Bartley would willingly have passed this affair over with Marcia, like some of their quarrels, and allowed a reconciliation to effect itself through mere lapse of time and daily custom. But there were difficulties in the way to such an end; his shameful escapade had given the quarrel a character of its own, which could not be ignored. He must keep his word about making a clean breast of it to Marcia, whether he liked or not; but she facilitated his confession by the meek and dependent fashion in which she hovered about, anxious to do something or anything for him. If, as he suggested to Halleck, she had divined the truth, she evidently did not hold him wholly to blame for what had happened, and he was not without a self-righteous sense of having given her a useful and necessary lesson. He was inclined to a severity to which his rasped and shaken nerves contributed, when he spoke to her that night, as they sat together after tea; she had some sewing in her lap, little mysteries of soft muslin for the baby, which she was edging with lace, and her head drooped over her work, as if she could not confront him with her swollen eyes. “Look here, Marcia,” he said, “do you know what was the matter with me this morning?” She did not answer in words; her hands quivered a moment; then she caught up the things out of her lap, and sobbed into them. The sight unmanned Bartley; he hated to see any one cry,--even his wife, to whose tears he was accustomed. He dropped down beside her on the sofa, and pulled her head over on his shoulder. “It was my fault! it was my fault, Bartley!” she sobbed. “Oh, how can I ever get over it?” “Well, don't cry, don't cry! It wasn't altogether your fault,” returned Bartley. “We were both to blame.” “No! I began it. If I hadn't broken my promise about speaking of Hannah Morrison, it never would have happened.” This was so true that Bartley could not gainsay it. “But I couldn't seem to help it; and you were--you were--so quick with me; you didn't give me time to think; you--But I was the one to blame, I was to blame!” “Oh, well, never mind about it; don't take on so,” coaxed Bartley. “It's all over now, and it can't be helped. And I can promise you,” he added, “that it shall never happen again, no matter what you do,” and in making this promise he felt the glow of virtuous performance. “I think we've both had a lesson. I suppose,” he continued sadly, as one might from impersonal reflection upon the temptations and depravity of large cities, “that it's _common_ enough. I dare say it isn't the first time Ben Halleck has taken a fellow home in a hack.” Bartley got so much comfort from the conjecture he had thrown out for Marcia's advantage, that he felt a sort of self-approval in the fact with which he followed it up. “And there's this consolation about it, if there isn't any other: that it wouldn't have happened now, if it had ever happened before.”