"We know there are nasty things in the world, but that is no reason--" She talked on in her indignant strain, but he was not following her.

He was smiling to himself as he looked up into her virginal face, so innocent, so penetratingly innocent, that its purity seemed always to enter into him, driving out of him all dross and bathing him in some ethereal effulgence that was as cool and soft and velvety as starshine.
_We know there are nasty things in the world_! He cuddled to him the notion of her knowing, and chuckled over it as a love joke.

The next moment, in a flashing vision of multitudinous detail, he sighted the whole sea of life's nastiness that he had known and voyaged over and through, and he forgave her for not understanding the story.

It was through no fault of hers that she could not understand.

He thanked God that she had been born and sheltered to such innocence.