. He did not begin to grasp what she
meant. To him she was just "fickle woman" always changing her mind. He
had, all his life, generalized about woman; he had never known a woman
who was not rather vapid, rather brainless; he had the same idea of
women as Professor Kraill had ventilated in his lectures--that they were
the vehicles of the race, living for the race but getting all the fun
they could out of the preliminary canter, since the race was a rather
strenuous, rather joyless thing for them. And it was in men they found
the fun. Yet here was Marcella, who was quite different from anything
feminine he had ever seen or imagined, suddenly appealing to him not to
let her be fickle. Immediately he felt very manly, very responsible.
Then he laughed.

"_Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?_" he said, looking into her eyes.

"Father often said that. What does it mean?"

"Who'll look after the looker-after?" he said, with a laugh. "Here's me
begging you to look after me and save me from going to hell. And here's
you asking me to grab you for fear you'll change your mind. I wonder
which is going to have the hardest job?"

She looked at him and said hurriedly:

"Louis, couldn't we be married now--to-night? In Scotland we do, you
know--just in any room without church or anything."

"But--I wish we could!" he said, his hands beginning to shake.

"I want to be sure--"

"I'm afraid we can't," he said, anxiously. "I'm afraid we'll have to
wait till we get to Sydney."

Unexpectedly memory brought back the thought that when he became engaged
to Violet he had kissed her and held her in his arms; he remembered it
very well. To get to the necessary pitch of courage he had had to get
very drunk on champagne, for champagne always made him in a generally
kissing and love-making mood that involved him often with barmaids and
street ladies. He knew very well that he would never have thought of
making love to Marcella: if she had not taken things into her own hands,
they would have parted in Sydney, necessary as he considered her to his
well being, much as he liked to be near her. He had, even through his
self-satisfied alcohol dream, seen her disgusted looks at Naples when he
had spoken to her. He guessed that the sort of half-maudlin love-making
that had won Violet would never suit Marcella. And he knew beyond the
shadow of doubt that no power on earth save whisky could ever get him to
make love to anything--even a young girl who seem