I must have been mistaken in thinking this marriage impossible and incongruous.

What incongruity could there be in Isaacs marrying Miss Westonhaugh?
My conclusions were false.

Why must he necessarily return with her to England, and wear a red coat, and make himself ridiculous at the borough elections?
Why should not this ideal couple choose some happy spot, as far from the corrosive influence of Anglo-Saxon prejudice as from the wretched sensualism of prosperous life east of the Mediterranean?
I was carried away by the idea, returning with redoubled strength as a sequel to what I had argued and to what I had guessed.
"Why not ?" was the question I repeated to myself over and over again in the half minute's pause after Isaacs finished speaking.
"You are right," he said slowly, his half-closed eyes fixed on his feet.
"Yes, you are right.

Why not?
Indeed, indeed, why not ?" It must have been pure guess-work, this reading of my thoughts.

When he was last speaking his manner was all indifference, scorn of my ideas, and defiance of every western mode of reasoning.