I had meant to be so frightfully subtle over Walter Markham when the
idea first flashed into my mind. I meant to leave my little audience
with the vague impression that there might be something in it, that I
might have found in Walter Markham's society I had made a mistake in
getting engaged so quickly to Cheneston Cromer--I just wanted to make it
easy for Cheneston to break off the engagement.
I was so sure he would come to me and ask me if his first suspicions
were correct and Walter and I cared for each other; then I would be
delicate and subtle again, and hint at devotion, nothing settled,
nothing sure.
I had wanted the delicacy of a butterfly, and I had trodden as earnestly
and thoroughly as an elephant--a whole herd of them.