"You don't really," he replied, and she turned away with a sigh of exasperation at the astonishing lack of sensitiveness in the male.
"You're nervy and strung up just at present," he went on. "And perhaps it has been bad for you to have so much of me all the time. But when you go back to town and find that you're envied by other women...."
"Because I'm married to you?" she interrupted, sharply.
"No, no, Doodles, I'm not so conceited as all that. Envied because you will be the loveliest of them all. But other men will envy me because I've got you for a wife. I don't think you realize how lovely you are."
She did realize it perfectly; but she resented a compliment that was inspired by self-satisfaction.
"The pleasure in being married to me, then," she challenged, "is that you're keeping me from other men? You wouldn't mind if I told you that I hated you, that I only married you to have rank and money, that I hooked you in the way an angler hooks a fat trout?"
"I was quite content to be hooked," said Tony.
"If I were unfaithful to you?"
His eyes hardened for a moment, like those of a groom who is being defied by a jibbing horse.
"Try it, old thing," he advised, and the whistle that lisped gently between his set teeth made expressive the quick breaths of rage that such a question evoked.