Thanks.

But how does Billy saying he and Pauline "couldn't go on together" another version of her account? She she he was begging, etc., then that he pursued her for months after her refusal to marry.

What I hear in Billy's account is him inventing a fiction of being the Christian man in control. Then he tried to erase her from his life story.

To me, that’s the “dark side” of his life—even if much of it might be unseen. It’s repeatedly indicated that he rewrote his life.