t'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.

"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 goo