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 Théo? 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 Théo 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.