When he had first come home she had cried heart-brokenly against him, had
hung with her arms about his neck, sobbing out that she knew--she
knew--she knew he had done nothing wrong. He had had to push her roughly
from him. He did not wish to go through a scene like that again!
To Bessie and his son, who maintained a sullen condemnatory attitude
towards him, he never spoke if he could avoid doing so.
Towards his wife he held an altogether different demeanour.
The troubles which had come upon him had been induced by his good-natured
desire to meet the heavy expenses of an extravagant household. Money which
he could not earn in the legitimate exercise of his profession, nor come
by honestly, had been spent. Who had had the spending of it but she--his
wife? Of his grievous undoing, then, it was she who was the sole cause.
Of this explanation he delivered himself to her in the first hour of his
return to his home.
She was too stricken, too dumbfounded, too much overwhelmed with shame and
sorrow for him to resent the attack upon herself, or to attempt reprisals.
Of her defenceless submission he took advantage, and presently had brought
himself honestly to believe that on his wife's shoulders lay the
responsibility of his downfall.
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