of it as a game," he said suddenly, to get out of the perilous sentence he had embarked upon. "If ever one of us finds himself in danger of death, let him think of the other so intensely that he warns him wherever he may be… Right?" He tried to laugh, but his lips remained motionless, as if frozen.

"Right," I said.

Fearing that he had displayed his feelings too clearly, my friend hastened to add:

"Mind you, I haven't the slightest belief in telepathy and all that…"

"Never mind," I murmured. "Let it be so…"

"Very well, then, let's leave it at that. Agreed?"

"Agreed," I answered.

They were our last words. We clasped each other's hands in silence, our fingers joined fervently, and suddenly unclasped. I walked away rapidly without looking back, as if I were being followed. I felt a sudden impulse to give one last look at my friend, but I repressed it. "Don't look back!" I bade myself. "Forward!"

The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty. If it could have guessed, how different this separation would have been.

It was growing lighter and lighter. The two mornings mingled. The loved countenance of my friend, which I could see more clearly now, remained immobile and desolate in the rain and the atmosphere of the port. The door of the café opened, the sea roared, a thickset sailor entered with legs apart and drooping moustaches. Voices rang out in pleasure:

"Welcome, Captain Lemoni!"

I retreated into the corner, trying to concentrate my thoughts afresh. But my friend's face was already dissolving in the rain.

It was becoming still lighter. Captain Lemoni, austere and taciturn, took out his amber rosary and began to tell his beads. I struggled not to see, not to hear, and to hold on a little longer to the vision which was melting away. If only I could live again the moment of that anger which surged up in me when my friend called me a bookworm! I recalled then that all my disgust at the life I had been leading was personified in those words. How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink! In that day of separation, my friend had helped me to see clearly. I was relieved. As I now knew the name of my affliction, I could perhaps conquer it more easily. It was no longer elusive and incorporeal; it had assumed a name and a shape, and it would be easier for me to combat it.

His expression must have made silent progress in me. I sought a pretext for abandoning my papers and flinging myself into a life of action. I resented bearing this miserable creature upon my escutcheon. A month earlier, the desired opportunity had presented itself. I had rented on the coast of Crete, facing Libya, a disused lignite mine, and I was going now to live with simple men, workmen and peasants, far from the face of bookworms!

I prepared excitedly for my departure, as if this journey had a mysterious significance. I had decided to change my mode of life. "Till now," I told myself, "you have only seen the shadow and been well content with it; now, I am going to lead you to the substance."

At last I was ready. On the eve of departure, while rummaging in my papers, I came across an unfinished manuscript. I took it and looked at it, hesitating. For two years, in the innermost depths of my being, a great desire, a seed had been quickening. I could feel it all the time in my bowels, feeding on me and ripening. It was growing, moving and beginning to kick against the wall of my body to come forth. I no longer had the courage to destroy it. I could not. It was too late to commit such spiritual abortion.

Suddenly, as I hesitatingly held the manuscript, I became conscious of my friend's smile in the air, a smile composed of irony and tenderness. "I shall take it!" I said, stung to the quick. "I shall take it. You needn't smile!" I wrapped it up with care, as if swaddling a baby, and took it with me.

Captain Lemoni's deep, raucous voice could be heard. I pricked up my ears. He was talking about the water spirits who, during the storm, had climbed up the masts of his caique and licked them.

"They are soft and sticky," he said. "When you take lots of them, your hands catch fire. I stroked my moustache and so, in the dark, I gleamed like a devil. Well, the seas washed into my caique and soaked my cargo of coal. It was waterlogged. The caique began to heel over; but, at that moment, God took a hand in things; he sent a thunderbolt. The hatch covers were burst open and the sea filled with coal. The caique was lightened, righted itself, and we were saved. No more of that!"

Out of my pocket I drew a little edition of Dante-my travelling companion. I lit a pipe, leaned against the wall and made myself comfortable. I hesitated for a moment. Into which verses should I dip? Into the burning pitch of the Inferno, or the cleansing flames of Purgatory? Or should I make straight for the most elevated plane of human hope? I had the choice. Holding my pocket Dante in my hand, I rejoiced in my freedom. The verses I was going to choose so early in the morning would impart their rhythm to the whole of the day.

I bowed over this intense vision in order to decide, but I did not have the time. Suddenly, disturbed, I raised my head. Somehow, I felt as if two eyes were boring into the top of my skull; I quickly looked behind me in the direction of the glass door. A mad hope flashed through my brain: "I'm going to see my friend again." I was prepared for the miracle, but the miracle did not happen. A stranger of about sixty, very tall and lean, with staring eyes, had pressed his nose against the pane and was looking at me. He was holding a little flattened bundle under his arm.

The thing which impressed me most was his eager gaze, his eyes, ironical and full of fire. At any rate, that is how they appeared to me.

As soon as our eyes had met-he seemed to be making sure I was really the person he was looking for-the stranger opened the door with a determined thrust of his arm. He passed between the tables with a rapid, springy step, and stopped in front of me.

"Travelling?" he asked. "Where to? Trusting to providence?"

"I'm making for Crete. Why do you ask?"

"Taking me with you?"

I looked at him carefully. He had hollow cheeks, a strong jaw, prominent cheekbones, curly grey hair, bright piercing eyes.

"Why? What could I do with you?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Why! Why!" he exclaimed with disdain. "Can't a man do anything without a why? Just like that, because he wants to? Well, take me, shall we say, as cook. I can make soups you've never heard or thought of…"

I started to laugh. His bluff ways and trenchant words pleased me. Soups pleased me, too. It would not be a bad thing, I thought, to take this loose-knit fellow with me to that distant, lonely coast. Soups and stories… He looked as if he had knocked about the world quite a lot, a sort of Sinbad the Sailor… I liked him.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked me familiarly, shaking his great head. "You keep a pair of scales, too, do you? You weigh everything to the nearest gram, don't you? Come on, friend, make up your mind. Take the plunge!"

This great lanky lubber was standing over me, and it tired me to have to look up to speak to him. I closed my Dante. "Sit down," I said to him. "Have a glass of sage?"