I do not yet know how this story will end, for what I am about to relate to you happened only yesterday morning, before I left the ship at Suez.

I sat in a long canvas chair, with heaps of books beside me and an empty soup bowl, my gaze reaching out to the cloud-crowned expanse, that encompassing expanse whose weight upon the breast was not lightened by the passing of the travelers. Everything seemed warm and damp, exceedingly damp. From the rim of the sky hung tattered banners of cloud, and into it the rim of the sea had melted away. The man sitting beside me had spread an open book upon his lap, with several books at his side as well, and he too was staring with a fixed gaze at the encompassing watery scene. The sea stirred up a spirit of melancholy and gloom, which nothing helped one to bear except the languor and idleness it breathes into the soul; it merges day into day, and so leads many people to believe that they must surely have enjoyed the voyage, since the time passed so quickly. It was plain that this gloomy, melancholy spirit hung over me and over my neighbor as well. My neighbor was tall and thin, with delicate hands, and there showed in his features a sensitivity of the utmost refinement. I asked myself who he might be... The books beside him were no help in answering that question, for they were of every kind: a translation of a collection of Greek verse, a modern novel, a scientific book, a study of the life of a certain statesman, and a collection of modern short stories. Then I noticed among them one of my

own books — the one called "The Man Who Lost Himself." Suddenly he turned his eyes from the water and addressed me, saying:

"Do you like the sea?"

I answered:

"Yes, I like it — in a way — in spite of its tedium and of the terror it unfortunately stirs in me. I am a good sailor; but while others stretch out in their wooden berths wishing they might drown, I stretch out on my wooden berth, wearing all my clothes, praying to God that I may not drown, and thinking of that vast gulf of waters in which a man's head dwindles to almost nothing. That is why I prefer the Mediterranean, where one is usually within sight of land... though it seems to have vanished entirely today... Indeed, I wish I were already at the Suez Canal, for I expect to enjoy a pleasant afternoon there."

He said: "Yes, I know that feeling; it steals over me a little too. And since you are a writer, I will tell you a story about it. But I trust you do not believe in omens and portents?

"Perhaps, in point of fact, it does not deserve to be called a story. It is a piece of evidence more than a story — or a proof of a certain theory... That