“Because I loved you—­because you had crept into my heart with your pretty ways, your charm, and the fascination of you.  I hadn’t any thought but you; you seemed all of my life, and I was going to do such great things for you.  By God, I was going to amount to something for your sake!  I was going to make you a proud and happy woman, but you wouldn’t have it!  You never got past the trivial things; the annoyances, the need of money, the little self-denials, the little inconveniences; you stopped there and dragged me back when I wanted to go on; you wouldn’t have it, you couldn’t or wouldn’t understand my hopes—­my ambitions!”

“Marsh, I was only a girl!” she said.

He put out his hand toward the bottle.

“Don’t, Marsh!” she entreated.

He turned away and fell to pacing the floor again.

“What happiness do we get out of life, what good?  We go on from day to day living a life that is perfectly intolerable to us both; what’s the use of it—­I wonder we stand it!”

“I have sometimes wondered that, too,” Evelyn half whispered.

“You had it in your power to make our life different, but you wouldn’t take the trouble; and see where we have drifted; you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you—­” She started.  “What sort of a basis is that for a man and wife, for our life together?”

“It’s what we—­what you have made it!” she answered.

“No, it isn’t; it’s what you have made it!  I tell you, you were bored to death; you wanted noise and world!  Remember how I used to come home from the office every night, and begrudged the moments when any one called?  I wanted only you; I talked over my cases with you, my hopes and my ambitions; but you mighty soon got sick of that—­you yawned, you were sleepy, and you wanted to go about; you thought it was silly staying cooped up like that, and seeing no one, going nowhere!  It was stupid for you, you were bored to death, you wanted noise and excitement, to spend money, to see and be seen,—­as if that game was worth the candle in a God-forsaken hole of a place like Mount Hope!  You killed my ambition then and there; I saw it was no use.  You wanted the results, but you wouldn’t pay the price in self-denial and patience, and so we rushed into debt and it’s been a scramble ever since!  I’ve begged and borrowed and cheated to keep afloat!”

“And I was the cause of it all?” she demanded with lazy scorn of him.

“There was a time when I stood a chance of doing something, but I’ve fooled my opportunities away!”

“What of the promises you made me when we were married—­what about them?” she asked.

“You created conditions in which I could not keep them!” he said.

“I seem to have been wholly, at fault; at least from your point of view; but don’t you suppose there is something I could say?  Do you suppose I sit here silent because I am convinced that it is all my fault?”