Margaret bit her lip and her eyes flashed.

'You are quite the most disgustingly brutal person I ever met,' she
said, no longer able to keep down her anger.

'No,' he answered calmly. 'I'm not brutal; I'm only logical. I took a
great deal of trouble to get that book for you because I thought
it would give you pleasure, and it wasn't a particularly legal
transaction by which I got it either. Since you didn't want it, I
wasn't going to let anybody else have the satisfaction of reading it
before it was published, so I just threw it away because it is safer
in the sea than knocking about in my cabin. If you hadn't seen me
throw it overboard you would never have believed that I had. You're
not much given to believing me, anyway. I've noticed that. Are you,
now?'

'Oh, it was not the book!'

Margaret turned from him and made a step forward so that she faced the
sharp wind. It cut her face and she felt that the little pain was
a relief. He came and stood beside her with his hands deep in the
pockets of his overcoat.

'If you think I'm a brute on account of what I told you about
Miss Bamberger,' he said, 'that's not quite fair. I broke off our
engagement because I found out that we were going to make each other
miserable and we should have had to divorce in six months; and if half
the people who are just going to get married would do the same thing
there would be a lot more happy women in the world, not to say men!
That's all, and she knew it, poor girl, and was just as glad as I was