Why, he asked the high heavens, had she told him to bring home a roll of cotton, if she was going to leave him?
Why had she turned her back on that little home, that had seemed to mean as much to her as it had to him?
Being kin to primitive man, Bud could only bellow rage when he should have analyzed calmly the situation.

He should have seen that Marie too had cabin fever, induced by changing too suddenly from carefree girlhood to the ills and irks of wifehood and motherhood.

He should have known that she had been for two months wholly dedicated to the small physical wants of their baby, and that if his nerves were fraying with watching that incessant servitude, her own must be close to the snapping point; had snapped, when dusk did not bring him home repentant.
But he did not know, and so he blamed Marie bitterly for the wreck of their home, and he flung down all his worldly goods before her, and marched off feeling self-consciously proud of his martyrdom.

It soothed him paradoxically to tell himself that he was "cleaned"; that Marie had ruined him absolutely, and that he was just ten dollars and a decent suit or two of clothes better off than a tramp.

He was tempted to go back and send the ten dollars after the rest of the fifteen hundred, but good sense prevailed.