No, she did not, that was the worst of it. She could not see that her strong direct nature, craving and athirst for affection, imposed a strain beyond endurance upon a temperament at once ease-loving and volatile like Gaston’s. ‘I have never deceived you, as far as I can remember, Dinah. I have not sufficient energy of character, I should imagine, to be deceitful.’ ‘No? We may have different notions of deceit, perhaps.’ ‘One may deviate, now and then, from veracity,’ said Gaston, recovering his good humour. ‘Suppressions of fact, in minor matters, are forced upon us all. The man would be a wretch, not fit for civilised society, who should for ever blurt out what he considered truth, regardless of the feelings he hurt, the toes he trod upon.’ ‘For instance--to speak of something I understand--if you had gone to Mrs. Thorne’s house after a mess dinner it would be forced on you not to tell me of it next morning?’ ‘To Mrs. Thorne’s house ... after a mess dinner! Such an unimportant thing may have happened once--twice, perhaps, during the weeks we have been here. But did I not mention it? Well, then, I do so now, and ask forgiveness,’ resting his hand upon her shoulder, ‘for the heinousness of my crime.’ ‘And your wager--was that, too, unimportant? Your wager, made at a time when my heart was breaking! And the feelings with which Linda Thorne regards your winning it----’ Dinah’s voice choked. Gaston Arbuthnot was, habitually, a man of mild speech. His most familiar men friends had never heard an English expletive escape him. When he was strongly moved his tongue went back, instinctively, to the language of his youth. And he was moved to sudden and keen anger at this moment. Three or four French expressions, fortunately not understanded of his wife, rolled from his lips. ‘You make me detest the sound of Linda Thorne’s name. But take care--take care, in this matter of hating, that you do not force me farther than you intend.’ ‘I would rather you hated than tolerated me,’ cried Dinah, her tear-worn eyes looking bravely up into Arbuthnot’s face. Some new note in her voice startled him. It was a note, Gaston Arbuthnot felt, that might well prove the prelude to dangerous self-assertion. Was a _tu quoque_ possible? ‘You do not wish me to be tolerant. The husband of any excessively pretty woman must be so, whether he will or not. Now yesterday--suppose the medal reversed, Dinah, that I begin to cross-question you--how did you spend your afternoon, yesterday? You forget. Let me refresh your memory. With whom were you walking down the High Street, towards four o’clock, in the dove-coloured dress I invented for you, the Gainsborough hat, the cambric collar?’