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."

It was the first intentional snub he had ever administered to her, and
she quivered under it, furious but impotent. All the evening's enjoyment
had gone out of her. She was conscious only of a desire to strike back
and wound him as he had wounded her.

She did not utter another word during the drive, and when they reached
their bungalow--the daintiest and most luxurious in the station--she
alighted without touching the hand he offered her.

Refreshments awaited them in the dining-room, and the bride swept in
and helped herself, suffering her cloak to fall from her shoulders. He
picked it up and threw it over a chair. His dark face was quite composed
and inscrutable. He was not a handsome man, but there was something
undeniably striking about him, a strength of personality that made him
somehow formidable. The red and gold uniform he wore served to emphasise
the breadth of shoulder, which his height did not justify. He was a
splendid wrestler. There was not a man in the mess wh