"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 Théo had played such a subordinate rôle 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, Théo 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?