Bud could not see for the life of him why Marie should have
quit for that little ruction. It was not their first quarrel, nor
their worst; certainly he had not expected it to be their last.
Why, he asked the high heavens, had she told him to bring home a
roll of cotton, if she was going to leave him? Why had she turned
her back on that little home, that had seemed to mean as much to
her as it had to him?
Being kin to primitive man, Bud could only bellow rage when he
should have analyzed calmly the situation. He should have seen
that Marie too had cabin fever, induced by changing too suddenly
from carefree girlhood to the ills and irks of wifehood and
motherhood. He should have known that she had been for two months
wholly dedicated to the small physical wants of their baby, and
that if his nerves were fraying with watching that incessant
servitude, her own must be close to the snapping point; had
snapped, when dusk did not bring him home repentant.
But he did not know, and so he blamed Marie bitterly for the
wreck of their home, and he flung down all his worldly goods
before her, and marched off feeling self-consciously proud of his
martyrdom. It soothed him paradoxically to tell himself that he
was "cleaned"; that Marie had ruined him absolutely, and that he
was just ten dollars and a decent suit or two of clothes better
off than a tramp.
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