"I don't quite understand your wife," Berenice said to Mannering. "Her dislike of me is a little too obvious. What does it mean? Do you know?"
He shook his head. He was looking very pale and tired.
"I am not sure that I know anything about it at all," he said. "I am beginning to distrust my own judgment."
"Your marriage—" she began, thoughtfully.
"Don't let us talk about it," he interrupted. "I tried to pay a debt. It seems to me that I have only incurred a fresh one."
They were silent for some time. Then their opponents lost a ball and displayed no particular diligence in attempting to find it. Berenice sat down upon a plank seat.
"Your marriage," she said, "seemed always to me a piece of quixotism. I never altogether understood it."
"It was an affair of impulse," he said, slowly. "Life from a personal point of view had lost all interest to me. I did not dream after my—shall we call it apostacy?—that I could rely upon even a modicum of your friendship. I looked upon myself as an outcast commencing life afresh. Then chance intervened. I thought I saw my way to making some atonement to a woman whose life I had certainly helped to ruin. That was where the serious part of the mistake came. I thought what I had to offer would be sufficient. I am beginning now to doubt it."
"And what are you going to do?" she asked, looking steadily away from him.
"Heaven knows," he answered, bitterly. "I cannot give what I do not possess."