In Strange Company by Guy Boothby

Somewhere or other I remember to have seen a picture of the two sorts of love which may enter man's life. I think it was called "Sacred and Profane Love," and it may possibly have been by one of the Old Masters. But wherever or whatever it was, it seemed to me that I had now had experience of both passions. Maud was the first, Juanita was the second. I had loved Maud for herself alone; Juanita fascinated me purely by her personal charms, and by a certain Bohemianism which, while it occasionally almost frightened me, held me in chains, that were to all intents and purposes stronger than links of iron. For it must not be imagined that my first visit to the "Orient" was my last. In fact, now that I had once fallen her victim, I was hardly to be found elsewhere.

As the first proof of the power she exercised over me, I declined my old skipper's offer to ship for another cruise, preferring idleness and poverty ashore, with the opportunities it presented of seeing the woman I so slavishly adored, to a life of money-making and hardship at sea.