Brigit nodded sympathetically. "Poor you," she said in English.
"Yes. The music made him half-mad, and then he had friends who taught him to gamble. There were other things, too. Women. He was so handsome and so fascinating, and his success was just beginning, they all ran after him, and he enjoyed it. I," she added, "didn't. Then we went to Paris. That was bad, too, only Théo was on the way, which made things better. He was good to me during my illness—ah, very good; and beautiful it was to see the big strong man, mad with his music and his success, washing the little baby and dressing him. When Théo was two—Victor had been working with his violin since he was fourteen—we went to Berlin, and then began his craze for work. He used to work four and five hours at a time for months. Once his health gave way, and we were very poor, so he went to some place for a cure, and the little one and I stayed at home. Then he met a great Prince,—I can never remember his name,—and he invited us to stay with him. It was in a big castle near Munich. Victor loved it, but I was very miserable. I never went anywhere with him again."
"Why were you miserable, petite mère?" Brigit's voice was very gentle; she seemed to see the young violinist, handsome and, as his wife put it, driven half-mad by his music, the centre of attraction at the German castle, and his little plain wife sitting forlorn by herself, looking on.
"It was a Lady Créfinne Cranewitz,"—this name at least, she remembered! "This Créfinne (it means countess) was very beautiful, but too big; large all over like a statue, and blond. She used to wear one flower in her bosom at dinner, and then give it to him afterwards. Also she gave him a lock of her hair."
"And what did he give her?"
Félicité smiled placidly. "He gave her—his love. Ah, yes, he loved her, his Créfinne Gigantesque."
"But——"
The teller of the tale drew a blue silk sock over her hand and poked at the hole in its heel with a thoughtful needle. "He always loves them—for the time, my dear. He is of a sincerity, my man!"
Since the evening of the dragon-skin frock Brigit had done nothing to charm Joyselle; he saw her through his own eyes now, and she, knowing that the game was in her own hands, could afford to wait; when the day came when she wanted to hurt him or to further gratify her own love, she could make him love her almost in a moment. So, so far as she knew, he still enjoyed her beauty without arrière pensée, although he saw her through his own eyes, not Théo's. Yet now, at this phrase of his wife's, "He always loves them—for the time," she started, half angrily. When—if—the day came when he loved her, would this "clean old peasant," as Carron had called her, sit and darn his socks and say to herself—"for the time"?
"You are very—placid about it."