A portion of confidence in her was lost.

He felt that he had no guarantee for the future; that at any moment, in the heat of passion, she might leave him again.

He remembered, too distinctly, her words on the night before, when he tried to make her comprehend his view of the relation between man and wife--"That will not suit me, Hartley." And he felt that she was in earnest; that she would resist every effort he might make to lead and control as a man in certain things, just as she had done from the beginning.
In matrimonial quarrels you cannot kiss and make up again, as children do, forgetting all the stormy past in the sunshiny present.
And this was painfully clear to both Hartley and Irene, as she, alone in her chamber, and he, alone in his office, pondered, on that day of reconciliation, the past and the future.

Yet each resolved to be more forbearing and less exacting; to be emulous of concession, rather than exaction; to let love, uniting with reason, hold pride and self-will in close submission.
Their meeting, on Hartley's return home, at his usual late hour in the afternoon, was tender, but not full of the joyous warmth of feeling that often showed itself.

Their hearts were not light enough for ecstasy.