"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 Théo 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 Théo had not told her. The old woman in Normandy had written, oh, yes; but then there must have been a great pourparler, and even Félicité had grown angry. Poor Félicité! To-night—oh, yes; at a dance at the Newlyns; she must give Théo 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?"