She laughed gently. "Beau-papa! Beau-papa! Where is Théo?"
For she knew now that she would not break her engagement to-night. The end was not yet. And by the strange laws that govern things emotional between men and women, her self-control, hitherto utterly lamed by his presence, was now, in face of his involuntary, as yet evidently unconscious awakening, restored to her tenfold strong. She could have spent weeks alone with the man without betraying her secret, now that she had established her power over him. It had been his acceptance of the fact of her future relationship to him, his unexpressed feeling that she was a being of another generation, his tacit refusal to see in her the woman per se, that had beaten her. Now she had, by the plain assertion of her beauty, the enforcing of the appreciation of it as a thing appertaining to her as a woman, not a daughter, got the reins—and the whip—into her own hands.
"Where," she repeated, still smiling, "is Théo?"
"He is in his room; he will come—ah, mon Dieu!" Kneeling by his violin, which luckily had fallen on a bearskin, he took it up and looked at it shamefacedly. "See what you made me do," he said to Brigit, "you and your golden dress! Mon pauvre Amati."
She continued to look at him in silence, her instinct telling her that the strange smile she had seen on the face of the woman in the glass could not be beaten for purposes of subjugation. She continued to look and smile, but she was sorry for him, even while every fibre in her thrilled with triumph.
He realised her now; if she wanted him to love her, he would.
"Will you call Théo?" she asked as he rose. Without a word he left the room, and a few moments later Théo's arms were around her, his fresh lips on hers.
The boy was so happy, so incoherently, innocently jubilant, that if she had in her room for another feeling, it would have been one of pity for him. But there was no room. She was filled with triumph, and a full vessel can contain not one drop more of however precious a liquid.
"Ma Brigitte—mon adorée—que je t'ai desirée!" stammered the boy. "Why did you stay so long? Why was it so long? But, now, it is over and you are here. You have come to me—you, a queen to her slave!"
His delightful face was wet with unconscious tears as they sat together, and his voice trembled. For a moment she wished she could love him. It would be so much more fitting, so much better—and then the demon in her laughed. No. It was his father she loved, and who, if she chose, should love her.