perhaps by habit, which is second nature--the habit of generations,
inherited in his blood--and his case is not on all-fours with your
case. And especially when he is a sailor--so cut off--so deprived--
Very well. And so it happened--as it happened. Never mind about the
right and wrong. What's wrong today may be right tomorrow; and in any
case, no arguing can undo what's done. We'll leave that."

She sat before him, panting, and the roses in her cheeks were white.
Happily, the fire had grown a little dull by this time.

"For myself," he continued, speaking slowly, as if trying to think
things out--"for myself, whether I ought to repent or not, I don't--I
can't. Theoretically, I know it is always the man who is in the wrong,
and I should have been foully in the wrong--I should be unfit to live
--if you had been an unmarried girl, Francie--or if I had been the--
the--"

"Oh!" she moaned bitterly, grasping his point of view, if not the plain
justice of it. "But I have brought it on myself--I have only myself to
thank. I made myself cheap, and must take the consequences."

"It is not that," he said kindly, but still feeling in his
unsophisticated brain that it was. "I don't hold you cheap, my dear. I
want to disabuse your mind of that idea, that I am throwing anything in
your teeth. Good God, I should think not!--it would come ill from me.
I have no conventional views about these things--none. But look here
now: if you were my wife, I should never see you with another fellow
without thinking--well, you know what I should think--and feeling
myself like poor old Ewing--Oh, I AM a brute!" It was revealed to him
all at once. "Do--DO forgive me!"