And when he thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his
sensibility was almost overcome by this miserable end. What a heavy
blow for that poor young woman! Captain Mitchell did not belong to the
species of crabbed old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young
men paying attentions to young women. It seemed to him a natural and
proper thing. Proper especially. As to sailors, it was different; it was
not their place to marry, he maintained, but it was on moral grounds as
a matter of self-denial, for, he explained, life on board ship is not
fit for a woman even at best, and if you leave her on shore, first of
all it is not fair, and next she either suffers from it or doesn't care
a bit, which, in both cases, is bad. He couldn't have told what upset
him most--Charles Gould's immense material loss, the death of Nostromo,
which was a heavy loss to himself, or the idea of that beautiful and
accomplished young woman being plunged into mourning.
"Yes," the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting, began again, "he
believed me right enough. I thought he would have hugged me.
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