"I do not know what you mean."
"I mean that you are letting that old coxcomb make love to you," he murmurs, angrily.
She lifts her eyebrows, and replies, calmly, "Yes!"
The young officer continues to gaze searchingly into her face.
"You are thoughtless," he says, slowly, with emphasis. "In your eyes Wenkendorf is an old man; but he does not think himself so old as you think him, and--and----" Suddenly, his forced composure giving way, he bursts forth: "At the least it is ridiculous! it is silly to behave as you are doing!"
In the entire dictionary Harry could have found no word with which to describe Zdena's conduct that would have irritated her more than "silly." If he had called her unprincipled, devilish, odious, cruel, she could have forgiven him; but "silly!"--that word she never can forgive; it makes her heart burn and smart as salt irritates an open wound.
"I should like to know by what right you call me thus to account!" she exclaims, indignantly.
"By what right?" he repeats, beside himself. "Can you ask that?"
She taps the gravel of the pathway defiantly with her foot and is obstinately silent.
"What did you mean by your treatment of me in Vienna? what did you mean by all your loving looks and kind words? what did you mean when you--on the evening before you left----"