You wanted the results, but you wouldn't pay the price in self-denial and patience, and so we rushed into debt and it's been a scramble ever since! I've begged and borrowed and cheated to keep afloat!" "And I was the cause of it all ?" she demanded with lazy scorn of him.
"There was a time when I stood a chance of doing something, but I've fooled my opportunities away!" "What of the promises you made me when we were married--what about them ?" she asked.
"You created conditions in which I could not keep them!" he said.
"I seem to have been wholly, at fault; at least from your point of view; but don't you suppose there is something _I_ could say?
Do you suppose _I_ sit here silent because I am convinced that it is all my fault ?" He did not answer her at once but continued to pace the floor; at length he jerked out: "No, I was at fault too.

I've a nasty temper.

I should have had more patience with you, Evelyn--but it was so hard to deny you anything you wanted that I could possibly give you--I'd have laid the whole world at your feet if I could!" "I believe you would, Marsh--then!" she said.
"It's a pity you didn't understand me," he answered indifferently.
Nothing he could say led in the direction he would have had it lead, for he wanted her to realize her part in what had happened, to know that the burden beneath which he had gone down was in a measure the work of her hands.

His instinct was as primitive as a child's fear of the dark; he must escape from the horror of his isolation; his secret was made doubly terrifying because he knew he dared not share it with any living creature.

Yet his mind played strange tricks with him; he was ready to risk much that he might learn what part of the truth he could tell her; he was even ready to risk all in a dumb brute impulse to gather up the remnants of his strength of heart and brain, and be the center of some widespread catastrophe; to put his fear in her soul just as it was in his own.