The truth was that he had dreaded his own irritability as much as he had dreaded her emotional demanding.

But he did not know it--he did not know what was the matter at all.

He simply knew vaguely that he was a brute, that he felt like a brute, and that he did not know how to stop being a brute.

His wife knew that he was a brute, and at the same time she felt throughly convinced that she was a suffering martyr.

He was dreading to come home and she was dreading to have him come home--and there they were in a continuous nightmare.