"She is a dear, poor Félicité, and when Victor has told her that I will not marry Théo, and I have gone away—she will be less troubled."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As she went up the stairs in the house in Tite Street, Brigit recalled the occasion of her other visit there and shuddered. Poor Carron. Could it have been partly her fault?
And that was her only tribute to his memory. Essentially selfish though the girl was, she was no hypocrite, and it did not occur to her now to make excuses for the man simply because he was dead.
But it had been just here at the turning of the dusty stairs that he had waylaid her on her way down after her first love scene with Joyselle, and she could not pass without recalling it.
Then she had been gloriously happy, feeling, because she and Victor loved each other, that the world was theirs; now she came a broken-willed, frightened woman, to plead with the man who had put her out of his life, to take her back. She would tell him that no matter what happened, she would never marry Théo, and—then, when he realised that she meant this, she would beg him to take her back.
And remembering the last days she trembled.
She knocked at his door, and a short, familiar bark answered the sound. Papillon. But-ter-fly.
Joyselle opened the door, which had been locked, and when he saw her, his face, already sombre, darkened ominously.