"I beg your pardon," the older man said, quickly. "That was a mistake.
I was wrong. I beg your pardon. But you have tried me very sorely. You
have intruded upon a private trouble that you ought to know must be
very painful to me. But I believe you meant well. I know you to be a
gentleman, and I am willing to think you acted on impulse, and that
you will see to-morrow what a mistake you have made. It is not a thing
I talk about; I do not speak of it to my friends, and they are far too
considerate to speak of it to me. But you have put me on the
defensive. You have made me out more or less of a brute, and I don't
intend to be so far misunderstood. There are two sides to every story,
and there is something to be said about this, even for me."

He walked back to his place beside the mantel, and put his shoulders
against it, and faced Van Bibber, with his fingers twisted in the cord
around his waist.

"When I married," said Mr. Caruthers, "I did so against the wishes of
my people and the advice of all my friends. You know all about that.
God help us! who doesn't?" he added, bitterly. "It was very rich, rare
reading for you and for every one else who saw the daily papers, and
we gave them all they wanted of it. I took her out of that life and
married her because I believed she was as good a woman as any of those
who had never had to work for their living, and I was bound that my
friends and your friends should recognize her and respect her as my
wife had a right to be respected; and I took her abroad that I might
give all you sensitive, fine people a chance to get used to the idea
of being polite to a woman who had once been a burlesque actress. It
began over there in Paris. What I went through then no one knows; but
when I came back--and I would never have come back if she had not made