"If I correctly recall my sight of your good husband," said the captain, "he could break me in two pieces across his knee."
She inwardly acknowledged this possibility, but she did not like to bear her new friend belittle himself.
"That's only because Jim is very strong," she explained.
"Perhaps," said von Klausen, "yet that was not the only kind of strength I bore in my mind, dear lady. I thought of the strength—of moral strength, strength of purpose—whether the purpose is for the good or the bad—which is two-thirds of bravery."
"And haven't you that?"
It might have been because he was altogether so new to her that the question came readily. There seemed then nothing strange in the discussion of these intimate topics.
"Who knows?" said von Klausen, quietly. "I have not yet been tried. Perhaps, should I love something or somebody, I should acquire these things." His tone lacked offence because it perfectly achieved the impersonal note. "They would come to me then, for I should love that cause or person better than my own life or my own welfare. I do not know. I have not been tried. I know only that, without the cause or the person, I have not real strength; I have not real courage. I have fought my duel; I have faced death—but I know there are forms of it that I fear. I am at least brave enough to admit that I am sometimes afraid. For the rest, I am not the type of man that women love: I need to be cared for, to be thought about, to be helped in the hundred foolish little ways—and women love men who do not take these things, but who give them."
His low voice, his simplicity, and most of all his childish manner, touched her.
"I think," she said, "that you are not fair to women."
Von Klausen pointed out across the rail.