d? 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?"

He did not answer her at once but continued to pace the floor; at length
he jerked out:

"No, I was at fault too. I've a nasty temper. I should have had more
patience with you, Evelyn--but it was so hard to deny you anything you
wanted that I could possibly give you--I'd have laid the whole world at
your feet if I could!"

"I believe you would, Marsh--then!" she said.

"It's a pity you didn't understand me," he answered indifferently.

Nothing he could s