"I don't like it," she returned. "Not a little bit, Wally. It isn't game, and it isn't manly. You must respect me, now and always. I can't have profanity, and I won't."
He essayed lame apologies, but a sudden, hot anger seemed to have possessed him, in presence of this free, independent, exacting woman—this woman who, worst of all, had just beaten him at the game of all games he prided himself on playing well. And despite his every effort, she saw through the veil of sheer, perfunctory courtesy; and seeing, flushed with indignation.
"Wally," she said in a low, quiet tone, fixing a singular gaze upon him, "Wally, I don't know what to make of you lately. The other night at Idle Hour, you hardly looked at me. You and father spent the whole evening discussing some business or other—"
"Most important business, my dear girl, I do assure you," protested Waldron, trying to steady his voice. "Most vitally—"
"No matter about that," she interposed. "It could have been abridged, a trifle. I barely got six words out of you, that evening; and let me tell you, Wally, a woman never forgets neglect. She may forgive it; but forget it, never!"
"Oh, well, if you put it that way—" he began, but checked himself in time to suppress the cutting rejoinder he had at his tongue's end.
"I do, and it's vital, Wally," she answered. "It's all part and parcel of some singular kind of change that's been coming over you, lately, like a blight. You haven't been yourself, at all, these few days past. Something or other, I don't know what, has been coming between us. You've got something else on your mind, beside me—something bigger and more important to you than I am—and—and—"
He pulled out his gold cigar-case, chose and lighted a cigar to steady his nerve, and faced her with a smile—the worst tactic he could possibly have chosen in dealing with this woman. Supremely successful in handling men, he lacked finesse and insight with the other sex; and now that lack, in his moment of need, was bringing him moment by moment nearer the edge of catastrophe.
"I don't like it at all, Waldron," she resumed, again. "You were late, the other night, in taking me to the Flower Show. You were late, today, for our appointment here; and the ten minutes I gave you to get ready in, stretched out to twenty before you—"
He interrupted her with a gesture of uncontrollable vexation.