“There’s nothing I wouldn’t give for it not to have happened,” he exclaimed. “I suppose I was a fool. You warned me. And it was I who, like an ass, encouraged them. I could kick myself!”
“It’s like you, John, dear, not to blame me,” she said humbly.
“Of course I don’t blame you. You thought it boyish folly. . . . What’s the good of talking about it?”
They did talk, however, in a helpless way.
“They had no intention of doing anything desperate,” she said, “until this morning. If he had remained in London, they might have gone on indefinitely. The prospect of endless months in France set the whole thing ablaze. . . . When I put the moral side before him, he retorted with a tu quoque.”
“What did he mean?”
“That I was ready, at his age, to run away with a married man.”
“Were you?” he asked.
“I suppose so,” she replied with a weary little smile.
“That was an entirely different affair.”