Why, he might murder his own wife under some such circumstances as
those under which he attacked Captain Blake. (Splendid fellow Blake!
Not every man after such a handling as that would make it his business
to prove that his assailant was neither drunk, mad, nor
criminal--merely under a hallucination. But for Blake he would now be
in jail, or lunatic asylum, to a certainty. The Colonel would have had
him court-martialled as a criminal, or else have had him out of the
regiment as a lunatic. Nor, as a dangerous lunatic, would he have been
allowed to buy himself out when Lucille's letter and his money
arrived. Blake had got him into the position of a perfectly sober and
sane person whose mind had been temporarily upset by a night of
horror--in which a coffin-quitting corpse had figured, and so he had
been able to steer between the cruel rocks of Jail and Asylum to the
blessed harbour of Freedom.)

Yes--in spite of Blake's noble goodness and help, Dam knew that he was
_not_ normal, that he _was_ dangerous, that he spent long periods on
the very border-line of insanity, that he stood fascinated on that
border-line and gazed far into the awful country beyond--the Realms of
the Mad....

Marry! Not Lucille, while he had the sanity left to say "No"!

As for going to live at Monksmead with her and Auntie Yvette--it would
be an even bigger crime. Was it for _him_ to make _Lucille_ a
"problem" girl, a girl who was "talked about," a by-word for those
vile old women of both sexes whose favourite pastime is the invention
and dissemination of lies where they dare, and of even more damaging
head-shakes, lip-pursings, gasps and innuendoes where they do not?

Was it for _him_ to get _Lucille_ called "The Woman Who Did," by those
scum of the leisured classes, and "That peculiar young woman," by the
better sort of matron, dowager and chaperone,--make her the kind of
person from whose company careful mothers keep their innocent
daughters (that their market price may never be in danger of the
faintest depreciation when they are for sale in the matrimonial
market), the kind of woman for whom men have a slightly and subtly
different manner at meet, hunt-ball, dinner or theatre-box? Get
Lucille "talked about"?

No--setting aside the question of the possibility of living under the
same roof with her and conquering the longing to marry.

No--he had some decency left, tainted as he doubtless was by his
barrack-room life.

Tainted of cours