There was some justice in this and Mary-Clare said slowly: "I'm sorry, Larry. I really was only thinking."
Now that she was face to face with her big moment, Mary-Clare realized anew how difficult her task was. Often, in the past, thinking of Larry when he was not with her, it had seemed possible to reason with him; to bring truth to him and implore his help. Always she had striven to cling to her image of Larry, but never to the real man. The man she had constructed with Larry off the scene was quite another creature from Larry in the flesh. This knowledge was humiliating now in the blazing light of reality grimly faced and it taxed all of Mary-Clare's courage. She was smiling sadly, smiling at her own inability in the past to deal with facts.
Larry was brought to bay. He was disappointed, angry, and outraged. He was not a man to reflect upon causes; results, and very present ones, were all that concerned him. But he did, now, hark back to the scene soon after the birth and death of the last child. Such states of mind didn't last for ever, and there was no baby coming at the moment. He could not make things out.
"See here," he said rather gropingly, "you are not holding a grouch, are you?"
For a moment Mary-Clare shrank. She weakly wanted to put off the big moment; dared not face it.
"It's late, Larry. You are tired." She got that far when she affrightedly remembered the bedroom upstairs and paused. She had arranged it for Larry--there must be an explanation of that.
"Late be hanged!" Larry stretched his legs out and plunged his hands in his pockets. "I'm going to get at the bottom of this to-night. You understand?"
"All right, Larry." Mary-Clare sank back in her chair--she had fallen on her adventurous way; she had no words with which to convey her burning thoughts. Already she had got so far from the man who had filled such a false position in her life that he seemed a stranger. To tell him that she did not love him, had never loved him, was all but impossible. Of course he could not be expected to comprehend. The situation became terrifying.
"You've never been the same since the last baby came." Larry was speaking in an injured, harsh tone. "I've put up with a good deal, Mary-Clare; not many men would be so patient. The trouble with you, my girl, is this, you get your ideas from books. That mightn't matter if you had horse sense and knew when to slam the covers on the rot. But you try to live 'em and then the devil is to pay. Dad spoiled you. He let you run away with yourself. But the time's come----"