A sense of terrible loneliness swept over him; a loneliness peopled with shadows, in which he was the only living thing, but the shadows were infinitely more real than he himself.  He had the brute instinct to hide, and the human instinct to share his fear.  He poured himself a drink.  Evelyn watched him with compressed lips as he drained the glass.  He drew himself up out of the depths of his chair and began to tramp the floor; words leaped to his lips but he pressed them back; he was aware that only the most intangible barriers held between them; an impulse that grew in his throbbing brain seemed driving him forward to destroy these barriers; to stand before her as he was; to emerge from his mental solitude and claim her companionship.  What was marriage made for, if not for this?

“Look here,” he said, wheeling on her suddenly.  “Do you still love me; do you still care as you once did?” He seized one of her hands in his.

“You hurt me, Marsh!” she said, drawing away from him.

He dropped her hand and with a smothered oath turned from her.

“You women don’t know what love is!” he snarled.  “Talk about a woman giving up; talk about her sacrifices—­it’s nothing to what a man does, where he loves!”

“What does he do that is so wonderful, Marsh?” she asked coldly.

He paused and regarded her with a wolfish glare.

“It’s no damned anemic passion!” he burst out.

“Thank you,” she mocked.  “Really, Marsh, you are outdoing yourself!”

“You have never let me see into your heart,—­never once!”

“Perhaps it’s just as well I haven’t; perhaps it is a forbearance for which you should be only grateful,” she jeered.

“If you were the sort of woman I once thought you, I’d want to hide nothing from you; but a woman—­she’s secretive and petty, she always keeps her secrets; the million little things she won’t tell, the little secrets that mean so much to her—­and a man wastes his life in loving such a woman, and is bitter when he finds he’s given all for nothing!”

His heavy tramping went on.

“Is that the way you feel about it?” she asked.

“Yes!” he cried.  “I’m infinitely more lonely than when I married you!  Look here; I came to you, and in six months’ time you knew a thousand things you had no right to know, unless you, too, were willing to come as close!  But I’m damned if I know the first thing about you—­sometimes you are one thing, sometimes another.  I never know where to find you!”

“And I am to blame that we are unhappy?  Of course you live in a way to make any woman perfectly happy—­you are never at fault there!”

“You never really loved me!”

“Didn’t I?” she sighed with vague emotion.

“No.”

“Then why did I marry you, Marsh?”

“Heaven knows—­I don’t!”

“Then why did you marry me?” She gave him a fleeting smile.