"Well, are matters so desperate?" she repeated.
He did not answer her at once.
"Bad enough," he replied at length and was silent.
A sense of terrible loneliness swept over him; a loneliness peopled with shadows, in which he was the only living thing, but the shadows were infinitely more real than he himself. He had the brute instinct to hide, and the human instinct to share his fear. He poured himself a drink. Evelyn watched him with compressed lips as he drained the glass. He drew himself up out of the depths of his chair and began to tramp the floor; words leaped to his lips but he pressed them back; he was aware that only the most intangible barriers held between them; an impulse that grew in his throbbing brain seemed driving him forward to destroy these barriers; to stand before her as he was; to emerge from his mental solitude and claim her companionship. What was marriage made for, if not for this?
"Look here," he said, wheeling on her suddenly. "Do you still love me; do you still care as you once did?" He seized one of her hands in his.
"You hurt me, Marsh!" she said, drawing away from him.
He dropped her hand and with a smothered oath turned from her.
"You women don't know what love is!" he snarled. "Talk about a woman giving up; talk about her sacrifices—it's nothing to what a man does, where he loves!"
"What does he do that is so wonderful, Marsh?" she asked coldly.
He paused and regarded her with a wolfish glare.