"Don't you, by your reproaches, make matters worse for me, Lucy, to-day. God knows that I have well-nigh more than I can bear."
The strangely-painful tone, so full of unmistakable anguish, aroused her kindly nature. She turned to him with a sigh.
"I wish I could make things better for both of us, Karl."
"At least, you need not make them worse. What with one thing and another--"
"Well?" she said, her voice softened, as he paused.
"Nothing lies around me, Lucy, but perplexity and dread and pain. Look where I will, abroad or at home, there's not as much as a single ray of light to cheer my spirit, or the faintest reflection of it. You cannot wonder that I am sometimes tempted to wish I could leave the world behind me."
"Have you had a pleasant day in town?" she asked, after a little while.
"No, I have had an unsatisfactory and trying day in all ways. And I have come home to find more to try me: more dissatisfaction here, more dread abroad. 'Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.' Some of us are destined to realise the truth in ourselves all too surely."
He looked at his watch, got up, and walked indoors without another word. Lucy gazed after him with yearning eyes; eyes that seemed to have some of the perplexity he spoke of in their depths. There were moments when she failed to understand her husband's moods. This was one.