"Yes, Gerald, I'll ask her. I—I am awfully sorry for you."

"Thanks. As far as that's concerned, everybody in the world ought to be sorry for everybody else. We all have our little private hell. When is the—is the wedding-day fixed?"

"Oh, no," she returned hastily, "dear me, no. She is in no hurry to marry, and he is, of course, dough in her hands. You, at least, needn't worry about that. Will you dine here?"

"Sorry——"

"She is to be here, and Joyselle. Theo is out of town."

Carron rose and hesitated. "Do you think she'd mind?" he asked piteously. A sharp pang touched her worldly heart. If, years ago, she had let him go? If she had not made him give up diplomacy because she wanted him in England? He would, doubtless, have divorced his impossible wife, and married, and this would not have come to him.

"Of course she won't mind. Does she know that you love her?"

He nodded. She stared, and then rang the bell. "Bring Mr. Carron a brandy and soda, Fledge; he is not well."

She went to the window and stood looking out into the quiet street until the man had returned and she heard Carron set down the empty glass.

Then, without looking at him, she came back. Her shallow soul was dismayed.

"Dinner at 8.30?" he asked after a pause.

"Yuss. Good-bye till then, for I must fly and make some calls."

"Good-bye, Tony. You are sure that boy isn't coming? I—I am getting to hate him——"

"Nonsense," she laughed harshly, for she was not merry; "he isn't even invited. He is in the country, I tell you."

"Then, au 'voir."

"Au 'voir, Gerry."

He went away, feeling that his cause perhaps was not utterly hopeless.

And in her gaudy bedroom, in the caravanserai that had been her idea of luxury, his wife lay dead.



CHAPTER EIGHT

When the women had left the dining-room Carron got up from his place and sat down by Joyselle, who looked at him with unconcealed astonishment. He had never liked Carron, and knew that the man did not like him.

"When is your next concert to be, M. Joyselle?"

"The third of June."

"I—I always come. I have come for years, and last June I heard you in Paris. You must like playing with Colonne."

"I do. He is a wonderful director. But—I did not know that you liked music, Mr. Carron."

"I have always liked it. And no one plays the violin as you do."

He would not have hesitated to lie about the matter, had it been necessary, but he happened to be telling the truth, and his weary voice carried conviction.

Joyselle smiled. "I am glad," he said.

The two men eyed each other for a moment, and much was decided by their gaze.

Carron broke the silence. "Did I not see you the other day in Chelsea. I was motoring, and going very fast; but I think it was you."

"It is possible. I have a studio in Tite Street. I go there to practise. It is very quiet there, at the top of the house, and I am very nervous when I am working."

Carron nodded absently; this did not interest him. At the other end of the table one of the Italian secretaries was talking about the Ascot favourite to Freddy Fane, who had recently divorced his chorus girl and stopped drinking, and who was supposed to be looked on with a favourable eye by old Mrs. Banner, the aunt and chaperon of Lady Mary Sligo, the prettiest of the season's debutantes.

"Is that man going to marry the beautiful girl I saw on the box-seat of his coach the other day?" asked Joyselle, suddenly.

"I daresay. His mother died last month and left him pots of money. Marmalade-pots—Peet's Peerless." After a moment Carron pursued, drawing lines on the tablecloth with a fruitknife: "I have a very fine violin—left me by my grandfather. It is a Strad, I believe. I wonder if you'd care to see it?"

Joyselle pursed up his lips. "I should, but I warn you, it is probably an imposture. Most cherished violins are—that are in the hands of non-players."

"No doubt, but Sarasate has played on this one, and he believed it to be genuine."

"Aha! When may I come?"

Carron named a near day, and then they went upstairs. He had obtained his immediate object, and now there remained to him that evening a far more difficult task.

Brigit was sitting by the window, fanning herself with a fan made of eagle-feathers. She wore white and looked very tired.

"May I sit down here, Brigit?"

She turned at his voice, and then stared at him. "You look very ill," she said abruptly, "is your heart all right?"

Her face did not change as she spoke, and there was no friendliness in her tone, but he thanked God that he was, and looked, ill.

"My heart is weak, I believe; nothing organic. It is very warm, and I never can bear heat. You look tired yourself."

She nodded absently. "Yes, I have been away—at the Bertie Monson's. Nelly Monson always gives me a headache, she talks so loud. And my room was under the nursery. I do hate children."

Carron caught his breath. She was actually talking civilly to him. And, then, remembering his request to her mother, he, for a second, hated Lady Kingsmead with a bitter and senseless hatred. Was Brigit, after all, only talking to him as a favour to her mother? But a second's reflection showed him the folly of this idea. Had Brigit ever done anything to please her mother? Never.

One of the two women-guests sat down at the piano and began to play, very softly, an old song of Tosti's. Everybody listened. A hansom jingled by and a bicycle's sharp bell was a loud noise in the after-dinner silence.

Joyselle was standing by a table, absently balancing on his forefinger a long, broad, ivory paper-knife. He was, Brigit remembered, curiously adept in balancing, and once she had seen him go through, for Tommy's amusement, a whole series of the kind, from the classic broomstick on his chin, to blowing three feathers about the room at a time, allowing none of them to fall. How quickly he had moved, in spite of his great height, and how Tommy had laughed. But, for the past week, something had gone wrong with the violinist. He had been away from the house one day when she went, and that afternoon, when she "dropped in" on her way from the station, he had hardly spoken. In his silence he seemed immeasurably far from her, and she would have given worlds to read his thoughts.

During dinner he had been conventionally polite, but playing a role was so foreign to him that even this laudable one of pretending to be amused when he was bored sat gloomily and guiltily on him.

Carron sat by her for twenty minutes, but her eyes were fixed on Joyselle, and her whole mind groping in the darkness for his.

There was a ball that night, so the party broke up early, but Joyselle stayed, absently, as if he did not notice that the others were going. He sat on a sofa and smoked cigarettes rapidly, rolling them himself, with quick, nervous movements, and throwing them into a silver bowl before they were half-burnt.

Lady Kingsmead tried to talk to him, but finding that, though he answered her politely enough, his thoughts were elsewhere, gave him up and took up a book, casting an impatient look at her daughter.

Carron had gone early, too restless to stay quiet, and afraid to rouse Brigit out of her curious lethargic state.

For a long time the three people sat in silence, and then Lady Kingsmead rose. "I think I'll go upstairs," she said, "but if you two enjoy sitting as mute as fish, there is no reason why you shouldn't continue to do so. Good-night, Joyselle."

He rose and kissed her hands, and a moment later he and Brigit were alone. It was the first time it had happened, for weeks, the girl realised suddenly.

He stood where Lady Kingsmead had left him, the light falling directly on his head in a way that showed up very plainly the curious halo-like effect caused by the silver greyness of the hair about his brow.

"What is wrong, Master?" she asked softly, using Tommy's name for him. He started. "The matter? Nothing that bears talking about, Brigit. But I am in its clutches and I will go."

A cold terror came over her. Was it—some woman? "Do not go," she said, her cheeks burning. "I don't mind your being silent."

He looked at her inquiringly, raising his eyebrows. It was clear that he noticed something strange in her voice; also that he did not know what it meant. But he sat down and began rolling a fresh cigarette. The flat silver box in which he carried his tobacco lay on the table beside him, and she idly took it up. "Rose-Marie a Victor," she saw engraved on it. "What a pretty name! The box is old, isn't it?"

"Yes. Or pretends to be. I have had it for years."

"And—she? Rose-Marie?"

"I don't know. It was twenty years ago—in Paris."

Felicite's story recurred to Brigit, the "bad time" in Paris; "how he loved them all for the time."

He was smoking fitfully, and frowning to himself. She was again forgotten. It was very warm, and the curtains swayed in irregular puffs of wind; then came a rumble of thunder. Joyselle started nervously.

"Un orage," he said; "I—I hate thunder."

"Do you? I like it." Together they went to the window and looked up at the threatening sky. A whirl of dust met them, and they drew quickly back, his sleeve brushing against her shoulders. "It will be bad," he said, broodingly.

"Yes."

She felt breathless and welcomed the coming storm as suiting her mood.

"I—you asked me what is the matter," Joyselle began, speaking very quickly. "I will tell you. It is this. There is in me a god, and I refuse to give him speech. I have genius and I waste it; I have a soul and I am crushing it. I am a most unworthy and miserable being!"

Absolutely sincere in every word he said, his dramatic temperament gave force and a kind of rhythm to his confession that made it very poignant, and his face very white, his big eyes glowed tragically as he stood looking over his hearer's head.

"A most miserable being."

He groaned, and throwing himself into a chair, buried his face in his hands.

Outside one or two carriages hurried past, and the darkness was streaked with quick recurring flashes of lightning.

Brigit looked long at Joyselle, and then, irresistibly drawn to him, laid her hand with great gentleness on his head. "You are tired, and the storm has got on your nerves."

"No, no! I am not tired. There is for my great good-for-nothingness not that excuse. I am—a wastrel of my gifts." It was, she saw, one of the crises of despair under which many artists suffer, but its intensity was most painful. "You are good to me, Brigitte," he said, brokenly, taking her left hand and holding it to his forehead, which was cold and damp. "You are an angel!"

As he spoke a terrific zigzag of fire crossed the windows, and the house shook in the almost immediate crash. Like a child Joyselle threw his arms round Brigit and hid his face against the embroidery on her corsage, holding her tight. It seemed to her an eternity before either of them moved, and when, abruptly, he let her go, and rose, his face had changed.

"Good-bye—I must go—I beg your pardon——"

He stammered piteously, and did not look at her, but stood holding the lapels of his coat as if he was trying to tear them off. Then, without another word, he was gone, out into the storm.



CHAPTER NINE

Brigit was not at all surprised when, early the next morning, a note from Joyselle was brought to her.

She had slept very badly, for she seemed to have reached a crisis in her relations with Joyselle; and lying awake in the heat that the storm had but increased, she passed hours in unprofitable forecastings. What would he do, now that he knew? Would he make love to her? Or would he try to hurry on the wedding? Or——

Of course, what he did do proved an utter surprise to her.

"My dear Brigit," he wrote, "just a line to say good-bye to you for a time. I am accepting an offer to do two months' touring in the United States (which country I do not like, but which likes me), and shall come back laden with dollars with which to buy you a beautiful wedding present. What shall it be—diamonds? I hope you will say lace—yards and yards of exquisite lace of all kinds—it is so much more poetic than stones. So au revoir, my dear, and may all happiness be yours. "Joyselle."

She sat up in bed and drew a long, uneven breath. She had not counted on the possibility of flight! And she could not bear it.

There had been some talk of his going to America, but he had disliked the idea, and she had not dreamed that he would even seriously consider it. There was not the slightest doubt that his decision was entirely due to the little scene of the evening before. That moment when his nervous horror of the lightning had impelled him to put his arms round her had, she knew, opened his eyes to his own danger. And it was characteristic of the man to act immediately and without hesitation. He would go—it was Saturday, and very probably he would leave by the noon train for Liverpool. It was now eight.

She lay for a long time with her eyes shut, trying to realise what life would be like without him. And then her undisciplined, wayward mind revolted. It was unbearable; therefore she would not bear it. She would not let him go.

Half an hour later she was in a hansom, trying to decide the details relative to her decision. He should not go, but which of the several possible ways should she employ to prevent it?

Before she could decide on anything more than the great fact that, cost what it may, she would not let him go, the hansom drew up at the house, and she was about to get out when the front door opened and Joyselle himself appeared.

"You!" he cried, impetuously, and then stood still. "You got my note?" he added a second later, sternly.

Her heart sank. He was very strong. Then he came towards her, his brows drawn down over his eyes, his nostrils dilated, and she lied.

"No—what note?"

Normans are quick to suspect deceit, and for a moment his expression did not change; then, for individually the man was as trustful as racially he was suspicious, he smiled. "I see. But why are you out so early? It is not yet nine."

"And you?" she returned deftly, her heart beating not only with the excitement of the duel, but with enjoyment of her own skill.

"I—well, I have business."

"Then get in and I'll take you wherever you want to go, I want to talk to you."

He hesitated, but she smiled at him and he succumbed, thinking to himself, she could see, that after all she knew nothing of what was going on in his mind.

As he took his place beside her the cabman opened his trap-door and asked with the hoarseness of his kind:

"W'ere to, sir?"

Joyselle frowned. "To—Piccadilly. I'll tell you when we get to where I wish to stop."

Brigit suppressed a smile. Now he was thinking, she saw, that he would tell her of his intended departure before he gave the Cunard Company's address.

He was pale, but to her surprise looked younger rather than older than usual. His mental disturbance had left traces on his face, and they were, as it was, young in their nature. He had fallen in love, and the youth in him, both physical and mental, flared up responsively to the call of the emotion.

Suddenly she saw her line of action clearly marked out for her, and without an instant's hesitation took it. If he suspected that she loved him, nothing in the world could keep him by her. So he must not know. In all her dreams and reflections about their relations, she had never taken into account the possibility of things turning out as they had. She had always tacitly taken for granted that it would be by her will that the man should be waked up to the real state of his own mind. Even after the evening of the dragon-skin frock he had not known the real explanation of his amazement on her entrance, and had, she knew, merely advanced in his perilous path to the point of realising that she was, although his future daughter, an amazingly desirable woman.

So far she had read him correctly. But that something outside her own personal sway should open his eyes she had not anticipated.

This had, however, happened, and with the acute intuition of a woman fighting for her life, she understood what she must do to prevent his flight.

So, turning towards him, she smiled amusedly.

"Eh, b'en, Beau-papa? Got over your fright? You big baby!"

He stared, and she went on without a pause, but speaking slowly, to give an idea of leisure, "To think that you of all people should be afraid of thunder! It was lucky you had your valorous daughter to shield you."

He gave a short, nervous laugh. "Yes, it is very idiotic, I know, but——"

"And then to bolt away into the very thick of it! That was because you were ashamed! I shall tell petite mere and Theo. But it was an awful storm, and so fearfully warm afterwards, wasn't it? I couldn't sleep at all—that's why I'm up so early. I came over to ask you to go up to Hampstead with me to get some real air. This London extract of air is a very poor substitute, isn't it? Now don't say no to a poor daughter whose young man is out of town!"

As she talked, looking casually at the passers-by, she could, so tense were her nerves, almost hear him think. "She is quite unsuspecting," he was telling himself, "there is no danger for her, and—it doesn't matter about me. And I am strong and need never betray myself——"

She talked on, the kind of unconcerned nonsense that was, her strange, new instinct told her, best calculated to quite his vibrant nerves. "Little child, little child," he returned mutely, "how little you know! Well—as you are so innocent, why should not I snatch this fearful joy while I may? It harms no one but myself, and such pain is better than any happiness on earth——"

"Yes, ma fille," he said at length, as she pointed to a barrow of nodding daffodils, "we will go to Hampstead; it is a good idea. But first I must send a wire or two. And—you must promise to return to me, unopened, the note you will find in Pont Street."

Her wandering stare was admirable. "Return unopened? But why? Was it—cross?"

He laughed aloud, his brilliant teeth flashing. "Si, si, that is it. Cross! You know how stupid I was last night? The coming storm—well—it was a silly note, and you will return it."

"Oh, of course, if you wish me to," she answered carelessly, but clenching her hands. "C'est une boutade comme une autre!"

He laughed again. His spirits were flying upwards like those of a criminal unexpectedly reprieved.

"Yes—just a fad. Hi, cabbee, stop here, will you?"

While he was in the telegraph-office Brigit allowed her muscles to relax and her face to express her hitherto rigidly concealed triumph.

He was not going. He would stay; she should continue to see him, and the world was full of joy. "Heavens, how I can lie," she whispered softly, "and now we shall both have to lie. We both know about him; he thinks I don't know; and he doesn't know about me! It is a comedy. Oh, Victor, Victor, Victor!"

He came out a moment later, seeming to fill the world with his giant bulk and his astounding radiation of joy. Two narrow-chested city clerks stood still to stare at him, their pallid little faces blank with amazement. A red-nosed flower-girl thrust a great bunch of yellow roses up at him with certainty of sale written all over her. "Roses? Of course. How much?"

He laughed aloud as he gave her some money and then got into the hansom.

"Hampstead Heath, cabby. At Falaise there are millions of these roses—see, with the outside leaves wrinkled and red. Oh, Brigit, Brigit, what a day!"



CHAPTER TEN

If it be true that everything is in the eye of the beholder, then Joyselle's and Brigit Mead's eyes must have been full of beauties that day.

For to them Hampstead Heath was the most marvellously lovely place on earth.

His light-heartedness, chiefly due to his faculty for ignoring side-issues and enjoying the present, was of course magnified as well by the fact that it followed close on the heels of one of his despairing black fits. Yesterday he had been, because of an unsatisfactory morning's work in Chelsea, in the very depths, honestly despising himself as an artist, sincerely loathing his incorrigible love of amusement and consequent wasting of time.

So this sunny, rather windy morning, Brigit by his side, and his newly awakened conscience stilled for the moment, was to him as near Paradise as anything he could imagine.

They lunched somewhere—neither of them could ever remember where—on very tough cold ham and insufficiently cooled beer, but they were both too happy to mind, or even to observe the faults of the menu. And as neither of them had ever before set eyes on the Heath, it was full of surprises, as well as of beauties. Yielding to some unexplained instinct, they both took off their hats (what is it that induces people to uncover their heads in high places?), and the warm sun shone down on their hair.

"Your hair must be very long, Brigitte?" observed Joyselle once, as he looked at her silky plaits that covered her crown in disregard of the laws of fashion.

"It is. Comes to my knees. Oh, look!"

Two people, a man and a girl, sat in the shade of an isolated tree only a few yards below the place where they stood. They were evidently enjoying an unlawful holiday, for they were workers—factory hands, probably, and they were as palpably rejoicing in their freedom.

The girl, whose brilliant red hair was pulled out at the sides until her head was as big as a bushel basket, wore a pink blouse and a green skirt. The youth, stunted and pale, was gorgeous only as to tie, but quite evidently she considered him her complement. For they were busy drinking beer from a bottle, turn about, and kissing each other delightedly between swallows. Joyselle started, drawing a deep breath, and Brigit, without moving her head, looked at him sideways, as the so-called Fornarina looks in the Uffizi, in Florence.

"They are cheery, aren't they?" she asked hastily, and he, nodding, turned away. For a few moments he was silent, and then he began to talk rather loudly about nothing in particular, and in a few moments was himself—the Joyselle of that particular day. Brigit realised that their stronghold of reserves and lies had been dangerously threatened by his mounting emotion. If he had broken down in his role—and she knew that the playing of any kind of a role was foreign to his nature, and therefore perilous—she would have lost him.

His mind, of course, except in certain moments when it all unconsciously was subjugated by her will, was a closed book to her.

For he was not only a man (and no woman can ever wholly understand any man's mind), but he was nearly twenty years older than she, and he was a Norman—a race very complicated, in its mixture of shrewd cunning and simplicity, and difficult for even other French people to comprehend. But groping in the dark though she was, the girl had grasped two essential facts: if Joyselle learned that she loved him, he would go away if it killed him; and if, though remaining in ignorance of her love, he was led to betray his, the result would be the same.

So her aim must be to keep him well under his own control, and to avoid betraying her personal feelings in the very least degree.

It was easy that first day. He was still more or less dazed and taken up with his discovery that he loved her, and therefore not so shrewd as usual. The future, she knew, would be harder.

But that one day was a delight to them both. He told her about his youth—as truthful an account as his wife's, but oh, how infinitely more picturesque and interesting.

His acquisition of the Amati was recounted with a wealth of detail that enchanted her, and she closed her eyes the better to see the little dark shop on the quai at Rouen, and the old man who would not sell his treasure, even for a good price, until he had heard the would-be purchaser play on it. "And then, my dear, I tuned it, and played. It was a bit from Tschaikovsky's Pathetic Symphony—the adagio movement. It was dark in the shop, with the velvety darkness old places get on a sunny day, and on the other side of the street lay the sunshine like gold. He sat, le vieux, in his chair away from the light, for his eyes were bad, and listened. And I played well, for I was playing for the greatest price I had ever commanded!"

"And then?" she asked softly, stroking her cheek with some young beech-leaves.

"And then he kissed me, and—I took out my cheque-book," returned Joyselle simply.

It was after four, and the wind had gone down, freeing the common from the beautiful cloud-streams that had chased over it earlier in the day.

The red-headed girl and her young man had disappeared, and from where they sat Joyselle and Brigit saw no signs of life.

"To-morrow it will be crowded with odious people," Brigit sighed.

"Why odious?"

"Well, I mean vulgar, noisy people."

He shook his head in a way that ruffled his halo of silver hair, and laughed.

"You should not be a snob," he teased. "After all, you are marrying the son of peasants."

"Peasants are different," she insisted, a little sulkily.

"Peasants are picturesque only in books, my dear. As for me, I like happy people, and even your English 'noisy and vulgar' ones are happy, I suppose, when they come up here on Sunday. Some day you and I will come again. And bring Theo," he added suddenly.

Then he rose. "Come, we had better start to walk back." She obeyed in silence.

"If I had not had genius," he continued as they reached the bottom of the slope and turned homewards, "I should be now—what? A Norman peasant in a black blouse driving, probably, a char-a-bancs to sell my fruit—or my corn. I could never have been a gamekeeper like my father, for I cannot kill. And if you, then, had come to Falaise and gone to the market, you might have bought a pennyworth of cherries of me. And all this might have been if I had not, one day, heard an old half-witted blind man play a cracked fiddle on the high road, thirty years ago!"

She frowned, for she hated this kind of talk. It was too true, and it hurt her baser pride, even while her nobler pride rejoiced in the very humbleness of his origin because it emphasised his present greatness.

"But—you are you, and I am only—me," she returned, ungrammatical but proudly humble.

He turned, his face flushing brilliantly. "Then you are proud of me?" he cried.

Danger again. After a long pause, which visibly hurt him, she returned with a smile, "Of course I am. Who would not be proud of such a father-in-law?"

Half an hour later it was all over, the wonderful day was finished, and to Brigit's amazement she was more than a little glad. It had been delightful, but it had been full of danger.

In time Joyselle would learn to evade these pitfalls, with which their future seemed to bristle, but as yet he was so unused to avoiding things in his path that it was almost a miracle that she had, as she put it with a half-whimsical, half-despairing smile, got him safely home without an outburst.

She was, had been from the first, fairly sure of herself, but she was wise enough to acknowledge that her strength depended largely on his. If he had broken down, she knew that the odds were largely against her being able, in her inevitable despair over his certain-to-follow good-bye, to continue to hide her own feelings. And after that, she believed, he would never see her again.

So it was with a strong feeling of relief that she said good-bye to him, half-way home, and went on alone.

As the hansom started again she turned and looked back. Joyselle stood, hat in hand, where she had left him, his face, now that he believed himself to be unseen by her, black with thought. Then, with the so familiar jerk of his head, he put on his hat, smiled, and marched off down the street.



CHAPTER ELEVEN

One afternoon, a few days later, Tommy Kingsmead burst into his sister's room where she was sitting writing.

"I say, Bick——"

"Hello, little boy, what's the matter?"

Tommy shrugged his shoulders in close imitation of Joyselle.

"I don't know, but something is. Very. It's—Theo!"

She started. "Theo? He isn't ill, is he?"

"No, no. He's downstairs; wants to see you. There's been some kind of a row in Golden Square. Petite mere and the Master have been talking for an hour, as hard as ever they can talk, and Theo is upset, and the Master has gone off in a tearing rage—do go down and find out, Brigit, and then come back and tell me."

Lord Kingsmead's pristine curiosity regarding everything with which he came into contact had by no means suffered eclipse since he had been living in London.

Devoted as he was to Joyselle and to his music, the little boy's passion for knowledge of all kinds seemed to increase, and there was in his small, pale, pointed face a strained, overkeen look that troubled his sister at times. Now, however, she had no leisure to think of it, and hurried downstairs to the drawing-room, where she found Theo walking restlessly up and down.

"Brigit," he burst out abruptly, as she came in, "when will you marry me?"

"Good gracious, Theo—what—what has put that into your head?" she parried ineffectively, sitting down, as he did not offer to give her any further greeting.

"Into my head? Has it ever been out of it? I am sorry to have startled you, dear," he continued, more gently, sitting down by her and taking her hands in his, "but surely I have been patient. And—I am tired of waiting."

She sat with bent head, looking at their joined hands. His hands were smaller and whiter than his father's, but very like them in shape. If they had been Joyselle's! If he had been able to come to her with that question: "When will you marry me?"

"You are very good," she said slowly, after a long pause.

"Then—?"

"Suppose you tell me why this sudden frenzy of haste?"

He hesitated. "Well—we have been engaged nearly eight months—and I love you, dear."

But she remembered Tommy's story and persisted.

"Surely, though, something must have happened to-day? You were quite content yesterday."

He flushed. "Eh bien, oui. It is that my grandmother has written. In September is to be their Golden Wedding. They are very old, and—they want—me to bring my wife to them. Brigit," he added, his boyish face flushing with anticipatory pink, "may I not do it?"

She rose and went to the window, her temples beating violently. For weeks Theo had played such a subordinate role in her mind, owing as much to his native modesty as to her absorption in his father, that his mood of to-day came to her as a shock. After all, put the thought away, forget the inevitable future in an almost hysterical enjoyment of the present, as she would, it must be faced some time. Could she possibly marry this boy whom her sentimental contemporaneousness with his father naturally seemed to relegate to a generation younger than herself?

It would be horrible, unnatural. A husband, be he ever so modern, and his wife ever so unruly, is in the nature of things more or less a master, whereas, she realised with a flash of very miserable amusement, she would, if displeased with him, feel less inclined to use wifely diplomacy than to box his ears. Emphatically, she had hopelessly outgrown him. Then, what should she do?

If she refused him now, what would be his father's attitude? She did not know. A week ago Joyselle would have hated her—or thought that he did, which is practically the same thing pro tem.

But now! Now that the violinist had had time to face and measure his own passion, would he not realise the futility of trying to force one's inclinations in such matters? Again she could only shake her head; she was out of her depth. Meantime, behind her, Theo was waiting for his answer. Suddenly the horrors of the situation seemed to burst on her from all sides. What had she done? Accepted this boy because he had money, and because she disliked her mother and her mother's friends; then she had, finding that she loved her future father-in-law, deliberately torn from his eyes the veil of family sentiment that had protected him from her, and later, when he had by an accident learned that she was to be loved, and that he loved her, she had by an ignoble trick kept him in England, refusing to let him play the decent part he had chosen. What was she, then, to have done this abominable and traitorous thing?

"Brigit—is it so—horrible to you?"

There was in his voice something like a repressed sob, and she had an extravagant horror of melodrama. If he wept she would, she knew, lose her temper.

"Listen, Theo. I—I will tell you to-night. I mean, I'll set a date. Only you must go now. I—I have an engagement."

"Then——"

"Then you are a goose to be so upset! I must think it over. I know I'm queer and—rather horrid, but—I have not changed. You knew what I was when you asked me to marry you. And—I never pretended to be—romantic, did I?"

He watched her dumbly. She had never looked to him more beautiful than at that moment in her simple blue frock, her hands behind her, her eyes almost deprecating. He rose with an effort. "All right, then. To-night. Thank you, Brigit."

As full of humble doubts as he had been the night he asked her to marry him, his honest eyes shining with the tears she had arrested in their course, he kissed her hand and withdrew.

When she had heard the front door close she went to a mirror on the wall and looked at herself.

"And now, you loathsome creature," she said aloud, fiercely, "you must make up your mind what you are going to do."

Like many nervous people, she had a habit of walking while she thought hard, and now after a few turns up and down the overcrowded room she went upstairs, put on a hat, and, leaving the excited Tommy a prey to a most maddening attack of thwarted curiosity, left the house.

She walked rapidly, looking straight ahead, seeing nothing, a rather ferocious frown causing many people to stare at her in surprise. She wore a delicately hued French frock and a mauve hat covered with blue convolvuli, but in her extraordinary self-absorption and intentness of thought there was something uncivilised about her. Her clothes were unsuited to her, and she walked as if quite alone in a vast plain.

Her answer to Theo? What was it to be? Should she find it here, in Sloane Street? How could she decide, not having the remotest idea what effect her decision would have on Joyselle? Could she live without him? As things now stood, he might, on her announcement that she was willing to marry Theo in, say, three months' time, fly to the ends of the earth that he might hide his own suffering, or—he might have the strength to endure it in silence for his son's sake.

If on the other hand she said no, that she could not marry his son, would he look on her decision as perfidy, and refuse to see her ever again, or—A man in a hansom swore softly with relief as she just escaped being knocked down by his horse, and quite unconscious of her danger, hurried on, her head bent.

Or—would he then—allow himself to love her—to love her frankly, so far as she was concerned?

At the corner of Sloane Square a man coming towards her saw her trance-like condition, and stopping short, forced her almost to run into his arms. "I beg your pardon," she began mechanically, and then her face changed. "You, Gerald! How d'ye do?"

She had not seen him for days, and then it had been in the evening, so that now in the strong afternoon sun she saw with a momentary shock that he looked very ill indeed.

"Seedy?" she asked, some unanalysed feeling of understanding urging her to an unusual gentleness of tone.

"Yes. What is wrong with you, Brigit?"

She had never forgiven him the affair of the evening when Tommy had walked in his sleep, but her mind was too full of her own trouble to have much room for resentment, and his value as an enemy had gone down. He looked too broken and ill to be dangerous.

"I—I'm all right," she returned.

"Where are you walking so fast?"

"I'm just walking."

"I see. A race with the demons," he said in a curious, hurried voice. "I do it, too. Everyone does, it seems. I just met Joyselle tearing out Chelseaward—the father, I mean."

She looked up at him, her face clearing. "Ah!"

"Yes. I like him. He is a great artist and—a whole man. No disrespect to your young man, my dear," he added, with a dismal attempt of his old jaunty manner.

"Yes; he is 'a whole man.' Well, I must get on. Good-bye." With a nod she left him and hurried on.

To Chelsea? Yes; No. 16-1/2 Tite Street—she knew. She had never seen the house, but she had heard the number. No one ever went there. Madame Joyselle had never been, and Theo only once. Why was he "tearing" there at that hour? Because, of course, he wanted to be alone. There had certainly been a row of some kind, of which Theo had not told her. The old woman in Normandy had written, oh, yes; but then there must have been a great pourparler, and even Felicite had grown angry. Poor Felicite! To-night—oh, yes; at a dance at the Newlyns; she must give Theo his answer. At a dance!

But how could she decide until she knew what Victor—"Hansom!" Her own voice surprised her as a pistol shot might have done. "Tite Street, Chelsea, 16-1/2."

The cabby, who was a romanticist and fed his brain on pabulum from the pen of Mr. Fergus Hume and other ingenious concocters of peripatetic mystery, wondered as he gave his horse a meaning lash with his whip—a tribute to the beauty of the fare—"Wot the dickens she was h'up to, with 'er big eyes and 'er 'ealthy pallor."

It further excited the excellent man's interest to be obliged, when he had arrived at his destination, to remind his fare that they had done so. "'Ere y'are, miss," he murmured soothingly down the trap. "Shall I wait?"



CHAPTER TWELVE

The house was an old one with a broad, low front door and shallow, much-worn oak stairs. In answer to Brigit's knock a Gamp-like person with a hare-lip appeared, and informing her curtly that Mr. Joyselle had come in only a few minutes before, added that she might go up—"To the top, miss, an' there's only one door when you've got up."

Brigit almost ran up the four flights, and then, when opposite the door, sat down on the top step and hid her face in her hands.

What should she say? Why had she come? Would he be glad to see her—or shocked? Worse still, would he accept her coming as an act of filial devotion?

No. That she would not allow.

Her mind, boiling, as it were, with a thousand ingredients, she could hardly be said to be thinking. Realising perfectly that she had behaved outrageously, sincerely ashamed of herself and full of remorse, yet her own position and her own welfare had never for a second ceased to be her chief concern. Suffering was of a certainty in store for some of the actors in the drama, but she held the centre of the stage and meant to avoid as much pain as possible. For her love for Joyselle was, of course, a purely selfish one. For several minutes she sat crouching on the stairs, utterly undecided as to what her next step was to be. Then a sound from within the room behind her caused her to turn sharply. A sound of—not music, but of pitiless, furious scraping and grinding on a violin.

Could it be Joyselle? It was horrible, like the cries of some animal in agony. And it went on and on and on.

"It must be Victor," she whispered; "it is his room. But—oh, how frightful! Has he gone mad? Oh, my God, my God!"

Rising, she stood for a horrible minute bending towards the door, and then with a quick movement opened it and went in.

The curtains were drawn, but a large window in the roof let in a square of cross daylight that looked like an island in a surrounding sea of dusky darkness; and in the light stood Joyselle, his back to her, his head bent over his violin in a way almost grotesque, as he groaned and tore at the hapless strings with venomous energy.

Brigit stood, unable to move. It is always an uncanny thing to watch for any length of time a person who believes himself to be absolutely alone, and when, as in this case, the person is undergoing, and giving full vent to a very strong emotion, the strangeness is increased tenfold.

The man was, it was plain, after a week's tremendous and for him wholly unusual self-restraint, now giving full rein to his great rage over his miserable situation. As he played, she could see the muscles of his strong neck move under the brown skin, and his shoulders rise and fall tumultuously with his uneven breaths. The din he made was almost unbearable, and she pressed her hands to her ears to shut it out.

The room was very large, and high, and round it, half-way up the dull yellow walls, ran an old carved gallery, relic of the time when it had been the studio of a hare-brained painter, a friend of Hazlitt and Coleridge, a believer in poor young Keats while the rest of the world laughed at him—in the very early days.

In those days feasts had been held here, and in the gallery, hidden behind flowering dwarf peach-trees in tubs, stringed instruments were played—very softly, for the painter of one good picture and dozens of bad ones, had taste—while his guests sat at his board. Stories are still told of the small table that used to be brought into the room at the end of dinner by two little Ethiopians in white tunics. An ancient table with faded gilding just visible on the claw feet that looked out from under its petticoat of finest damask; and on it priceless gold and silver bowls and salvers of all shapes, full of the most marvellous fruits from all countries, some of which fruits were never seen elsewhere in England. All dead and gone to dust years ago, host and guest and grinning little Ethiopians. Joyselle had told Brigit this story, and now as she stood watching him vent his wrath and anguish on his faithful Amati, a kind of vision came to her; and she seemed to see the room as it used to be—vaguely, the big table with six or eight men sitting around it drinking wine, and, more distinctly, the heaped-up bowls and plates of fruit——

Half hypnotised she stood there, her hands pressed to her ears until, with a final excruciating dig into the strings, he dropped his left arm and turned.

For a moment he, in his square of light, did not see her in the dusk under the gallery. Then he took a step forward, and with a low cry caught her in his arms and crushed her and the violin painfully to his breast.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu," he repeated over and over, kissing her roughly, "you have come. Then you know, ma Brigitte, you know!"

"Yes, I know," she admitted sullenly. "Let me go, Victor, you—you hurt me."

He dropped his arms and she withdrew a few steps. He was very pale and his hair was ruffled.

"You—it was good of you to come," he said after a pause. "Then, you are not angry?"

"No."

"Brigit—je t'aime, je t'aime. I am infamous, I am a monster, a father to be execrated by all honest men and women, but—I love you!"

He laid the violin down in a chair and came to her. "Et toi?" he asked hoarsely.

The moment had come when she must think, she told herself, but her brain refused to work. The only thing that mattered was that he should stay. What must she say, truth or lie, that would inspire that necessity?

She stared at him blankly, and then, before she could speak, he knelt at her feet and pressed a fold of her dress to his face.

"Victor," she said slowly, trembling so she could hardly stand, "you will not—leave me?"

And Joyselle caught her up off the floor and held her as if she had been a baby.

"Dieu merci," he cried. "Dieu merci."



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

An hour later Brigit Mead came quietly down the now nearly dark stairs of the old house, smiling faintly to herself.

Joyselle's confession had been complete and circumstantial. He had not attempted to hide from her one thing, and in the relief of his, as it seemed, unavoidable avowal, he had hardly given her time to speak. "It was, I think, the evening you came in the golden gown. You remember? It was a vision; but an angelic vision, Most Beautiful; but one that turned me first to stone, and then to fire. Vivien must have worn a golden gown. And then the evening in Pont Street—the storm, when I put my arms round you—they went round the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, it is true, but also round my daughter. But—in that lightning flash of time I found they were round the woman compared to my love of whom the whole world does not matter! And I ran into the night and walked for hours in the rain, and I think I was mad. Then I determined to go to America. And I would have gone, God knows, but—you came, and your unconsciousness broke me down. If you had suspected, I should have gone; I was on my way to the Steamship Company when I met you. And then, Hampstead—and this past week—and then you came to me here where I work—and where I dream—ah, my beloved!"

He was very gentle in his unhoped-for happiness, and to her immense relief he never once mentioned, or even appeared to remember, his son.

When he asked her, with the marvelling curiosity of a boy lover, when and why she ever came to love him, she only shook her head. "I love you," she answered, and he forgot, looking at her, to insist.

No word of the future had been said, not a plan had been made. Only, at parting, to meet later in the evening at the Newlyns, he said to her, "I will be the greatest violinist in the world, my woman."

And her heart beat high with honest pride in him.

Too happy to think, she went down the stairs, and half-way down found herself face to face with Gerald Carron.

It was nearly dark, but she could just see that his white face was drawn and hideous with anger.

"What are you doing here?" she cried, drawing back, but furious in her turn.

"What are you doing here? You—you!"

"You have been spying on me," she returned with a good assumption of courage that she was very far from feeling. "Well—I have been to talk to Mr. Joyselle. Have you any objection to my doing so?"

"Objection? Yes, I have. You have fooled us all. Engaged to the boy, and—I have always known that you didn't care for that child, and wondered—Now I know." He laughed shrilly. "And other people shall know, too! Your mother will be pleased, and—the clean peasant! I only wonder you haven't married that poor wretch. The situation would then be even more—biblical."

She tried to pass him, but he barred her way. "If you don't let me go, I will call for M. Joyselle. And if he doesn't hear me, someone else will. Do you understand?"

He did not answer, and looking at him carefully for a moment she was for the first time terrified. His eyes were not those of a sane man.

"Gerald, don't be nasty," she urged, gently. "Surely you must see that there is no harm in my coming to see Joyselle! In a month or two he will be my father-in-law."

He sneered. "Ah, bah! I saw your face as you passed the last window. It was not the face of a girl coming from her future father-in-law. It was the face——"

Before he could finish a door opened on the floor above and two children came downstairs, chattering gaily to each other. Brigit turned to the elder, a boy of six, dressed in a quaintly cut green blouse.

"Is your papa at home, my dear?" she asked.

The child laughed. "My papa is dead," he answered cheerfully, "but Uncle Chris is there."

Brigit looked at Carron for a moment, and then went downstairs with her hand on the little boy's shoulder. "And what is your name?" she asked.

"I'm Bob Seymour, and this is Patty. Uncle Chris has been painting us. He gives us a shilling apiece each time."

"How very nice." Patty, who wore as obviously artistic a costume as her brother's, thumped noisily from behind them, and a few seconds later Brigit had kissed her unconscious but all-powerful bodyguard and jumped into the hansom.

If a man had come instead of the children, almost anything might have happened, for she had no doubt that Carron's sanity was approaching snapping-point, but the innocent courage of Bob and Patty had quieted him.

Brigit had a very unpleasant drive home, but the romantic cabby was delightfully thrilled. As it happened, he had been "crawling" for some minutes before Brigit had engaged him in Sloane Square, and had noticed her being accosted by Carron.

"Something queer along of all this," he meditated; "that lean chap didn't look quite right, an' she 'adn't no patience with 'im neither. Then in she goes to the old 'ouse, an' then along comes another 'ansom with the lean chap. Then I waits an hour, an' out she comes with the little kids, kissin' 'em, an' the biggest little kid arsks 'er 'er nime! If she didn't know 'im, why did she kiss 'im? An' before we'd got to the corner out comes the lean 'un, lookin' like a bloomin' corpse. Something must 'ave 'appened in that old 'ouse, an' I'll keep a lookout in the People and see wot it was. I'd like to 'ave been a fly on the wall during that there interview, I would. A fly on the wall with a tiste for short'and."



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lady Kingsmead, who was going to the Newlyns' ball later, was having dinner in her little sitting-room when Carron came rushing in, nearly treading on the heels of the afflicted Fledge, who did like to have a chance to announce visitors properly.

"Good Lord, Gerald!—what is the matter?"

"Matter enough. Brigit is Victor Joyselle's mistress."

He sank into a chair and pressed his thin hands together until the bones cracked.

"Gerald!"

"She is! she is! I have just come from his studio in Chelsea. Followed her there. She was alone with him for over an hour. And when she came out——"

Lady Kingsmead rose and went to him.

"Now listen to me," she said firmly. "You have either been drinking or you are mad. I don't care where you have been or where you saw Brigit. This story is—rot!"

Lady Kingsmead was not a clever woman, but this move on her part, the result not of a virtuous belief in virtue or of a sudden swing of her mental pendulum towards the effective, such as some women have—was amazing in its effect, because it was spontaneous and sincere.

"Will you have something to drink?" she asked.

It was a curious scene; the dainty little room with the swivel-table laid for one, the pretty, well-preserved woman, looking down with real pity but something very near scorn at the broken, haggard, untidy man sprawling in a rose-coloured chair.

"You are a fool, Tony," he said roughly. "I tell you I know."

"Bosh. You know perfectly well that I was never silly about my children. Well—I don't care what you say about Brigit, I know she is all right. As yet, anyway," she added.

"She loves that—that brute," he stammered, wiping the perspiration from his face with a crumpled handkerchief. "I saw her face as she left his studio."

Lady Kingsmead pursed her mouth thoughtfully.

"That may be," she admitted. "I've thought for some time that something was in the air——"

Breaking off, she glanced hastily at him. The old habit of telling him her thoughts as they came to her was still strong, but this was not her Gerald Carron. This was a new man of whom she knew little. For this much wisdom she had learned: that every new love makes a new man of a man.

And this Carron, with his wild eyes, was no person to confide in.

"Come, buck up, old thing," she said, with an affectation of brusque good-humour: "you haven't been sleeping. Isn't that it?"

"Yes. I'll never sleep any more."

"And you're taking—Veronal?"

"Yes, sometimes. Oh, don't bully me, Tony! I'm—done."

"I should think you were, to come and tell a woman beastly stories about her own daughter! You'll be sorry to-morrow. Did you tell her this beautiful idea by way of making yourself engaging?"

"I told her—yes."

"And she didn't knock you down? Upon my word, I am surprised. Now look here, Gerald; you must go. I'm going to dress. We are going to the Cassowary's ball. You'd better go to bed and try to sleep without any Veronal. Will you? Will you, Gerry, poor old boy?"

His nerves were in such a condition that this unmerited and unexpected kindness broke him down utterly. Suddenly, to her horror, the poor wretch burst into tears, sobbing like a child.

"Gerry, don't—oh, for Heaven's sake, don't!" she cried, laying her hand on his head. "You—you mustn't. Gerry, Gerry dear——"

"Yes, pat his head and call him dear!" cried Brigit furiously from the open door. "He insults me in the most abominable way, the vile little beast, and then you pet him. Bah! mother, you do really make me ill!"

Lady Kingsmead turned, amazed. "You are off your head, too! Can't you see he is ill?"

But Brigit's anger, nursed all during the drive home, burst out afresh. All her life she and her mother had quarrelled; there had never been implanted in her even an idea of the common decency of filial respect, or of its semblance. Her mother's gusty, fitful temper had always, when roused, been given instant vent in a torrent of vituperation, and the girl, while too sulky to be so spontaneous even in the unpleasant sense of the word, had early acquired the habit of speaking to her mother as she would have to a greatly disliked sister.

So now, when her rage with Carron burst its bounds, and she found, as she thought, her mother taking his part, she gave free rein to her temper, and its eloquent bitterness struck Lady Kingsmead for the moment dumb.

Carron sat still, his face hidden in his hands. When at last Brigit's arraignment ceased, Lady Kingsmead's turn came, and more feebly, less effectively, but to the best of her powers, she gave back abuse for abuse.

It was not a pleasant sight. Unbridled rage never is, even when in a good cause, and these two undisciplined women had lost all dignity and said very bad things to each other.

Brigit's one excuse was her mistaken assumption that her mother had believed Carron's story, and when Lady Kingsmead had shrieked out everything else that she thought might hurt her daughter, she added, "I believed in you, you little brute, though he said he saw you there. I might have known he wouldn't have dared to make up such a tale."

Brigit, who had stood quite still, now spoke. "Then—you believe him now?"

"Yes, I do!" lied Lady Kingsmead, goaded by the sneer on her daughter's fierce mouth.

There was a long pause, and then Brigit Mead went to the door.

"I am sorry I lost my temper and made such a beast of myself," she said slowly, "and—I will never speak to you again as long as I live."

She closed the door gently and went upstairs to her room.

It was done now, decided, her boats were burnt. From this day henceforth she would be spoken of as the queer Mead girl who doesn't live with her mother.

While she dressed for dinner she laid her plans with the quickness native to her. She would dine and dance at the Newlyns, and then she would go to the Joyselles' for the night.

The next day she would go and talk to a girl friend who had a flat in huge and horrible "Mansions" out Kensington way. She would live alone with a maid; and she would have to pinch and scrape—but that would not matter. And then—Joyselle would come to see her, and very probably some day they would lose their heads, and it would be her mother's fault. There was much satisfaction in this reflection, for she ignored the fact that in all probability the crisis had been only precipitated by her mother's speech.

There was Tommy. Well, Joyselle would be good to him for her sake. And even if Tommy should elect to come and live with her, her mother could not prevent his doing so. She would fuss and cry and tell all her friends how ungrateful her children were, but in the end Tommy's firmness would prevail.

She laughed as she got out of the carriage at the Newlyns. By great good luck Joyselle was dining there, and Theo coming only to the dance.

"I will tell him," she thought, and her heart gave a great throb and then sank warmly into its place at the thought of seeing him. "He will turn slowly and hold his shoulders stiffly and try to look indifferent," she thought, "but oh—his eyes!"



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Sparrow and the Cassowary were much delighted with their own dinner and their own ball.

Freddy Newlyn was a kindly little man, with an absurd fussy manner full of importance, as so many kindly little men have. Is it by some gentle providential dispensation that the physically insignificant are so often upheld by harmless vanity?

The Cassowary, on the other hand, bony and distressingly red in the wrong places, suffered from a realisation of her own defects that she endeavoured to conceal by an assumption of the wildest high spirits. This jocularity, of course, became at times rather painful, but as she was possessed of much money and a kind heart, it was forgiven her.

The dinner was very large, and the guests sat at small tables all over the place—a delightful invention of the Cassowary's, who screamed with piercing glee at the excitement displayed as lots were drawn for the different tables.

"Seven, Sir John? Then you'll find your partner and go to the library—only three tables there! Dicky, what is your number? Four? Oh, you lucky little brute The conservatory. Who's your girl? Oh, yes, Piggy! Aren't I a lamb?"

The numbers of the various tables were being drawn, as she spoke, from a vase on the drawing-room table.

"And you, M. Joyselle? Thirteen. Oh, what awful luck!"

Everyone screamed with laughter, for the Norman was looking with unfeigned concern at his bit of paper.

"Je n'aime pas le treize, madame," he protested, disregarding the prevailing mirth.

"But—what can I do? It's a nice table in the billiard-room. Who's your partner?"

"Lady Sophy Browne—which is she?"

"Oh, Sophy Browne. Go on drawing, you men, I must speak to Fred. I say, Fred——"

The good-natured Cassowary tramped across to the door where the Sparrow was standing, and bending down, said something to him.

"Is he really? I say, that's too bad. But you can't change the tables, can you, dear?"

"I don't know. These kind of people are so superstitious, you see; it's enough to make him glum all the evening, and Sophy was so keen—she says he looks like a bust by Rodin, and she wants to do him in pen and ink."

The Sparrow rubbed his pointed nose thoughtfully.

"Change the two of 'em to another table, can't you?"

"I've got 'em all sorted, though. Unless—I might change Billy and the Farquhar girl to their table, and put them in the boudoir balcony! Billy wouldn't mind and the Farquhar girl doesn't matter; she didn't get me those tickets, anyhow."

The Sparrow gave a little hop of satisfaction.

"Right. That'll do famously."

So the Cassowary went back to the table and laid her hand on Joyselle's sleeve. "I have put you at another table, M. Joyselle. You go to the boudoir balcony—Sophy will take you there—so it's all right. I must go and find Billy Vere now. Oh——" turning, she found herself face to face with Brigit Mead, who had just arrived.

"I say, Brigit, would you mind sitting at the table with M. Joyselle? Eugene Struther is your man, and M. Joyselle objects to his table because it is number thirteen."

Brigit, shaking hands with her enthusiastic hostess, caught Joyselle's eye. He had heard.

"Mind? Not a bit," she answered carelessly, "if he doesn't."

Mrs. Newlyn turned, to find the top of Joyselle's head presented to her in a bow of mockly-resigned acquiescence. "Then, that's all right. What's the matter, Oliver?"

Lord Oliver Maytopp, a cherished clown in that section of society in which the Newlyns had their being, was making believe to cry, his large mouth opened grotesquely, his fists digging into his eyes.

"I d—don't want to sit at the table next Meg's," he sobbed, "when I tell funny stories she always—makes faces at me. I want to go home to Nursey."

Brigit moved away, her upper lip raised disdainfully. How odious they all were!

And how detestable the whole house with its health of art-treasures, selected by an artist friend of Newlyn's.

"Nouveau-riche?" asked Joyselle, joining her.

"No. That is, they are well-born, but they are nouveau as regards money. Her father made a lucky speculation in electric-lighting, I think it was, after she was married. They haven't got used to their money yet. So," she added, as they stepped out on to one of the many balconies with which the house was ornamented, "you don't object to sitting at my table?"

"Brigitte!"

His was of the type of face that is ennobled by any strong passion, and he looked very splendid as he towered above her, white and shaken.

"You will not leave me?" she asked, again possessed by the fear that had tormented her from the moment when he had dropped his violin the evening of the golden frock.

"Brigitte," he returned, leaning on the rail and presenting a non-committal back to anyone who might chance to join them, "let us not talk of that yet. I love you, and you are mine, and I am yours, whatever happens."

An agony of terror took her strength as he spoke. Uncertainty was always hard for her to bear, but in this vital matter she felt that she could not endure it.

"If you are going to be cruel and leave me," she said, her face taking on an expression of relentless cruelty, "you must do so at once."

He turned.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—I cannot bear suspense. If, for any reason, you are going to—to go—please go now."

He was honestly puzzled, for she looked at him as if he had been an enemy.

"My dear—my beloved—what do you mean?" His voice was grieved and gentle. "Surely you can see that——" he broke off into French, "that the situation is not simple? That we love we cannot help—nor would we, by God!—but in an honest man and an honest woman——"

"Come along, you two," cried Mrs. Newlyn, "dinner is announced. M. Joyselle, go and find Lady Sophy, and you, Brigit, come and be found by your man—I forget who he is——"

"Eugene Struther," she answered quietly, "I am glad, too."

Struther was one of the best of the young men to be met at the Newlyns, and he and she always got on fairly well. Their table was squeezed rather tightly into a little balcony looking over the diminutive garden that, although she never went into it, or knew one of its flowers from another, was one of the several joys of the Cassowary's heart. So few people have gardens in London.

Lady Sophy Browne, an ethereal-looking woman, with a consciously wan smile and a grey chiffon frock, that looked as if it would have had to be unpinned and unwound, rather than taken off, when bed-time came, put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands under her chin.

"Do you know Rodin's Portrait d'un Inconnu?" she asked Joyselle.

"No, madame."

"But you know Rodin?"

"I have met him."

Ecstatic was her smile.

"I knew it. And unconsciously you were his model for the Inconnu. But it is you, M. Joyselle! Do not deny it, for I know."

Joyselle took an olive.

"I do not deny it, Lady Sophy. But I know nothing of it. If you are right I am—much flattered."

Brigit was amused, for she saw that the Spectre, as her friends called the grey-draped peeress, had anticipated excitement and curiosity on Joyselle's part.

There was music somewhere in the distance, and the air was sweet with the smell of roses from the room behind them as well as from the garden below.

Struther talked little, Brigit, with her usual indifference to others, almost not at all, and as Joyselle's self-command rose only to the height of an occasional reply to the Spectre's monologue, which was not of an arresting nature, the party on the balcony was very quiet.

Brigit suffered tortures as she sat watching Joyselle. It was, then, as she had feared. He was going to be strong and make everyone miserable.

If she had been asked to propose any kind of a plan for the future, her answer would have been, when denuded of side issues and fantasy, simply that she could see nothing better than simple drifting. As yet she could not anticipate, and it roused in her a kind of jealousy that Joyselle had so soon begun to think of Theo. His love for her should have dimmed all consideration for his son—it should have been she who suggested some means of hurting the boy as little as possible.

But she could see that Joyselle was going to be what she called in the frankness she allowed herself, tiresome about that wretched boy of his.

She also knew that Joyselle would be anything but pleased by her resolution to leave home and live by herself. His respect for certain laws were an integral part of his nature, and she knew that he would not approve of her deserting what he was certain to call the maternal roof. This curious element of Philistinism in his otherwise Bohemian nature was very perplexing, and she told herself, as she looked at him while he gravely listened to the ghostly Lady Sophy, that her troubles were in reality only just beginning.

"M. Joyselle," she asked him during a pause that only a burning desire for champagne induced Lady Sophy to allow to pass unchallenged, "will petite mere mind my coming to sleep to-night? I want very much to see her about something, and so I told mother I'd get you and Theo to take me home."

He bowed with an assumption of fatherly gratification. "But of course, my dear." Then, for his powers of dissimulation were not of durable quality, he turned quickly to Lady Sophy.

So that was all right.

When dinner was over and the women were herded together in the drawing-room, Brigit sat down and took up a book. In an hour Theo would be coming, and would want his answer. What was it to be?



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Theo arrived rather late, and after making his bow to his hostess, came straight to her. His fine young face was flushed and eager and his eyes very bright.

Brigit, who was standing talking to Maytopp, felt her heart sink. She had not yet decided what to say, and instinctively she looked round the room for Joyselle.

"Brigit—will you dance?" Theo bowed, a trifle lower than Englishmen bow, and offered her his arm with the very slightest suggestion of swagger. And somehow he reminded her at that moment more of his father than he had ever done.

He did not speak as they danced, but she knew that he was fairly confident of her answer being a favourable one, and she tried to think that the waltz was never going to end.

But it did end, and she found herself near the window leading to the balcony where she had talked with his father early in the evening.

"Brigit——" he whispered gently, looking out into the darkness.

And then she heard herself answer: "Yes, Theo. But—ask your father what he and I have decided."

"Ask papa!"

"Yes. He knows what we are going to do, and he will tell you."

Without a word he left her and she stepped out on the balcony. Leaning against the parapet she stared down into the empty street, wondering what Joyselle would say. She had not intended to put the responsibility of the future on him; she had said the words almost unconsciously, but they were said. And he, when he came?

Would the horrible courage she had felt in him prevail to the extent of allowing him to give her to his son? Or would he refuse to settle things? Or would he, worst of all, announce his departure for America!

He was so many men, each of whom were so strong and so individual, that she could not know what he would say. Closing her eyes she waited. When the two men joined her Theo was—laughing. And to her overwrought nerves the sound seemed an insult.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked sharply.

He started. "Why—I don't remember. Papa said something amusing. Is anything wrong, my dear?"

"No." Joyselle stood in the light and she could see his face. It looked set and a little grim, but there was a fierce light in his eyes.

She looked at him defiantly. Yes, she had done well; he should choose.

"Eh, bien?" suggested Joyselle suddenly, "why have you sent for me, Most Beautiful?"

So Theo had not explained!

"Theo is very impatient," she answered in a low voice; "he wants me to set our wedding-day. And—I have to make up my mind, you know—I thought as you and I had talked it over before dinner, you would not mind—casting the die for us."

There was a pause while Joyselle deliberately moved beyond the radius of the light.

Theo did not move, but his immobility was the motionlessness of extreme tension. He had not observed the discrepancy in her story, Brigit saw, and was simply waiting.

It seemed many minutes before Joyselle spoke. Then he said briskly, "The pros and cons are many, Theo. Brigit will tell you them later. And there are—clothes to be got, are there not? And I must go away in a few days—to Madrid, and shall be gone three weeks. It might be well for you to marry at once, say early in June, or—you might wait until the autumn."

He lit a cigarette and Brigit drew a deep breath of relief. Thank God, he was hedging, and could not make up his mind.

"I do not wish to wait," announced Theo, with unexpected and terrible decision. "I can see no reason for it, pere. Brigit, let it be early in June."

Joyselle's match fell to the floor, and his cigarette was still unlit.

"I think I have been patient," pursued the young man, his voice trembling a little. "Ah, father, I love her, and I want my wife."

Joyselle's arm jerked and the unlit cigarette flew out into the darkness. "You are right," he began abruptly, but Brigit drew nearer to him and in the darkness laid her hand on his.

"He is right in one way, Beau-pere" she said, grasping his hand with spasmodic strength, "and I am a brute, but I should so much rather wait a little longer. I have reasons, Theo."

Joyselle caught her hand in his, and gave a great laugh.

"Oh, mes enfants, mes enfants," he cried. "When lovers disagree, who is to decide but—chance? Come, Theo, your chances shall be the same as hers. Heads you win, tails you lose. Agreed?"

Staggering back into the light, his face flushed, his teeth flashing in a broad smile, he took a sixpence from his pocket. "You both agree?"

Theo nodded in silence and Brigit answered simply "Yes."

The coin shot from the violinist's thumb-nail, flew up into the air and was caught on his palm, his left hand covering it.

"Heads, then, a June wedding. Tails, then mees has her way, and the event is put off till autumn? Right?"

"Yes."

Theo had turned away, and Brigit was free to look full into Joyselle's face. It was a wonderful face in its absolute oneness of expression. There were no complications, no remorse, nothing but wild and fierce love of gambling, and hope that the woman he loved should remain free a little longer.

"It is—tails."

Theo walked into the ballroom without a word, and Brigit found herself close in his father's arms for a wild moment. "We have won, mon adoree, mon adoree," he murmured. "Thank God!"

She drew away, trying to remember prudence.

"Yes. Then—this summer is ours. And in the autumn——"

"It is not even summer yet. Do not think of it. We shall be happy, Brigitte, for you are my woman and I am your man. And the future—oh, never mind the future, my love, my love!"



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cromwell Mansions are a depressing pile of buildings not far from the Kensington High Street; they have lifts, uniformed hall-porters, house telephones and other modern inconveniences, and a restaurant.

The restaurant is, of course, the Mansions being inhabited chiefly by women, very bad indeed, but it obviates the necessity of cooks and kitchens in the, for the most part, diminutive flats into which the place is divided.

One day early in August Brigit Mead sat in the restaurant at a small table near an open window through which she caught an invigorating view of a brick court in the middle of which a woman was washing a cabbage at a pump.

It was a very warm day and the butter, more liquid than solid, seemed to be the last of a huge bundle of straws the weight of which threatened to break the girl's back.

That the cold beef was hard and tasteless was a detail to be borne with, but the butter seemed particularly insulting as it melted before her eyes.

"Going to thunder, I believe," observed a wan girl at the next table. "It would, of course, as I have tickets for Ranelagh!"

"Of course," agreed Brigit, absently.

She hated being so late in town, but the Lenskys, to whom she had been going, had wired to put her off, as Pammy had come down with measles. And the wire having come only that morning, she had as yet made no other plan for the rest of the month.

"Give me some cream, please," she said to the waiter, "without too much boracic acid powder in it."

There was no irony in her remark and the waiter accepted it in good faith. "It's the 'eat, my lady," he explained serenely. "It all goes sour if they don't put something in it."

Brigit ate a piece of fruit tart, a bit of cheese, and rose languidly.

"I see your mother has gone to the country, Lady Brigit," said a girl near the door, as she passed.

"Yes. She always goes on the 28th of July."

"I saw it in some paper. Are you staying on long?"

The story of her leaving her mother's house was, Brigit knew, common property, but this was the first time anyone had ventured to broach the matter to her.

"I suppose," went on the unlucky questioner, "that you will soon be joining her?"

"Do you?" asked Brigit.

"Do I what?"

"Suppose so?" And Miss M'Caw was alone, staring after the tall figure in the plain white frock, that for all its plainness looked so out of place in Cromwell Mansions.

Unlocking her door, Brigit went into her sitting-room and lit a cigarette. She had taken the flat from a friend who had been sent abroad by her doctor, and the whole place was absurdly unsuited to its present owner.

Maidie Conyers was blonde and small, so the room was pale blue and "cosy." There were embroidered pillows on the buttony Chesterfield, lace shades to the electric lights, and be-rosebudded liberty silk curtains.

Brigit hated the house, but it was cheap, and she had little money.

With a grunt of furious distaste she sat down in a satin chair, and leaning back began to smoke. The tables in the room were very bare, for the chief ornaments had been photographs—in very elaborate frames—of Maidie Conyers' friends, and Brigit, finding that she loathed Maidie Conyers' friends, had banished them one and all.

"Loathsome room," the girl said aloud, lighting a fresh cigarette, "disgusting curtains."

What she in reality felt mostly, though she did not know it, was the lack of room in the flat. Used all her life to the large rooms of Kingsmead, she felt, now that the unusual heat had come, cramped and restless.

It maddened her to have to make plans. Where should she go? How like that little wretch Pammy to go and have measles now.

She would go to Golden Square as soon as it got a little cooler and make Victor play to her. They might go for a drive later. Or she might make Theo take her for a walk in the park. Suddenly she heard a slight scratching noise in the entry, and rose. The porter, to save himself trouble, was letting some visitor in unannounced. She would murder that porter.

But when she saw the visitor she forgot the guilty official.

"Gerald!"

"Yes, Brigit. Do—do you mind?"

"I—yes, I mind, of course I do. Why have you come?"

Carron, who was very smartly dressed and who looked wretchedly ill, sank into a chair.

"It is nearly four months ago," he murmured. "I—I hoped you would have forgiven me."

"Well, I haven't. So please go."

Her ill-humour, accumulating ever since the receipt of the wire from the Lenskys, seemed about to burst. She looked exceedingly angry, and the poor wretch in the chair before her trembled as he looked at her.

"D—don't be so hard on me, Bicky."

"Don't call me Bicky. And please go. I don't want to be rude, but I shall lose my temper if you don't."

Carron's pinched face quivered. "I—I am very ill Brigit," he said in a hurried, deprecating way. "I—I am not sleeping at all, my nerves are—rotten. And I thought I'd die if I couldn't see you. Don't be any harder on me than—than necessary."

She sat down on the arm of a chair, and looked at him closely.

"You do look ill—very ill. And you look—I say, Gerald, are you taking anything?"

He gave a shrill, cackling laugh. "Taking anything. No. You mean morphine or something of that kind? Pas si bete, my dear. Oh, no, I have always had a perfect horror of anything like that. W—why?"

"Because—I think you are," she returned coolly. "Show me your left arm, Gerald."

"No, no, you are mad, my dear,—I assure you I don't. I give you my word of honour——"

She came to him, and taking his arm in her strong hands pushed up his sleeves and studied his emaciated arm for a few seconds in silence.

"I thought as much," she commented, as he almost whimpered in his helpless annoyance.

"You are so rough, Brigit. Tony always says you are so rough."

"Yes, I am. Well—I am sorry for you, Gerald. When did you begin?"

"Oh—long ago. But—I seem to need more of late."

"Took it at first to make you sleep, I suppose?"

"Yes. And then—well you see, I like it. And it's nobody's business," he finished defiantly.

"That's true. Would you like some tea?"

"Oh, yes, Brigit. You are kind. It is good of you to forgive me."

"I haven't forgiven you," she retorted, going to the tea table, "but I am sorry for you. Where have you been of late?"

"Oh, all about, as usual. I came up from Morecambe yesterday. Rotten party. Have you seen your mother?"

Brigit's lips tightened. "No."

"I saw her three weeks ago. She is very much hurt by your behaviour."

"Broken-hearted, I should think!"

"Well, she's queer enough, I grant you, and not over-motherly, but—she is your mother when all's said and done."

The girl watched the kettle boil and said nothing.

"Tommy is coming on wonderfully with his violin, isn't he?" pursued Carron.

"Yes."

"Does he come here often?"

She looked up, frowning. "You know perfectly well that he has never been here," she returned shortly. "Do you like your tea strong?"

"Yes, please, no milk. Well—you must miss him."

"And you know perfectly well that I see him twice a week at Joyselle's."

Carron took his cup with trembling hands and set it down carefully on the table.

"You needn't snap my head off," he observed.

"No. But why play comedy? Mother has told you all about it, so I can't see the use of this sort of humbug."

He was silent for a moment, and then began in a new voice. "Brigit, I—I really have something to say to you."

"What is it?"

"It's this. That day—the last time I saw you, you know, your mother was standing up for you when you came in. She—refused to believe me when I, when I——"

"I know. But when I came in she was——"

"She was simply being good to me. Look here, Brigit, really and truly, she was. She went for me when I said—that. And your coming in in a temper was what—upset the apple-cart."

Brigit raised her eyebrows.

"Right. Now let's talk about something else. When did you see Tommy?"

"A week ago. He is in town now."

"I know. I shall see him to-morrow."

"At Joyselle's?"

"Yes."

"Brigit—you can see what a wreck I am. Tell me. Are you going to marry that boy?"

"I am."

"When?"

"In October."

"Then——"

She rose. "I am a model of patience, Gerald, but you have asked enough questions."

"But—well, I am sorry I was such a beast. Can you endure seeing me once in a long time—say once a month? It—it may make life possible to me—don't say that you don't see the necessity for that! Brigit——"

"But it is so useless, Gerald, and so painful——"

"No. And I can tell you all kind of things about people—you must be lonely! Tommy is only a kid after all, and doesn't hear—By the way, why does he never come here?"

She hesitated. "Do you really not know?" Then, seeing sincerity in his eyes, she went on. "Well—Joyselle made me promise mother that."

"Made you!"

"Yes. He—you see he is old-fashioned. And—well, in two words he said that unless I promised he—he—would not teach Tommy or even see him!"

Carron whistled. "Well, I'll be damned!"

"Yes. Absurd, wasn't it? But—Oh, well, there's no use in explaining."

As she spoke she heard the introductory scraping at the keyhole again, and a moment later Tommy came in.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A remarkably dandified Tommy; a solemn and significant Tommy, who shook hands solemnly with his sister and Carron and then sat down and took off his gloves.

"I have come on business, Brigit," he announced quietly.

Carron rose. "Then I will go. Thanks very much, Brigit, for your hospitality—and I will look in again in three or four weeks, if you don't mind."

Tommy's frame of mind was too dignified to permit of his staring, but he was obviously surprised at Carron's presence, and when the man had gone he said with considerable importance: "Since when has Carron been calling on you?"

"This is the first time. Oh, Tommy—should you have come?"

"I have just left mother at Aunt Emily's," he answered, his voice explaining plainly what his dignity forbade his putting into words.

So her mother knew!

"New clothes; also gloves; also something smelly and very nice on your hair!"

Brigit bent over and kissed him tenderly, her face very sweet with affection. "Please elucidate, little brother. Has mother sent you?"

"No. She knows I have come, though."

"Some tea?"

"If you please."

So she lit the kettle and going to a cupboard produced two enchanting-looking white jars. "Marmalade or cherry jam?"

"I think—neither, please," returned Kingsmead, with an effort. "I—am not hungry."

It was all very mysterious, and Brigit, scanning the little boy's face, saw that he was nervous as well as important; pale as well as elegant in attire. So she made the tea and gave him a cup in silence.

After a long pause he cleared his throat and began. "Brigit, of course I'm only a kid—and all that sort of thing."

"Yes, dear?"

"And you are grown up, and have a great deal more—well, experience than I. And then you are very beautiful, and I am—not," he added with a flicker of irrepressible mirth that was immediately quenched.

"Yes, Tommy?"

"Well—I just say all that, dear old thing, so you won't think me sidey, you know."

"I don't, Tommy. In fact, I have sometimes observed in you symptoms of almost radical——"

"Don't laugh, Brigit," he broke in with a quaint wave of his hand. "What I mean to say is simply this. I am, although so young, and not very big—the Head of the Family."

This magnificent declaration was so unlike his usual style of conversation that his sister with difficulty refrained from laughing.

"Well, Tommy—yes, there would be no use in my denying that you, not I, are the Earl of Kingsmead. But—your manner is somewhat solemn; surely you are not thinking of marrying?"

The earl's mouth broadened spasmodically, and his eyes gleamed with amusement.

"I say, Bick, if you laugh at me, how on earth am I ever to get it said?"

"All right. Only take some jam and don't terrify me with magnificence. This is the first time to my knowledge that an earl has ever shed the effulgence of his presence in these humble walls——"

Tommy's grandeur gave up the ghost, and with a yell of delight he dived deep into one of the jars and heaped his plate with suspiciously crimson cherry jam.

"Good old Bick! I must have looked an awful little ass. But—well, will you chuck it all and come home?"

"Oho!"

"Yes, 'oho' as much as you like, but it is all rot your living here, and she hates it, and it's unpleasant all round. Besides the country is really lovely now, and I miss you."

"Do you, Tommy dear?"

"I do."

"Did mother send you?"

"No. She said you wouldn't come if she did, but that you might if I—if I——"

"If you exerted your authority as Head of the Family!"

"Well, yes." Tommy, now completely shamefaced, took more jam and handed back his cup.

"She is funny," mused Brigit. "To have so little sense of humour."

"That's what I told her. But Aunt Emily says people are talking about your living alone, etc. And—besides, I think she is really rather fond of you, Bick."

"Oh, no, she isn't. However, M. l'Ambassadeur, you have fulfilled your mission, so be content."

Tommy paused in his task of biting into a piece of cake and looked up at her. "Then—you will?"

"No, dear; I most certainly won't. But don't you bother about that. I like this very well, and after all it isn't for long."

"Oh. You mean you are going to marry Theo. When?"

"In October, probably. Nothing is settled. More jam?"

"No, thanks. I say, Bicky, what are you going to do in September?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Because they are all going to La-bas, to the Golden Wedding. They were talking about it the other day. Are you going, too?"

She shook her head. "Oh, no. But I daresay I shall be with the Lenskys then. I can't go now, because one of the children is ill."

Tommy rose and looked at his watch, a shadow of his former proud manner settling on him as he put on his gloves. "She will be very much disappointed," he remarked, "but I don't see how she can forbid my coming here now, do you?"

"No, of course she can't. And oh, Tommy, I have missed you! Are you at Golden Square to-night?"

"Yes. Coming to supper?"

"I think so. Good-bye, you darling little boy."

After he had closed the door, Tommy pounded on it until she opened it.

"I say, Bicky, what happens to ambassadors who fail in their missions?" he asked, winking delightedly.



CHAPTER NINETEEN

Yellow Dog Papillon lay asleep on the Chesterfield in Joyselle's room. He was dreaming an enchanting dream about a particularly aromatic bone that he found in a dust-bin—a ham-bone slashed by a careless hand and cast away before all meat had been removed from it—a bone for which any dog would have risked much.

So it was tiresome to be awakened by a sound of low voices.

Opening one eye warily Yellow Dog Papillon looked up and saw something he had of late seen several times, his beloved master standing by the Girl Who Had Sometimes Just Come from a Cat.

The girl had water in her eyes, too.

"I am very sorry, Victor," she was saying, "but I cannot, and will not. I can't see why you should care."

"But I do care. You know that I have always hated it. And Tommy told me himself that she let him go with the express purpose of making up with you. It is your duty to go back."

She drew away from him.

"I cannot."

"You mean you will not."

"Exactly; I will not."

Yellow Dog did not understand all of this dialogue, but he knew his master's face as well as his voice, and because he liked the Girl Who Had Sometimes Just Come from a Cat, he would have liked to advise her to lay down her arms at once. "No good opposing him when his eyes are like that," he said to himself; "if it was me, I'd just sit up and beg and make him laugh."

But Brigit would not condescend to sit up and beg.

"There's no use in discussing it," she said very coldly, "for I will not go back."

Joyselle watched her in silence for a long time. "Not even if I entreat you?" he asked in a gentle voice.

Her lips tightened, for tenderness with coercion behind it had no delusions for her.

"Not even if you entreat me. I have told you that I dislike my mother and I do not wish to see her. I will not tell you why, and that, at least, you ought to approve of."

"It is horrible for a daughter to say that she does not like her mother——"

"It is horrible for me not to like her, but I can't help it. And it is not horrible for me to tell—anything to you."

But his face did not soften. "I wish you to go to Kingsmead, Brigit."

"I will not go to Kingsmead, Victor."

"Then," his anger now finally blazed up, "I can say only—good-bye."

Her face was as white and as hard as his own, and being a woman she could even laugh.

"Adieu, donc—Beau-pere!"

"What do you mean by that? You will not—surely you cannot mean that you will——"

"But I do!" He himself had suggested a revenge to her. "If you and I quarrel, I will most certainly not marry your son."

For a moment the father in him dominated the mere man, and his eloquence was great as he reproached her.

"No—no, I am not cruel," she answered cruelly, her anger reinforced by a wave of jealousy anent Theo, "but as I do not love him, why should I marry him? And this kind of thing had far better cease. After all, you care for him far more than you care for me."

"Grand Dieu!"

"Yes, of course you do," she went on in the tone of gentle, unimpassioned reason that women sometimes use in violent anger, to the utter amazement and undoing of their male opponents. "And moreover, I daresay if I really loved you as much as I thought I did, I should be unable to refuse to do what you wish about my mother."

Joyselle's face was very white.

"What do you mean? Do you mean that your love for me was a mere caprice, and that—it has gone?"

His agony was unconcealed, and as she gazed she smiled, for her own torture was nearly unbearable.

"I shouldn't like to say it was only a caprice——" She hesitated, and he sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

Suddenly he rose and seizing her arm roughly, gave her another cue, which she remorselessly and instantly took.

"There is someone else," he cried, utterly forgetting that the very day before she had loved him madly, "you love some other man. Tell me who it is!"

And with the extraordinary fortitude common to fanatics and furious women, she smiled and answered:

"Perhaps! Tout passe, mon cher."

It was a cheap and melodramatic bit of acting, and any unprejudiced onlooker must have seen the agony in her face, but Joyselle was blinded by his own pain and fled from the room without another word.

She heard a door slam and knew that he had gone out. And the world came to an end for her.

It was about six o'clock, and Tommy had gone out with Theo. They would not be back until about eight.

Felicite, too, was out. She was alone. She saw Papillon, who was sitting up, looking at her with a world of sympathy in the cock of his ear.

Suddenly Brigit burst into tears, nervous, hysterical, noisy sobbing, as she had done that day in the olive grove at the Villa Arcadie. She had been living under great nervous strain for months, and these breakdowns were of appalling violence. She could not stop crying, and she could not reason and tell herself that he would come back and forgive her.

All she could realise was her hideous misery and sense of desolation. She was utterly alone, she was hungry, she was cold, she was hopeless.

Presently someone touched her shoulder very gently. It was Felicite.

"What is it, my dear?" the elder woman asked. "What has happened?"

And Brigit, too unstrung to tell the usual conventional lies, simply sobbed on, her whole body shaking with agony.

Madame Joyselle sat patiently by her, stroking her shoulders with a kind hand, murmuring little broken phrases in French, patting her hair.

"Oui, oui, ma mie—Pauvre petite, ca te soulagera—Pleures, ma cocotte, pleures!"

And at last the girl was quiet, and reached for her handkerchief.

"I—I am sorry to have been so idiotic, I don't know why I am such a fool——"

Felicite smoothed back her wet hair and smiled at her.

"Poor child," she answered quietly. "I am so sorry. I have seen it for some time——"

Brigit stared at her.

"Seen—?"

"That you have fallen in love with Victor. It is really too bad of him, the old rascal."

Her gentle face was so undisturbed, so calmly acceptant of the heinous fact that Brigit could do nothing but stare. "I am glad poor Theo does not suspect," went on Felicite, untying the strings of her old-fashioned bonnet, "we must not let him know, n'est ce pas?"

"I—I don't see——" stammered the girl, blankly.

"No, he must not know. Nor Victor either, if we can help it. Though he is very vain, and vain men always see. On the whole," she added with a kind of gentle amusement, "you have all been absurdly blind but me. And I did not like to warn you."

"This is—very extraordinary," began Brigit, rising. "I don't quite see——"

But Felicite drew her down to her chair again. "That is just it, ma pauvre petite. I did see. I saw his little fancy for you, too. It began the evening of the dragon-skin frock, and it lasted, oh—about a month. And you never noticed it, poor child. And now you are miserable about him. I am so sorry."

There was such convincing sincerity in her every tone that Brigit could not even pretend to be angry.

"You must think me very silly," she murmured.

But the little woman shook her head, "Non, non, it is not silly to love. It is unwise, or wrong, or heavenly, or mad, but silly, non. And he is very attractive, mon homme." This tribute she added reluctantly, as if from a sense of fairness. "And many have loved him."

Suddenly Brigit's anger flamed up.

"And—I am so insignificant that you are not afraid of me," she cried. "What if he had not got over it? What if he loved me as much—more than I love him?"

Felicite smiled serenely and sweetly.

"No, I know him. I saw it come—and go. But do not be angry and proud, my dear. I wish only to help you."

And Brigit, touched by her kindness as well as terrified by her own indiscretion, sat down by her.



CHAPTER TWENTY

When Joyselle came in at eight o'clock he went straight to his room to dress. He was still very angry, but his anger was less poignant than his sense of helpless defeat. Brigit's attitude was absolutely incomprehensible to him, and hurt him in an almost unbearable degree. That she should defy him, grow as angry as he himself, he had already learned was not impossible; but the cruel hardness of her face as she had sent him away had shocked him more than anything in his whole experience.

He was a shrewd man, and his love for her had never blinded him as to her faults; often he had corrected her for unfilial behaviour, for a too sharp word, for selfishness. But the one quality which to a strong and tender man is unendurable in the woman he loves, cruelty, he had never before realised in the girl, and his discovery that it lay in her to hurt him as she had done, had nearly broken his heart.

For hours he had walked rapidly through the streets, seeing no one, avoiding being knocked down by a kind of subconscious attention and alertness of mind, his brain struggling desperately with its problem.

In a few words, all life seemed to him to have reduced itself to the question, "How could she?" As yet he had not got further than this, and it did not occur to him to wonder whether or no her mental attitude was definite or only temporary. "How could she? How could she so rend him? Of what was her heart made that it could allow her so to wound his?"

When he reached home the incomprehensibility of this problem was fast outweighing his anger, and Felicite, who came in as he stood in the middle of the room brushing his hair, smiled at the misery in his face.

"So she was cruel, the little one?" she asked gently, sitting down and folding her hands in her characteristic way.

"She was—abominable. But how did you know?"

"I found her in tears. You must be gentle with her, my man."

He stared. "Gentle? But she is a demon when she is angry. Tell me to be gentle with an enraged lioness."

Felicite's smile was good to see. "She is not an enraged lioness, Victor. She is—very unhappy, and we must help her."

He went to the dressing-table and put down his brushes. "I am tired, wife," he said quietly; "let us talk of something else. Besides, it is nearly half-past eight."

She nodded.

"Yes. But—Victor, you remember the Polish girl?"

"Franska? Yes."

"Well? And the pantomimiste, and Miss Belton, and Lady Paula——"

Joyselle started in the act of shaking scent on his handkerchief. "Of course I remember them. But what have they to do with Brigitte?"

"Only this, Victor. The poor child is in love with you, vieux vaurien! And that is why she is so savage."

She sat quite still, looking up at him with an indulgent smile, into which the maternal element largely entered. He was a fatal person, this great fiddler of hers; but to her he was also a child to be cared for, and a not quite normal being, to whose absent mind much must be explained.

Her charming face, almost old in spite of its fresh colour, was touched, as she watched his back, with a flicker of kindly mischief.

"And to think that you did not know, blind one," she teased.

"It—it is your imagination," he returned with a slight stammer, turning and facing her.

"No, no. Also I did not imagine that at first you, too, were a little epris. It was most natural, my dear. She is so very beautiful. I was glad when it passed. It was the day of the long discussion about the wedding—the day of the letter from your mother—do you remember? When you rushed away like a whirlwind?"

"Yes—I remember."

"Well, when you returned, you were quiet and a little pale, and I understood. The talk about Theo's wedding had put things into their right places in your mind, silly old child, pas? And then you brought her back here after the dance, and—all was well."