"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 Théo, "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.