“Then I shall bring the butterfly up later.”
“I said,” Margaret ignored his interruption, “that I had the feeling that she was going to be a storm center and bring some kind of queer trouble upon us.”
“Yes.”
“She did, didn’t she?”
“I’m not so sure that’s the way to put it,” David said gravely. “We brought queer trouble on her.”
“She made—you—suffer.”
“She gave my vanity the worst blow it has ever had in its life,” David corrected her. “Look here, Margaret, I want you to know the truth about that. I—I stumbled into that, you know. She was so sweet, and before I knew it I had—I found myself in the attitude of making love to her. Well, there was nothing to do but go through with it. I wanted to, of course. I felt like Pygmalion—but it was all potential, unrealized—and ass that I was, I assumed that she would have no other idea in the matter. I was going to marry her because I—I had started things going, you know. I had no choice even if I had wanted one. It never occurred 296 to me that she might have a choice, and so I went on trying to make things easy for her, and getting them more tangled at every turn.”
“You never really—cared?” Margaret’s face was in shadow.
“Never got the chance to find out. With characteristic idiocy I was keeping out of the picture until the time was ripe. She really ran away to get away from the situation I created and she was quite right too. If I weren’t haunted by these continual pictures of our offspring in the bread line, I should be rather glad than otherwise that she’s shaken us all till we get our breath back. Poor Peter is the one who is smashed, though. He hasn’t smiled since she went away.”