ould appreciate what they had cost him, too, when they no longer
had him to draw on. He felt very sorry for himself. Grown man as he was,
he was driven back into infancy by his terrors, and like a pouting,
supperless boy, he wanted to die to spite the rest of the family and
win their apologies even if he should not hear them.

He wondered if, after all, his wife would not be happier to be rid of
him. No, she would regret him for one thing at least, that he left her
without means.

Well, she deserved to be penniless. Why should she expect a man to kill
himself for her sake and leave her a wealthy widow to buy some other
man? Let her practise then some of the economies he had vainly begged of
her before. If she had been worthy of his posthumous protection she
would not have treated him so outrageously at a time of such stress as
this.

She knew he was dog-tired, yet she allowed him to be angered, and she
knew just what themes were sure to provoke his wrath. So she had harped
on these till she had rendered him to a frenzy.

They had stood about or paced the floor or dropped in chairs and fought
as they flung off their clothes piecemeal. She had combed and brushed
her hair viciously as she raged, weeping the unbeautiful tears of wrath.
But he had not had that comfort of tears; his tears ran down the inside
of his soul and burned. She goaded him out of his ordinary
self-control--knew just how to do it and reveled in it.

No doubt he had said things to her that a gentleman does not say to a
lady, that hardly any man would say to any woman. He was startled to
remember what he had said to her. He abhorred the thought of such
things coming from his lips--and to the mother of his children. But the
blame for these atrocities was also hers. She had driven him frantic;
she would have driven a less-dignified man to violence, to blows,
perhaps. And she had had the effrontery to blame him for driving her
frantic when it was she that drove him.

Finally they had stormed themselves out, squandered their vocabularies
of abuse, and taken resort to silence in a pretended dignity. That is,
she had done this. He had relapsed into silence because he realized how
impervious to truth or justice she was. Facts she would not deal in.
Logic she abhorred. Reasoning infuriated her.

And then in grim, mutual contempt they had crept into bed and lain as
far apart as they could. He would have gone into another room, but she
would have thought he