"I can't exactly fancy Diana as that sort of woman."
"Well, it ain't anything against a woman that she don't know her own mind," was the captain's philosophical reflection. "Most men don't know their own mind when it comes to marryin'. Only the difference is this: a man loses his head and asks a girl, and then he wonders if she's going to make him happy. And a woman hesitates about sayin' 'Yes,' but when she once decides, she sticks to a man through thick and thin."
In spite of his gloom Justin smiled. "Where did you learn it all, captain? You are as wise as if you had been married to a half dozen wives."
"There's a sayin'," the captain explained, "that a sailor has a wife in every port. That ain't true. Sailors as a rule are constant men. But they see a lot of wimmen creatures, and they learn that there ain't much difference, when it comes to lovin', between a Spanish lady who flirts with her eyes, and a Boston lady who flirts with her brain. They're all after the same thing, and that's a home, with a big H, and it's a credit to them that they are—otherwise we men wouldn't ever know when to settle down."
"Yet it's because of a woman that some of us never settle down." Justin's young eyes were looking out stormily upon the gray world. "It's because of some woman that we wander and are never satisfied."
The little captain gave him a keen glance. "Well, you won't ever have to worry," he said; "all you've got to do is to keep at it till you find the right woman. That's what that Betty child said to me the other day. 'Captain, if a man wants a woman, he's got to keep after her until she says 'Yes.'"
"Did Betty Dolce say that?"
"Yes—she's a smart little thing."
But Justin's thoughts were not of her "smartness" but of her pathetic loveliness. All night her sobs had echoed in his heart. When he had driven his gay party home after their stop at Anthony's, he had ridden for miles alone in the storm. He had welcomed the beat of the rain in his face. He had yearned for some adventure which would shut out that vision of the shadowy room.
But no adventure had been forthcoming, and so he had sought his uneasy couch, and had tried to sleep, and had risen at the first crow of cocks.