He recalled the white heat of his indignation against Dan Baldromma for what he had done to his step-daughter. That was only last night, and now he himself .... what a fool! What a fool! Then the sense of his folly gave way to a sense of shame. Down to yesterday he had lived a decent life. Reckless, heedless, careless, stupid perhaps, but decent anyway. And now .... what shame! The light was then clearing, and raising his eyes he saw on the south beach a one-story fisherman's cottage from which the smoke was rising. It was Mrs. Quayle's cottage. She was making her early breakfast, and presently she would go to his room to make his. He shuddered at a vision of what she would find there--the close air, the gas fire, the girl's blouse on the floor, the girl herself .... how degrading it all was! He saw Dan Baldromma ferreting out the facts (as of course he would, having to find excuses for his own barbarity), and then blazoning them abroad to his own disgrace and the discredit of his class. Or worse--a hundredfold worse--holding them as a threat over his father. What a disgusting bog he had strayed into! He saw the truth leaking out one way or other and putting an end to his career at the bar. It was not the same here as in the greater communities, where a man might commit a fault and then submerge it in the fathomless tide of life. In this little island, where everybody knew everybody, it was the man himself who was submerged. If the story of last night became known to anyone it would become known to everyone, from the Governor himself to the meanest beggar on the roads. No position of honour or authority would ever be possible to him after that. The black fact would be a clanking chain which he would have to drag after him as long as he lived. When he thought of this--that the event of one night might alter the whole course of his life, and bring scandal upon the Deemster, and that it was due to a miserable accident in the first instance--the accident of meeting Bessie on the streets after midnight--he was filled with a fierce and consuming rage, and for one bad moment he had an almost uncontrollable desire to return to his rooms and drive her out of them. That horrified him. He hated himself for it, and after a while his self-pity gave place to pity for the girl. "Good heavens, what are my risks compared to hers?" he asked himself. The poor girl had so many excuses. Back in the past, before she was born even, she had been condemned and branded, and the damned hypocritical world had been deepening the injury every day since. If he had found her in the streets it was only because her brutal step-father had turned her from his door. And if she had come into his rooms it was because she had no other shelter.