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 Cameron looks at my breast and can truthfully say that the fire is dying out of the wound there, if I am not deceiving myself in thinking that I am infinitely more of a man than I was thirty days ago, that’s another proposition. That’s a proposition that I hadn’t figured on when I essayed the bridegroom stunt. And that’s a proposition that’s going to take a lot of thought. It doesn’t behoove any man to assume a ‘I am holier than thou’ attitude, but at the same time, a man certainly has to do considerable thinking before he makes up his mind as to whether he wants to assume the rearing of a child fathered by a man who had the streak of yellow in his make-up that made him neglect to give his child honourable parentage.”

Jamie thought that over. He thought for a long time. He thought deep and hard. He thought from the background of Scottish prejudice. He remembered personal pride. He thought from the background of public opinion. Then he cast them all aside and thought straight from the shoulder. From somewhere a legal phrase crept into his brain. “Mitigating circumstances.” He could not think of the form of the Storm Girl as he had held it tight in his arms, he could not think upon the silkiness of her hair and the perfume of her breath and the wild odours that clung about her, he could not force himself to think that she was anything but fresh and young and healthful both of body and of mind. It was not compatible with ordinary reason that she should have polluted her body and smirched her soul, that she had broken the laws of God and broken the laws of man, and risked, not only