He was too ingenuous. Everybody on board was, exception
being made of Mr. Smith who, however, was simple enough in his way, with
that terrible simplicity of the fixed idea, for which there is also
another name men pronounce with dread and aversion. His fixed idea was
to save his girl from the man who had possessed himself of her (I use
these words on purpose because the image they suggest was clearly in Mr.
Smith's mind), possessed himself unfairly of her while he, the father,
was locked up.
"I won't rest till I have got you away from that man," he would murmur to
her after long periods of contemplation. We know from Powell how he used
to sit on the skylight near the long deck-chair on which Flora was
reclining, gazing into her face from above with an air of guardianship
and investigation at the same time.
It is almost impossible to say if he ever had considered the event
rationally. The avatar of de Barral into Mr. Smith had not been effected
without a shock--that much one must recognize. It may be that it drove
all practical considerations out of his mind, making room for awful and
precise visions which nothing could dislodge afterwards.
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