To see her the first time had been something of a
shock to him. He had some preconceived ideas as to captain's wives
which, while he did not believe the testimony of his eyes, made him open
them very wide. He had stared till the captain's wife noticed it plainly
and turned her face away. Captain's wife! That girl covered with rugs
in a long chair. Captain's . . . ! He gasped mentally. It had never
occurred to him that a captain's wife could be anything but a woman to be
described as stout or thin, as jolly or crabbed, but always mature, and
even, in comparison with his own years, frankly old. But this! It was a
sort of moral upset as though he had discovered a case of abduction or
something as surprising as that. You understand that nothing is more
disturbing than the upsetting of a preconceived idea. Each of us
arranges the world according to his own notion of the fitness of things.
To behold a girl where your average mediocre imagination had placed a
comparatively old woman may easily become one of the strongest shocks
. . . "
Marlow paused, smiling to himself.
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