the beautiful cloud-streams that had chased over it earlier in the day.
The red-headed girl and her young man had disappeared, and from where
they sat Joyselle and Brigit saw no signs of life.

"To-morrow it will be crowded with odious people," Brigit sighed.

"Why odious?"

"Well, I mean vulgar, noisy people."

He shook his head in a way that ruffled his halo of silver hair, and
laughed.

"You should not be a snob," he teased. "After all, you are marrying the
son of peasants."

"Peasants are different," she insisted, a little sulkily.

"Peasants are picturesque only in books, my dear. As for me, I like
happy people, and even your English 'noisy and vulgar' ones are happy, I
suppose, when they come up here on Sunday. Some day you and I will come
again. And bring Theo," he added suddenly.

Then he rose. "Come, we had better start to walk back." She obeyed in
silence.

"If I had not had genius," he continued as they reached the bottom of
the slope and turned homewards, "I should be now--what? A Norman peasant
in a black blouse driving, probably, a char-a-bancs to sell my fruit--or
my corn. I could never have been a gamekeeper like my father, for I
cannot kill. And if you, then, had come to Falaise and gone to the
market, you might have bought a pennyworth of cherries of me. And all
this might have been if I had not, one day, heard an old half-witted
blind man play a cracked fiddle on the high road, thirty years ago!"

She frowned, for she hated this kind of talk. It was too true, and it
hurt her baser pride, even while her nobler pride rejoiced in the very
humbleness of his origin because it emphasised his present greatness.

"But--you are you, and I am only--me," she returned, ungrammatical but
proudly humble.

He turned, his face flushing brilliantly. "Then you are proud of me?" he
cried.

Danger again. After a long pause, which visibly hurt him, she returned
with a smile, "Of course I am. Who would not be proud of such a
father-in-law?"

Half an hour later it was all over, the wonderful day was finished, and
to Brigit's amazement she was more than a little glad. It had been
delightful, but it had been full of danger.

In time Joyselle would learn to evade these pitfalls, with which their
future seemed to bristle, but as yet he was so unused to avoiding things
in his path that it was almost a miracle that she had, as she put it
with a half-whimsical, half-despairing smile, got him safely home
without an outburst.

She was, had been from the first, fairly sure of herself, but she was
wise enough to acknowledge that her strength depended largely on his. If
he had broken down, she knew that the odds were largely against her
being able, in her inevitable despair over his certain-to-follow
good-bye, to continue to hide her own feelings. And after that, she
believed, he would never see her again.

So it was with a strong feeling of relief that she said good-bye to him,
half-way home, and went on alone.

As the hansom started again she turned and looked back. Joyselle stood,
hat in hand, where she had left him, his face, now that he believed
himself to be unseen by her, black with thought. Then, with the so
familiar jerk of his head, he put on his hat, smiled, and marched off
down the street.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


One afternoon, a few days later, Tommy Kingsmead burst into his sister's
room where she was sitting writing.

"I say, Bick----"

"Hello, little boy, what's the matter?"

Tommy shrugged his shoulders in close imitation of Joyselle.

"I don't know, but something is. Very. It's--Theo!"

She started. "Theo? He isn't ill, is he?"

"No, no. He's downstairs; wants to see you. There's been some kind of a
row in Golden Square. _Petite mere_ and the Master have been talking for
an hour, as hard as ever they can talk, and Theo is upset, and the
Master has gone off in a tearing rage--do go down and find out, Brigit,
and then come back and tell me."

Lord Kingsmead's pristine curiosity regarding everything with which he
came into contact had by no means suffered eclipse since he had been
living in London.

Devoted as he was to Joyselle and to his music, the little boy's passion
for knowledge of all kinds seemed to increase, and there was in his
small, pale, pointed face a strained, overkeen look that troubled his
sister at times. Now, however, she had no leisure to think of it, and
hurried downstairs to the drawing-room, where she found Theo walking
restlessly up and down.

"Brigit," he burst out abruptly, as she came in, "when will you marry
me?"

"Good gracious, Theo--what--what has put that into your head?" she
parried ineffectively, sitting down, as he did not offer to give her any
further greeting.

"Into my head? Has it ever been out of it? I am sorry to have startled
you, dear," he continued, more gently, sitting down by her and taking
her hands in his, "but surely I have been patient. And--I am tired of
waiting."

She sat with bent head, looking at their joined hands. His hands were
smaller and whiter than his father's, but very like them in shape. If
they had been Joyselle's! If he had been able to come to her with that
question: "When will you marry me?"

"You are very good," she said slowly, after a long pause.

"Then--?"

"Suppose you tell me why this sudden frenzy of haste?"

He hesitated. "Well--we have been engaged nearly eight months--and I
love you, dear."

But she remembered Tommy's story and persisted.

"Surely, though, something must have happened to-day? You were quite
content yesterday."

He flushed. "_Eh bien, oui._ It is that my grandmother has written. In
September is to be their Golden Wedding. They are very old, and--they
want--me to bring my wife to them. Brigit," he added, his boyish face
flushing with anticipatory pink, "may I not do it?"

She rose and went to the window, her temples beating violently. For
weeks Theo had played such a subordinate _role_ in her mind, owing as
much to his native modesty as to her absorption in his father, that his
mood of to-day came to her as a shock. After all, put the thought away,
forget the inevitable future in an almost hysterical enjoyment of the
present, as she would, it must be faced some time. Could she possibly
marry this boy whom her sentimental contemporaneousness with his father
naturally seemed to relegate to a generation younger than herself?

It would be horrible, unnatural. A husband, be he ever so modern, and
his wife ever so unruly, is in the nature of things more or less a
master, whereas, she realised with a flash of very miserable amusement,
she would, if displeased with him, feel less inclined to use wifely
diplomacy than to box his ears. Emphatically, she had hopelessly
outgrown him. Then, what should she do?

If she refused him now, what would be his father's attitude? She did not
know. A week ago Joyselle would have hated her--or thought that he did,
which is practically the same thing _pro tem_.

But now! Now that the violinist had had time to face and measure his own
passion, would he not realise the futility of trying to force one's
inclinations in such matters? Again she could only shake her head; she
was out of her depth. Meantime, behind her, Theo was waiting for his
answer. Suddenly the horrors of the situation seemed to burst on her
from all sides. What had she done? Accepted this boy because he had
money, and because she disliked her mother and her mother's friends;
then she had, finding that she loved her future father-in-law,
deliberately torn from his eyes the veil of family sentiment that had
protected him from her, and later, when he had by an accident learned
that she was to be loved, and that he loved her, she had by an ignoble
trick kept him in England, refusing to let him play the decent part he
had chosen. What was she, then, to have done this abominable and
traitorous thing?

"Brigit--is it so--horrible to you?"

There was in his voice something like a repressed sob, and she had an
extravagant horror of melodrama. If he wept she would, she knew, lose
her temper.

"Listen, Theo. I--I will tell you to-night. I mean, I'll set a date.
Only you must go now. I--I have an engagement."

"Then----"

"Then you are a goose to be so upset! I must think it over. I know I'm
queer and--rather horrid, but--I have not changed. You knew what I was
when you asked me to marry you. And--I never pretended to be--romantic,
did I?"

He watched her dumbly. She had never looked to him more beautiful than
at that moment in her simple blue frock, her hands behind her, her eyes
almost deprecating. He rose with an effort. "All right, then. To-night.
Thank you, Brigit."

As full of humble doubts as he had been the night he asked her to marry
him, his honest eyes shining with the tears she had arrested in their
course, he kissed her hand and withdrew.

When she had heard the front door close she went to a mirror on the wall
and looked at herself.

"And now, you loathsome creature," she said aloud, fiercely, "you must
make up your mind what you are going to do."

Like many nervous people, she had a habit of walking while she thought
hard, and now after a few turns up and down the overcrowded room she
went upstairs, put on a hat, and, leaving the excited Tommy a prey to a
most maddening attack of thwarted curiosity, left the house.

She walked rapidly, looking straight ahead, seeing nothing, a rather
ferocious frown causing many people to stare at her in surprise. She
wore a delicately hued French frock and a mauve hat covered with blue
convolvuli, but in her extraordinary self-absorption and intentness of
thought there was something uncivilised about her. Her clothes were
unsuited to her, and she walked as if quite alone in a vast plain.

Her answer to Theo? What was it to be? Should she find it here, in
Sloane Street? How could she decide, not having the remotest idea what
effect her decision would have on Joyselle? Could she live without him?
As things now stood, he might, on her announcement that she was willing
to marry Theo in, say, three months' time, fly to the ends of the earth
that he might hide his own suffering, or--he might have the strength to
endure it in silence for his son's sake.

If on the other hand she said no, that she could not marry his son,
would he look on her decision as perfidy, and refuse to see her ever
again, or--A man in a hansom swore softly with relief as she just
escaped being knocked down by his horse, and quite unconscious of her
danger, hurried on, her head bent.

Or--would he then--allow himself to love her--to love her frankly, so
far as she was concerned?

At the corner of Sloane Square a man coming towards her saw her
trance-like condition, and stopping short, forced her almost to run into
his arms. "I beg your pardon," she began mechanically, and then her face
changed. "You, Gerald! How d'ye do?"

She had not seen him for days, and then it had been in the evening, so
that now in the strong afternoon sun she saw with a momentary shock that
he looked very ill indeed.

"Seedy?" she asked, some unanalysed feeling of understanding urging her
to an unusual gentleness of tone.

"Yes. What is wrong with you, Brigit?"

She had never forgiven him the affair of the evening when Tommy had
walked in his sleep, but her mind was too full of her own trouble to
have much room for resentment, and his value as an enemy had gone down.
He looked too broken and ill to be dangerous.

"I--I'm all right," she returned.

"Where are you walking so fast?"

"I'm just walking."

"I see. A race with the demons," he said in a curious, hurried voice. "I
do it, too. Everyone does, it seems. I just met Joyselle tearing out
Chelseaward--the father, I mean."

She looked up at him, her face clearing. "Ah!"

"Yes. I like him. He is a great artist and--a whole man. No disrespect
to your young man, my dear," he added, with a dismal attempt of his old
jaunty manner.

"Yes; he is 'a whole man.' Well, I must get on. Good-bye." With a nod
she left him and hurried on.

To Chelsea? Yes; No. 16-1/2 Tite Street--she knew. She had never seen
the house, but she had heard the number. No one ever went there. Madame
Joyselle had never been, and Theo only once. Why was he "tearing" there
at that hour? Because, of course, he wanted to be alone. There had
certainly been a row of some kind, of which Theo had not told her. The
old woman in Normandy had written, oh, yes; but then there must have
been a great _pourparler_, and even Felicite had grown angry. Poor
Felicite! To-night--oh, yes; at a dance at the Newlyns; she must give
Theo his answer. At a dance!

But how could she decide until she knew what Victor--"_Hansom!_" Her
own voice surprised her as a pistol shot might have done. "Tite Street,
Chelsea, 16-1/2."

The cabby, who was a romanticist and fed his brain on pabulum from the
pen of Mr. Fergus Hume and other ingenious concocters of peripatetic
mystery, wondered as he gave his horse a meaning lash with his whip--a
tribute to the beauty of the fare--"Wot the dickens she was h'up to,
with 'er big eyes and 'er 'ealthy pallor."

It further excited the excellent man's interest to be obliged, when he
had arrived at his destination, to remind his fare that they had done
so. "'Ere y'are, miss," he murmured soothingly down the trap. "Shall I
wait?"




CHAPTER TWELVE


The house was an old one with a broad, low front door and shallow,
much-worn oak stairs. In answer to Brigit's knock a Gamp-like person
with a hare-lip appeared, and informing her curtly that Mr. Joyselle had
come in only a few minutes before, added that she might go up--"To the
top, miss, an' there's only one door when you've got up."

Brigit almost ran up the four flights, and then, when opposite the door,
sat down on the top step and hid her face in her hands.

What should she say? Why had she come? Would he be glad to see her--or
shocked? Worse still, would he accept her coming as an act of filial
devotion?

No. That she would not allow.

Her mind, boiling, as it were, with a thousand ingredients, she could
hardly be said to be thinking. Realising perfectly that she had behaved
outrageously, sincerely ashamed of herself and full of remorse, yet her
own position and her own welfare had never for a second ceased to be her
chief concern. Suffering was of a certainty in store for some of the
actors in the drama, but she held the centre of the stage and meant to
avoid as much pain as possible. For her love for Joyselle was, of
course, a purely selfish one. For several minutes she sat crouching on
the stairs, utterly undecided as to what her next step was to be. Then a
sound from within the room behind her caused her to turn sharply. A
sound of--not music, but of pitiless, furious scraping and grinding on a
violin.

Could it be Joyselle? It was horrible, like the cries of some animal in
agony. And it went on and on and on.

"It must be Victor," she whispered; "it is his room. But--oh, how
frightful! Has he gone mad? Oh, my God, my God!"

Rising, she stood for a horrible minute bending towards the door, and
then with a quick movement opened it and went in.

The curtains were drawn, but a large window in the roof let in a square
of cross daylight that looked like an island in a surrounding sea of
dusky darkness; and in the light stood Joyselle, his back to her, his
head bent over his violin in a way almost grotesque, as he groaned and
tore at the hapless strings with venomous energy.

Brigit stood, unable to move. It is always an uncanny thing to watch for
any length of time a person who believes himself to be absolutely alone,
and when, as in this case, the person is undergoing, and giving full
vent to a very strong emotion, the strangeness is increased tenfold.

The man was, it was plain, after a week's tremendous and for him wholly
unusual self-restraint, now giving full rein to his great rage over his
miserable situation. As he played, she could see the muscles of his
strong neck move under the brown skin, and his shoulders rise and fall
tumultuously with his uneven breaths. The din he made was almost
unbearable, and she pressed her hands to her ears to shut it out.

The room was very large, and high, and round it, half-way up the dull
yellow walls, ran an old carved gallery, relic of the time when it had
been the studio of a hare-brained painter, a friend of Hazlitt and
Coleridge, a believer in poor young Keats while the rest of the world
laughed at him--in the very early days.

In those days feasts had been held here, and in the gallery, hidden
behind flowering dwarf peach-trees in tubs, stringed instruments were
played--very softly, for the painter of one good picture and dozens of
bad ones, had taste--while his guests sat at his board. Stories are
still told of the small table that used to be brought into the room at
the end of dinner by two little Ethiopians in white tunics. An ancient
table with faded gilding just visible on the claw feet that looked out
from under its petticoat of finest damask; and on it priceless gold and
silver bowls and salvers of all shapes, full of the most marvellous
fruits from all countries, some of which fruits were never seen
elsewhere in England. All dead and gone to dust years ago, host and
guest and grinning little Ethiopians. Joyselle had told Brigit this
story, and now as she stood watching him vent his wrath and anguish on
his faithful Amati, a kind of vision came to her; and she seemed to see
the room as it used to be--vaguely, the big table with six or eight men
sitting around it drinking wine, and, more distinctly, the heaped-up
bowls and plates of fruit----

Half hypnotised she stood there, her hands pressed to her ears until,
with a final excruciating dig into the strings, he dropped his left arm
and turned.

For a moment he, in his square of light, did not see her in the dusk
under the gallery. Then he took a step forward, and with a low cry
caught her in his arms and crushed her and the violin painfully to his
breast.

"_Mon Dieu, mon Dieu_," he repeated over and over, kissing her roughly,
"you have come. Then you know, ma Brigitte, you know!"

"Yes, I know," she admitted sullenly. "Let me go, Victor, you--you hurt
me."

He dropped his arms and she withdrew a few steps. He was very pale and
his hair was ruffled.

"You--it was good of you to come," he said after a pause. "Then, you are
not angry?"

"No."

"Brigit--_je t'aime, je t'aime_. I am infamous, I am a monster, a father
to be execrated by all honest men and women, but--I love you!"

He laid the violin down in a chair and came to her. "_Et toi?_" he asked
hoarsely.

The moment had come when she _must_ think, she told herself, but her
brain refused to work. The only thing that mattered was that he should
stay. What must she say, truth or lie, that would inspire that
necessity?

She stared at him blankly, and then, before she could speak, he knelt
at her feet and pressed a fold of her dress to his face.

"Victor," she said slowly, trembling so she could hardly stand, "you
will not--leave me?"

And Joyselle caught her up off the floor and held her as if she had been
a baby.

"_Dieu merci_," he cried. "_Dieu merci._"




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


An hour later Brigit Mead came quietly down the now nearly dark stairs
of the old house, smiling faintly to herself.

Joyselle's confession had been complete and circumstantial. He had not
attempted to hide from her one thing, and in the relief of his, as it
seemed, unavoidable avowal, he had hardly given her time to speak. "It
was, I think, the evening you came in the golden gown. You remember? It
was a vision; but an angelic vision, Most Beautiful; but one that turned
me first to stone, and then to fire. Vivien must have worn a golden
gown. And then the evening in Pont Street--the storm, when I put my arms
round you--they went round the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, it
is true, but also round my daughter. But--in that lightning flash of
time I found they were round the woman compared to my love of whom the
whole world does not matter! And I ran into the night and walked for
hours in the rain, and I think I was mad. Then I determined to go to
America. And I would have gone, God knows, but--you came, and your
unconsciousness broke me down. If you had suspected, I should have gone;
I was on my way to the Steamship Company when I met you. And then,
Hampstead--and this past week--and then you came to me here where I
work--and where I dream--ah, my beloved!"

He was very gentle in his unhoped-for happiness, and to her immense
relief he never once mentioned, or even appeared to remember, his son.

When he asked her, with the marvelling curiosity of a boy lover, when
and why she ever came to love him, she only shook her head. "I love
you," she answered, and he forgot, looking at her, to insist.

No word of the future had been said, not a plan had been made. Only, at
parting, to meet later in the evening at the Newlyns, he said to her, "I
will be the greatest violinist in the world, my woman."

And her heart beat high with honest pride in him.

Too happy to think, she went down the stairs, and half-way down found
herself face to face with Gerald Carron.

It was nearly dark, but she could just see that his white face was drawn
and hideous with anger.

"What are you doing here?" she cried, drawing back, but furious in her
turn.

"What are you doing here? You--you!"

"You have been spying on me," she returned with a good assumption of
courage that she was very far from feeling. "Well--I have been to talk
to Mr. Joyselle. Have you any objection to my doing so?"

"Objection? Yes, I have. You have fooled us all. Engaged to the boy,
and--I have always known that you didn't care for that child, and
wondered--Now I know." He laughed shrilly. "And other people shall know,
too! Your mother will be pleased, and--the clean peasant! I only wonder
you haven't _married_ that poor wretch. The situation would then be even
more--biblical."

She tried to pass him, but he barred her way. "If you don't let me go, I
will call for M. Joyselle. And if he doesn't hear me, someone else will.
Do you understand?"

He did not answer, and looking at him carefully for a moment she was for
the first time terrified. His eyes were not those of a sane man.

"Gerald, don't be nasty," she urged, gently. "Surely you must see that
there is no harm in my coming to see Joyselle! In a month or two he will
be my father-in-law."

He sneered. "Ah, bah! I saw your face as you passed the last window. It
was not the face of a girl coming from her future father-in-law. It was
the face----"

Before he could finish a door opened on the floor above and two children
came downstairs, chattering gaily to each other. Brigit turned to the
elder, a boy of six, dressed in a quaintly cut green blouse.

"Is your papa at home, my dear?" she asked.

The child laughed. "My papa is dead," he answered cheerfully, "but Uncle
Chris is there."

Brigit looked at Carron for a moment, and then went downstairs with her
hand on the little boy's shoulder. "And what is your name?" she asked.

"I'm Bob Seymour, and this is Patty. Uncle Chris has been painting us.
He gives us a shilling apiece each time."

"How very nice." Patty, who wore as obviously artistic a costume as her
brother's, thumped noisily from behind them, and a few seconds later
Brigit had kissed her unconscious but all-powerful bodyguard and jumped
into the hansom.

If a man had come instead of the children, almost anything might have
happened, for she had no doubt that Carron's sanity was approaching
snapping-point, but the innocent courage of Bob and Patty had quieted
him.

Brigit had a very unpleasant drive home, but the romantic cabby was
delightfully thrilled. As it happened, he had been "crawling" for some
minutes before Brigit had engaged him in Sloane Square, and had noticed
her being accosted by Carron.

"Something queer along of all this," he meditated; "that lean chap
didn't look quite right, an' she 'adn't no patience with 'im neither.
Then in she goes to the old 'ouse, an' then along comes another 'ansom
with the lean chap. Then I waits an hour, an' out she comes with the
little kids, kissin' 'em, an' the biggest little kid arsks 'er 'er nime!
If she didn't know 'im, why did she kiss 'im? An' before we'd got to the
corner out comes the lean 'un, lookin' like a bloomin' corpse. Something
must 'ave 'appened in that old 'ouse, an' I'll keep a lookout in the
_People_ and see wot it was. I'd like to 'ave been a fly on the wall
during that there interview, I would. A fly on the wall with a tiste for
short'and."




CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Lady Kingsmead, who was going to the Newlyns' ball later, was having
dinner in her little sitting-room when Carron came rushing in, nearly
treading on the heels of the afflicted Fledge, who did like to have a
chance to announce visitors properly.

"Good Lord, Gerald!--what is the matter?"

"Matter enough. Brigit is Victor Joyselle's mistress."

He sank into a chair and pressed his thin hands together until the bones
cracked.

"Gerald!"

"She is! she _is_! I have just come from his studio in Chelsea. Followed
her there. She was alone with him for over an hour. And when she came
out----"

Lady Kingsmead rose and went to him.

"Now listen to me," she said firmly. "You have either been drinking or
you are mad. I don't care where you have been or where you saw Brigit.
This story is--rot!"

Lady Kingsmead was not a clever woman, but this move on her part, the
result not of a virtuous belief in virtue or of a sudden swing of her
mental pendulum towards the effective, such as some women have--was
amazing in its effect, because it was spontaneous and sincere.

"Will you have something to drink?" she asked.

It was a curious scene; the dainty little room with the swivel-table
laid for one, the pretty, well-preserved woman, looking down with real
pity but something very near scorn at the broken, haggard, untidy man
sprawling in a rose-coloured chair.

"You are a fool, Tony," he said roughly. "I tell you I know."

"Bosh. You know perfectly well that I was never silly about my children.
Well--I don't care what you say about Brigit, I _know_ she is all right.
As yet, anyway," she added.

"She loves that--that brute," he stammered, wiping the perspiration from
his face with a crumpled handkerchief. "I saw her face as she left his
studio."

Lady Kingsmead pursed her mouth thoughtfully.

"That may be," she admitted. "I've thought for some time that something
was in the air----"

Breaking off, she glanced hastily at him. The old habit of telling him
her thoughts as they came to her was still strong, but this was not her
Gerald Carron. This was a new man of whom she knew little. For this much
wisdom she had learned: that every new love makes a new man of a man.

And this Carron, with his wild eyes, was no person to confide in.

"Come, buck up, old thing," she said, with an affectation of brusque
good-humour: "you haven't been sleeping. Isn't that it?"

"Yes. I'll never sleep any more."

"And you're taking--Veronal?"

"Yes, sometimes. Oh, don't bully me, Tony! I'm--done."

"I should think you were, to come and tell a woman beastly stories about
her own daughter! You'll be sorry to-morrow. Did you tell _her_ this
beautiful idea by way of making yourself engaging?"

"I told her--yes."