"Quite right, Francie. Dozens of men will come courting you as soon as you go out again, and any one of them will make you a better husband than I should have done; but not a better friend. I hope you will always remember that."
"Many thanks. Will you be so very kind as to release my hands, Captain Carey? They ache."
"One moment. I want to make sure of the last chance I shall get to explain—to tell you exactly what I mean—you, who are old enough, experienced enough, to understand. I don't want to defend myself, Francie—not at all. I am not the cad to say, 'The woman tempted me, and I did eat.' I don't blame you, dear—I don't blame anybody. A woman is a woman; and a lovely woman like you—well, the way things are managed in this world, I don't believe she can help herself. But look here, Francie, a man is a man too, and a good deal more so. If you were a girl, I wouldn't say this; but you knew—you knew what you were doing when you laid yourself out to be sweet and—and kind to a fellow, as you were to me. Did you take me for an old maid or a Social Purity Society? You know you didn't. A man does his best, but he's too heavily handicapped—I won't say by nature—perhaps by habit, which is second nature—the habit of generations, inherited in his blood—and his case is not on all-fours with your case. And especially when he is a sailor—so cut off—so deprived—Very well. And so it happened—as it happened. Never mind about the right and wrong. What's wrong today may be right tomorrow; and in any case, no arguing can undo what's done. We'll leave that."
She sat before him, panting, and the roses in her cheeks were white. Happily, the fire had grown a little dull by this time.
"For myself," he continued, speaking slowly, as if trying to think things out—"for myself, whether I ought to repent or not, I don't—I can't. Theoretically, I know it is always the man who is in the wrong, and I should have been foully in the wrong—I should be unfit to live—if you had been an unmarried girl, Francie—or if I had been the—the—"
"Oh!" she moaned bitterly, grasping his point of view, if not the plain justice of it. "But I have brought it on myself—I have only myself to thank. I made myself cheap, and must take the consequences."
"It is not that," he said kindly, but still feeling in his unsophisticated brain that it was. "I don't hold you cheap, my dear. I want to disabuse your mind of that idea, that I am throwing anything in your teeth. Good God, I should think not!—it would come ill from me. I have no conventional views about these things—none. But look here now: if you were my wife, I should never see you with another fellow without thinking—well, you know what I should think—and feeling myself like poor old Ewing—Oh, I AM a brute!" It was revealed to him all at once. "Do—DO forgive me!"
"Pray don't apologise!" she cried, in a high, shaking voice. "It is best, as you say, to speak plainly—not to mince matters—especially as there is no one to call you to account for what you say."
"And it would be worse for you, ever so much," he continued earnestly. "Having got into the way of—of this sort of thing—I'm afraid I might be tempted again—that I couldn't honestly promise—in short, the fact of the matter is that we are neither of us domesticated, so to speak—"
"There—that will do" she broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly. "Will you let me go, Captain Carey? Or must I call my servants to my assistance? I have only servants now."