He's starting to have a guilty conscience, and it's because he is now admitting to himself that he threatened her when he told her she wasn't going to like what he was going to do next. He then attempted to coax her dog over to him. He taunted her plain and simple. What she did next wasn't okay, but he was in the wrong too. If the roles were reversed, we would be asking why the white man felt the need to tell the black woman to leash her dog.