No, I'm not complaining. You shall have as bad to condemn before
I've done, so you needn't apologise. But, as it happens, I wasn't
that sort of blackguard. Moreover, it wouldn't have worked, anyhow.
Santa was as good as her name--
"No, damn it! I will clear myself of _that_! . . . You'll understand
that I loved the woman, and--well, in the old days, as you'll do me
the justice to remember, I hated men who played loose among women.
As for 'making love' to Santa--oh, I can't explain to you, who never
saw her, how utterly that was beyond question on either side. . . .
Almost white she was, with the blood of the Incas in her--blood of
Castile, too, belike--and yet all of a woman, with funny rustic ways
that turned at any moment to royal. . . . And she loved Farrell--my
God!
"I wonder now if she guessed--guessed at the time, I mean. They say
that women always guess; which in these matters is as good as
knowing. . . . But I'm holding up my story."
"The _Eurotas_ went down in something like 36, south latitude,
longitude 105 and a half west. That's as near as I make it: that is
to say, some three or four hundred miles from any known land save
Easter Island, which lay well away north and to windward, for we were
down where the main winds set between W.
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