Humbert is a character who will inevitably try to justify his attraction to Dolores. Though at the basest level it is against the law, but it is also a "sickness" which the public will ostracize any active participant of. Humbert is in (or would be in, if he had not died in jail) a position which requires him to make some kind of social appeal to the jury as to not be proven guilty. His explanations require logic, whimsy, and other traits which will trigger human empathy in those looking on. His attempts at triggering such empathy are various.
For one, he attempts to produce an empathy in the jury through sad recollection, in the passage on page 15, reminiscing on the "flurry of pale repetitive scraps" that was his youth. He tells the tale of his indirection as a student as if it is a tragedy worthy of public mourning--that, though his studies "were meticulous and intense," he was eventually plagued by "a peculiar exhaustion"; one which hindered him in some sort from pursuing his education to the fullest extent. Of course, in the bigger picture of human life, it may not come as a surprise that a young adult pursuing a college degree found themselves questioning their interests and motives, but Humbert talks of this time in such a way that the audience is made to think it is a great misfortune and he is at some kind of disadvantage because of it.
H.H. also attempts to create logic by explaining the rules of his attraction in a step-by-step fashion. The passage listed from pages 17-18 is a prime example of this: Humbert explains that "there must be a gap of several years, never less than ten ... generally thirty or forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between maiden and man to enable the latter to come under a nymphet's spell." Of course, this is ridiculous--that there is a certain age boundary which the offender in a pedophilic relationship must adhere to in order for that relationship to be considered a nymphetic seduction; of course, it is just made up in Humbert's head to justify his actions to himself and to those looking on, but H.H. explains his attraction in such a precise and finite way--explaining more deeply that "it is...a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount, and a certain contrast that the mind perceives" that triggers an attraction to a "nymphet"--that the reader, the jury, and the general bystander is likely to say "Well, maybe there is a science to his 'sickness.'"
One last passage that I found in which Humbert tries to justify his actions occurs when he meets Mr. McCoo on page 36 and learns that his house has burnt down:
"No, since the only reason for my coming had vanished, the aforesaid arrangement seemed preposterous...I was angry, disappointed and bored, but being a polite European, could not refuse to be sent off to Lawn Street in that funeral car, feeling that otherwise McCoo would devise an even more elaborate means of getting rid of me... I tipped the chauffer and hoped he would immediately drive away so that I might double back unnoticed to my hotel and bag; but the man merely crossed to the other side of the street where an old lady was calling to him from her porch. What could I do?"
Here, Humbert tries to appeal to the audience in a way which might not be expected: that he was stuck in a trap of unfortunate coincidence, a situation in which his manners conflicted with his real feeling and motives, forcing him to accept the offer of staying with the Hazes rather than going on his own way. One might be pretty suspicious that Humbert still had in mind that figure of an adolescent whom he wished to "fondle in Humbertish" (35) when he decided to stick around and see what happened, but he explains the situation in a way which justifies his actions to himself and his audience as an inescapable case of coincidence, which would eventually lead to his fatal attraction to Dolores.
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