Mr. Neckart did not reply for a few moments. "It is impossible that I should ever marry," he said gravely. "There is an obstacle which would make it simply criminal in me. I never think of it."
The captain colored: "I beg your pardon, Bruce: I did not know—"
"You have not intruded: you have not hurt me in the least," laying his hand for an instant on the captain's knee. "It is not a matter about which I have any soreness of feeling. The obstacle arose from circumstances: I am not in any sense guilty."
Captain Swendon nodded and occupied himself with rebuckling his shoes. He could neither answer to the purpose nor rid his face of the shocked alarm visible in it. To have been told that Neckart was dying would have startled him less, and seemed not so pitiable to him as to know that he was shut out for life from love and marriage.
Neckart read his thoughts. "There's a difference in men," he said, concealing a smile. "It would not suit you, captain, to go through life as an anchorite or a Catholic priest, but it really agrees with me very well. I am not a domestic man by taste, nor susceptible to woman's influence. I have met a few women, of course, beautiful, and with the intellect and wealth which would make them desirable wives; and I have no doubt if I had been differently situated I should have loved and married. But it never cost me a second thought to pass them by."
"But this obstacle—it may some day be removed?" ventured the captain.
Mr. Neckart's features settled into the hard lines again. "Not while I live," he said.
If there was one quality in himself on which the captain could build with confidence, it was his keen insight into other men. He read Neckart's life as an open book. "Bruce is married already," he said to himself. "He was precisely the kind of lad to be taken in by some creature that is now a secret burden on him. Drinks or chews opium, I've no doubt, or has gone to the devil with one jump. Tut! tut! He would not be divorced. I know what his opinion is on that head. But she'll die: that sort of women never live long.—It will all come right, Bruce," he said aloud. "There's more ruling of eternal justice in all of our lives than we give God credit for. But this matter astonishes me. I've heard of your intimacy with certain women in Washington—leaders of society. I always thought of you as a marrying man."
"Because I cannot marry I have the more right to accept whatever entertainment or friendship women can give me," falling into his ordinary easy tone. "I have the keenest appreciation for an ambitious woman who has intellect and culture, and is alive with energy and coquetry. I know such women. They seem to be full of subtle flame. Certainly, I would make a friend of such a one. Why not? I would marry her if I could."
A moment after he looked up the beach, and seeing the captain's daughter, smiled to think what an absolute contrast she was to this ideal live, brilliant woman. She was sitting on a log, the dog asleep at her feet, her hands clasped about her knees, looking out to sea, and he could swear she had sat there motionless as the stretch of gray sand about her for an hour. Such torpidity revolted Neckart. Neither did it appease him that the nobly-cut, dim-lighted face, the mass of yellowish hair rolling down from its black band, the coarse brown dress which hung about her in thick folds, all gave him pleasure. In the moment he had met her first he had felt an odd repulsion to this girl. The women with whom he had fraternized were akin to himself: Jane, child as she was, was antagonistic. He felt for her the same kind of irritated dislike as that which Miss Fleming gave to her, and which people of active brains are apt to give to any creature whose animus is totally different from their own.