The man started a little, but he promptly recovered from his astonishment, and looked at her with twinkling eyes. "Now I understand," he said. "You were a little disgusted with me. The men you are used to wouldn't have thrown any one they couldn't agree with out of a hotel." "No. Still, there are cases when the provocation may be too strong for one." "It is quite often that way with me. I'm afraid I am a little short in temper." He leant upon the table, as though he had nothing more to say, and Carrie recognised that he did not mean to tell her what had led up to the outbreak. Whether this was due to pride or generosity she did not know, but the fact made its impression upon her. Her husband was, it seemed, sure enough of his own purposes to disregard what others thought of him; but there was a certain sting in the reflection. A desire on his part to stand well in her estimation would have been more gratifying. Still, she overcame the slight sense of mortification. "You haven't told me what the provocation was," she said. "No," said Leland, with a little quiet smile. "It wouldn't be quite the thing to worry you with an explanation every time I lose my temper. I do it now and then." "Ah," said Carrie, "don't you care, then, what I think of you? Still, in this case, I needn't ask you. Mrs. Custer told me that, too. That is why I felt I must ask you to forgive me for presuming to blame you. I want to be just, and I was in my wilfulness horribly far from being so." "You want to be just? That was the only reason?" The girl saw the tension in his face, and stood silent, swayed by a whirl of confused sensations. She would not admit there was another reason, though something in her nature clamoured for a breaking down of the restraint between them. She had looked down on this man and wantonly wounded him, while he had shown her what she realised was a splendid generosity and borne her scorn in silence. It was once more his independent silence that troubled her, and she felt just then that she would sooner have had him compel her to acknowledge that he was not what she had striven to think him. "Well," he said, a trifle sadly, "I suppose I must not expect too much." The girl's heart smote her. She knew just what he wanted her to say, but she could not say it, and yet she meant to do all she had undertaken. "There is a little more, and it must be said," she said. "I know part, at least, of what those men said of me." She stopped, and, holding herself rigidly, though one hand which she had laid on the table quivered a little, looked at him steadily. "If I could only prove them wrong, but I can't," she said. A deep flush crept into Leland's face, and the veins rose swollen on his forehead, while he grasped her shoulder almost roughly. "Do you know what you are saying?" he asked. "That I married you because we were poor at Barrock-holme. It was a horrible wrong I did you--and you have made me ashamed."