"I don't mean that, Isla. Gad, how quick and hard you are on a fellow! Your tongue's like a two-edged sword. I only mean that there's a time in a chap's life--don't you know?--when, if he gets into a good woman's hands, she shapes him for good. If he gets into the hands of the other sort, then God help him!--he hasn't much chance else."
A fleeting pity crossed Isla's face. It was a passionate human appeal. She began dimly to glimpse the fact of the frightful war between good and evil which ravages the souls of some, making life a battle-ground from the cradle to the grave.
She put out a timid hand and touched his arm.
"I'm sorry if I have been hard, Malcolm. I--I didn't understand. But now----"
"Now I mean to win Vivien Rosmead when I'm clean enough to ask her," he answered in a voice that gripped.
Isla remembered the heightened colour in Vivien's cheek, the tones and terms in which Malcolm was spoken of at Achree, and she had no doubt of the issue. But the woman in the purple frock! Something gripped her by the throat. She did not know what she wished or hoped for. She did passionately feel, however, that if Vivien made another venture upon the sea of matrimony she ought to be very sure of the seaworthiness of her barque.
"I suppose she divorced her husband. Have you ever heard anything about the story, Malcolm?"
"Nothing. They never speak of it. Why should they? That sort of thing is best forgotten."
"She will never forget it. I can't forget how she spoke that day she came to me--the day when father died. Her eyes are very wide open, Malcolm. She will take no risks next time."
"But she isn't hard," he said eagerly. "And a woman who has lived--who has seen life--can make allowances for a man. It's that I'm building on."