ivial. Are
those all?'

'They are all I care to mention just now to you.'

'Captain! can there be secrets between us?'

De Stancy paused and looked at the lad as if his heart wished to confess
what his judgment feared to tell. 'There should not be--on this point,'
he murmured.

'Then tell me--why do you so much object to her?'

'I once vowed a vow.'

'A vow!' said Dare, rather disconcerted.

'A vow of infinite solemnity. I must tell you from the beginning;
perhaps you are old enough to hear it now, though you have been too
young before. Your mother's life ended in much sorrow, and it was
occasioned entirely by me. In my regret for the wrong done her I swore
to her that though she had not been my wife, no other woman should stand
in that relationship to me; and this to her was a sort of comfort. When
she was dead my knowledge of my own plaguy impressionableness, which
seemed to be ineradicable--as it seems still--led me to think what
safeguards I could set over myself with a view to keeping my promise to
live a life of celibacy; and among other things I determined to forswear
the society, and if possible the sight, of women young and attractive,
as far as I had the power to do.'

'It is not so easy to avoid the sight of a beautiful woman if she
crosses your path, I should think?'

'It is not easy; but it is possible.'

'How?'

'By directing your attention another way.'

'But do you mean to say, captain, that you can be in a room with a
pretty woman who speaks to you, and not look at her?'

'I do: though mere looking has less to do with it than mental
attentiveness--allowing your thoughts to flow out in her direction--to
comprehend her image.'

'But it would be considered very impolite not to look at the woman or
comprehend her image?'

'It would, and is. I am considered the most impolite officer in the
service. I have been nicknamed the man with the averted eyes--the man
with the detestable habit--the man who greets you with his shoulder,
and so on. Ninety-and-nine fair women at the present moment hate me like
poison and death for having persistently refused to plumb the depths of
their offered eyes.'

'How can you do it, who are by nature courteous?'

'I cannot always--I break down sometimes. But, upon the whole,
recollection holds me to it: dread of a lapse. Nothing is so potent as
fear well maintained.'

De Stancy narrated these details in a grave meditative tone with his
eyes on the wall, as