"Well, when you returned, you were quiet and a little pale, and I understood. The talk about Théo's wedding had put things into their right places in your mind, silly old child, pas? And then you brought her back here after the dance, and—all was well."
Joyselle stood quite still. He was bitterly ashamed of himself for deceiving this dear, good woman, who was so innocently believing in him, but he could say nothing. All was well, she said, when he came home that evening after Brigit had come to him in the studio. Yes, but it was because he knew then that she loved him; because his scruples were for the time overwhelmed by the irresistible force of their passion for each other; because the glory of the present blinded his eyes to any visualising of the future.
That love, like everything else, must go through a series of mathematically exact evolutions, Joyselle of course, in his present frame of mind, could not realise. To him, as to every lover, the happenings and exigencies of his situation seemed those of pure hazard, and this phase, as he listened to his wife's interpretation of it, appeared to him absolutely the result of a chance quarrel with Brigit.
"She is distressed and very tragic about it all," continued Félicité. "Of course she would be tragic; it is her nature. She no doubt believes that she will never get over it. It is a pity, isn't it?"
"Oui, oui." He had again turned away, and stood by the window polishing his nails, of which he was very vain, in the palm of his hand.
"The only thing that troubles me is—Théo. It would break his heart, poor child. He, too," she added, still with her kindly cynicism, "would think she will never get over it. It is thus that all lovers think. But—what are we to do, Victor? I have been thinking much about it. Shall we try separation—from you—for her? Or would that make it worse? She is not patient, and she has no discipline or self-control. She might do something foolish."
"Why should she do something foolish, if it is only a—passionette?" he asked harshly, for he did not enjoy his wife's hypothesis.
"It is not the greatest loves that are the most desperate, my dear. But we must go down. Be kind to her. Remember that she is young, and that her imagination has made a king of you."
Joyselle frowned ferociously as he followed his wife downstairs. He did not like being taken into her confidence in this way, and her calm assumption that he, too, regarded Brigit as a silly schoolgirl who must be managed into giving up a childish fancy for an old man cut him to the quick. When they reached his study they found Théo sitting at the piano playing with the parrot, while Brigit stood, looking like a thunder cloud, at an open window. Joyselle started as he saw her face. Surely its expression must rouse even Félicité's slow suspicion!
And never, for his sins, he told himself grimly, had she been more beautiful. Her storm of tears had left her eyes unswollen, but shadowy and unusually melting, while her face, as white as paper, was the face of one who had been face to face with a horrible death.