Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to
marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement
ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as
to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually
came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of
his simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. He
had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed.
Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some
one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was
not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with
other men--one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she
insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but
she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it
was still not believed that she had. There were those who could not
only charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to some
one was involved, turned over to Peter.

"Dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right.
I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one has
handed me a damned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessed
that she wasn't suited to me. She was really too free--a life-lover more
than a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because she
liked me. She isn't really my sort, not simple enough."

"But you loved her, I thought?"

"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were many
ways about her that troubled me. You think I'm kidding about this home
and family idea, but I'm not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you.
I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine