It was childishly spoken, but then she was a child, and the admiration she had enjoyed throughout the evening had slightly turned her head. He did not reply to her speech. Indeed, it was as if he had not heard it. And her indignation mounted. There was not another man of her acquaintance who would have treated her with a like lack of courtesy. Did he think, because he was her husband, that she belonged to him so completely that he could behave to her exactly as he saw fit? Perhaps. She did not know him very well; nor apparently did he know her. For during the brief six weeks of their married life she had been a little shy, a little constrained, in his presence. But her success had, as it were, unshackled her. Without hesitation she gave her feelings the rein.
"Do you consider that I am not to be trusted?" she asked him sharply.
"I beg your pardon?"
There was a note of surprised interrogation in his voice. She did not look at him, but she knew that his eyebrows were raised, and a faint—quite a faint—sense of misgiving stole over her.
"I asked if you thought me untrustworthy," she asked.
"Oh!"
He relapsed into silence again, and she became exasperated.
"Why don't you answer me?" she said, with quick impatience.
He turned his head deliberately and looked at her; and again she tingled with an apprehension which no previous word or action of his had ever justified.
"Unprofitable questions," he said coolly, "like ill-timed jests, are better left alone."