"I haven"t seen you do that for years," he said.
"What?"
"Hump yourself in that cryptic way."
"Haven"t you?" she said. "I was just wondering--" but she stopped herself suddenly.
"Wondering what?" David was watching her narrowly, and perceiving it, she flushed.
"This is not my idea of an interesting conversation," she said; "it"s getting too personal."
"I can remember the time when you told me that you didn"t find things interesting unless they were personal. "I like things very personal,"
you said--in those words."
"I did then."
"What has changed you?" David asked gravely.
"The chill wind of the world, I guess; the most personal part of me is frozen stiff."
"I never saw a warmer creature in my life," David protested. "On that same occasion you said that being a woman was about like being a field of clover in an insectless world. You don"t feel that way nowadays, surely,--at the rate the insects have been buzzing around you this winter. I"ve counted at least seven, three bees, one or two beetles, a b.u.t.terfly and a worm."
"I didn"t know you paid that much attention to my poor affairs."
"I do, though. If you hadn"t put your foot down firmly on the worm, I had every intention of doing so."
"Had you?"
"I had."
"On that occasion to which you refer I remember I also said that I had a queer hunch about Eleanor."
"Margaret, are you deliberately changing the subject?"
"I am."
"Then I shall bring the b.u.t.terfly 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.s that I was, I a.s.sumed 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 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."
"You wouldn"t smile if you were engaged to Beulah."
"Are they still engaged?"
"Beulah has her ring, but I notice she doesn"t wear it often."
"Jimmie and Gertrude seem happy."
"They are, gloriously."
"That leaves only us two," David suggested. "Margaret, dear, do you think the time will ever come when I shall get you back again?"
Margaret turned a little pale, but she met his look steadily.
"Did you ever lose me?"
"The answer to that is "yes," as you very well know. Time was when we were very close--you and I, then somehow we lost the way to each other. I"m beginning to realize that it hasn"t been the same world since and isn"t likely to be unless you come back to me."
"Was it I who strayed?"
"It was I; but it was you who put the bars up and have kept them there."
"Was I to let the bars down and wait at the gate?"
"If need be. It should be that way between us, Margaret, shouldn"t it?"
"I don"t know," Margaret said, "I don"t know." She flashed a sudden odd look at him. "If--when I put the bars down, I shall run for my life. I give you warning, David."
"Warning is all I want," David said contentedly. He could barely reach her hand across the intervening expanse of leather couch, but he accomplished it,--he was too wise to move closer to her. "You"re a lovely, lovely being," he said reverently. "G.o.d grant I may reach you and hold you."
She curled a warm little finger about his.
"What would Mrs. Bolling say?" she asked practically.
"To tell you the truth, she spoke of it the other day. I told her the Eleanor story, and that rather brought her to her senses. She wouldn"t have liked that, you know; but now all the eligible buds are plucked, and she wants me to settle down."
"Does she think I"m a settling kind of person?"
"She wouldn"t if she knew the way you go to my head," David murmured.
"Oh, she thinks that you"ll do. She likes the ten Hutchinsons."
"Maybe I"d like them better considered as connections of yours,"
Margaret said abstractedly.