"It doesn't get on," he said, in a voice that did not seem to be his own.
"I'm very sorry." The deep note was sincerity itself.
"I don't know why," said the Sailor, "but it's too much for me now."
"Of course, it is all immensely difficult. The latter part particularly. Somehow, one always felt it would be."
"It's not that," said the Sailor. "Not the difficulty, I mean. That was always there, and I was never afraid of it. But I think I am losing grip."
She looked at him, a little disquieted. There was a note in his voice she heard then for the first time.
"That must not be," she said. "There's no reason for it."
"Ah, you don't know. I begin to feel now that I'll never be able to put it through."
"Why should you feel that? What reason can you have, a man of your wonderful powers, a man with all his life before him?"
"I just haven't the strength," he said in his quaint speech, "and that's all there is to it."