CHAPTER THREE
Brigit left the villa the next morning and went straight to London. And the nearer she got to the old town which contained, for her, the very kernel of life, her spirits mounted and mounted in spite of herself. She had for so long been "down among the dead men," as Tommy called depression, that her sudden change of mood affected her strangely.
"If I must never see him again," she repeated over and over again aloud to herself, in the solitude of her compartment, "I shall at least see him once, and—hear him speak. I'll make him play to me, too; and I shall see his big unseeing eyes, and his wonderful hands!" The very wheels of the train seemed to be saying, "I'll see him, I'll see him, I'll see him," and when she landed at Dover, in a pouring rain, she could have laughed aloud for sheer joy.
Her mother was living in town, in the tiny house in Pont Street, but had gone to the country for the week-end, so the girl, to her great delight, was alone with the servants.
Putting on a dressing-gown she sat down by her fire and closed her eyes.
"Three months, a fortnight, and six days," she thought. "It seems years. I wonder what he will say to me? Will he be glad to see me? And—how am I to do? Shall I tell Théo, and make him tell? Or shall I be brave—as Pam would—and tell him myself!"
Then, realising her absurdity in forgetting that after all it was more Théo's affair than his father's, she laughed aloud.
It was easy to laugh, for whatever happened she would see Victor Joyselle that evening, and beyond that she could not, would not, look. The world might end to-morrow, and it mattered nothing to her. That night he and she would be face to face.
She shuddered, for he would call her his daughter and kiss her forehead. Then the smile came back to her lips, and she rose. It didn't matter; nothing mattered but the great, primary fact that in—how many hours?—four, she would see him. Let his mood be what it would—fatherly, aloof, impish—he would be himself, she would see him, and she loved him.