‘A vow of infinite solemnity. I must tell you from the beginning; perhaps you are old enough to hear it now, though you have been too young before. Your mother’s life ended in much sorrow, and it was occasioned entirely by me. In my regret for the wrong done her I swore to her that though she had not been my wife, no other woman should stand in that relationship to me; and this to her was a sort of comfort. When she was dead my knowledge of my own plaguy impressionableness, which seemed to be ineradicable--as it seems still--led me to think what safeguards I could set over myself with a view to keeping my promise to live a life of celibacy; and among other things I determined to forswear the society, and if possible the sight, of women young and attractive, as far as I had the power to do.’ ‘It is not so easy to avoid the sight of a beautiful woman if she crosses your path, I should think?’ ‘It is not easy; but it is possible.’ ‘How?’ ‘By directing your attention another way.’ ‘But do you mean to say, captain, that you can be in a room with a pretty woman who speaks to you, and not look at her?’ ‘I do: though mere looking has less to do with it than mental attentiveness--allowing your thoughts to flow out in her direction--to comprehend her image.’ ‘But it would be considered very impolite not to look at the woman or comprehend her image?’ ‘It would, and is. I am considered the most impolite officer in the service. I have been nicknamed the man with the averted eyes--the man with the detestable habit--the man who greets you with his shoulder, and so on. Ninety-and-nine fair women at the present moment hate me like poison and death for having persistently refused to plumb the depths of their offered eyes.’ ‘How can you do it, who are by nature courteous?’ ‘I cannot always--I break down sometimes. But, upon the whole, recollection holds me to it: dread of a lapse. Nothing is so potent as fear well maintained.’ De Stancy narrated these details in a grave meditative tone with his eyes on the wall, as if he were scarcely conscious of a listener. ‘But haven’t you reckless moments, captain?--when you have taken a little more wine than usual, for instance?’ ‘I don’t take wine.’ ‘O, you are a teetotaller?’ ‘Not a pledged one--but I don’t touch alcohol unless I get wet, or anything of that sort.’ ‘Don’t you sometimes forget this vow of yours to my mother?’ ‘No, I wear a reminder.’ ‘What is that like?’ De Stancy held up his left hand, on the third finger of which appeared an iron ring. Dare surveyed it, saying, ‘Yes, I have seen that before, though I never knew why you wore it. Well, I wear a reminder also, but of a different sort.’ He threw open his shirt-front, and revealed tattooed on his breast the letters DE STANCY; the same marks which Havill had seen in the bedroom by the light of the moon.