Peg O' My Heart Part 28

He looked at her in amazement.

"What do you mean?" he gasped. "It's only because you haven't the right that you do it--by suggestion," Ethel pursued.

"How can you say that?" And he put all the heart he was capable of into the question.

"You don't deny it," she said quietly.

He breathed hard and then said bitterly:

"What a contemptible opinion you must have of me."

"Then we're quits, aren't we?"

"How?" he asked.

"Haven't YOU one of ME?"

"Of YOU? Why, Ethel--"

"Surely every married man MUST have a contemptible opinion of the woman he covertly makes love to. If he hadn't he couldn't do it, could he?"

Once again she levelled her cold, impa.s.sive eyes on Brent's flushed face.

"I don't follow you," was all Brent said.

"Haven't you had time to think of an answer?"

"I don't now what you're driving at," he added.

Ethel smiled her most enigmatical smile:

"No? I think you do." She waited a moment. Brent said nothing. This was a new mood of Ethel's. It baffled him.

Presently she relieved the silence by asking him:

"What happened last night?"

He hesitated. Then he answered:

"I'd rather not say. I'd sound like a cad blaming a woman."

"Never mind how it sounds. Tell it. It must have been amusing."

"Amusing? Good G.o.d!" He bent over her again. "Oh, the more I look at you and listen to you, the more I realise I should never have married."

"Why DID you?" came the cool question.

Brent answered with all the power at his command. Here was the moment to lay his heart bare that Ethel might see.

"Have you ever seen a young hare, fresh from its kind, run headlong into a snare? Have you ever seen a young man free of the trammels of college, dash into a NET? _I_ did! I wasn't trap-wise!"

He paced the room restlessly, all the self-pity rising in him. He went on: "Good G.o.d! what nurslings we are when we first feel our feet! We're like children just loose from the leading-strings. Anything that glitters catches us. Every trap that is set for our unwary feet we drop into. I did. Dropped in. Caught hand and foot--mind and soul."

"Soul?" queried Ethel, with a note of doubt.

"Yes," he answered.

"Don't you mean BODY?" she suggested.

"Body, mind AND soul!" he said, with an air of finality.

"Well, BODY anyway," summed up Ethel.

"And for what?" he went on. "For WHAT? Love! Companions.h.i.+p! That is what we build on in marriage. And what did _I_ realise? Hate and wrangling! Wrangling--just as the common herd, with no advantages, wrangle, and make it a part of their lives--the zest to their union.

It's been my curse."

"Why wrangling?" drawled Ethel.

"She didn't understand."

"You?" asked Ethel, in surprise.

"My thoughts! My actions!"

"How curious."

"You mean you would?"

"Probably."

"I'm sure of it." He tried to take her hand. She drew it away, and settled herself comfortably to listen again:

"Tell me more about your wife."

"The slightest attention shown to any other woman meant a ridiculous--a humiliating scene."

"Humiliating?"

"Isn't doubt and suspicion humiliating?"

"It would be a compliment in some cases."

"How?"

"It would put a fict.i.tious value on some men."

"You couldn't humiliate in that way," he ventured, slowly.

"No. I don't think I could. If a man showed a preference for any other woman she would be quite welcome to him."