"Oh! I'm not much concerned about it," she said.
This admission on her part seemed to him to strengthen the intimacy between them. Would Arnoux be seized with mistrust with regard to them?
"No! not now!"
She told him that, one evening, he had left them talking together, and had afterwards come back again and listened behind the door, and as they both were chatting at the time of matters that were of no consequence, he had lived since then in a state of complete security.
"With good reason, too—is that not so?" said Frederick bitterly.
"Yes, no doubt!"
It would have been better for him not to have given so risky an answer.
One day she was not at home at the hour when he usually called. To him there seemed to be a sort of treason in this.
He was next displeased at seeing the flowers which he used to bring her always placed in a glass of water.
"Where, then, would you like me to put them?"