"If only one had been a little
older, a little less sure about things, a little less narrow! I should
have listened. I should have understood. At all events, I should not, I
think, have been cruel."
Not for the first time did remorse for that fourth feather which she had
added to the three, seize upon her. She sat now crushed by it into
silence. Captain Willoughby, however, was a stubborn man, unwilling upon
any occasion to admit an error. He saw that Ethne's remorse by
implication condemned himself, and that he was not prepared to suffer.
"Yes, but these fine distinctions are a little too elusive for practical
purposes," he said. "You can't run the world on fine distinctions; so I
cannot bring myself to believe that we three men were at all to blame,
and if we were not, you of all people can have no reason for
self-reproach."
Ethne did not consider what he precisely meant by the last reference to
herself. For as he leaned complacently back in his seat, anger against
him flamed suddenly hot in her. Occupied by his story, she had ceased to
take stock of the story-teller. Now that he had ended, she looked him
over from head to foot. An obstinate stupidity was the mark of the man
to her eye.
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