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 God!" 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 God! 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.
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