glad when it passed. It was the day of the long discussion about the
wedding--the day of the letter from your mother--do you remember? When
you rushed away like a whirlwind?"

"Yes--I remember."

"Well, when you returned, you were quiet and a little pale, and I
understood. The talk about Theo'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 Felicite.
"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--Theo. 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 Theo 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 Felicite'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.

"I beg your pardon for having been--rude," she said to him sulkily,
holding out her hand, which was as cold as ice.

"But it is I," he murmured, touching his lips to her fingers and feeling
her quiver as he did so. "It is that we both have what you English call
bad tempers, _pas_?"

"You must have been very bad this time, papa," commented Theo, closing
the cage door on le Conquerant and joining them. "Brigit is very angry.
Look at her!"

"I am not angry, Theo. But--quarrelling is disgusting."

Why she had stayed the girl hardly knew. She had not forgiven Joyselle,
and her apology was a mere concession to the feelings of Felicite and
Theo.

Joyselle had hurt her, but her treatment of him had so wounded herself
that she could not forgive him. All of which is quite illogical and
quite feminine.

"I will go away--anywhere--to-morrow," she told herself as she ate her
supper. "Theo will not know why, and Felicite will not tell. This sort
of thing cannot go on. This is the fifth row in the last month. We are
both too pig-headed. It's no use trying to keep the peace. I suppose if
I were his mistress he would be easier to manage--or I should. The truth
is, we are both struggling for supremacy, and we can neither of us drive
the other."

Joyselle, with a great effort, chattered gaily throughout the meal. His
thoughts, too, were in a turmoil, for he knew that her apology had been
offered merely on Theo's account, and he also knew that something was
going to happen.

Felicite, sincerely sorry for Brigit and anxious anent Theo, talked more
than usual, so that the uncongenial gathering was more voluble and noisy
than usual.

At its close Felicite called her son to her room under some pretext or
other, and Joyselle and Brigit went alone to his study. He closed the
door very quietly, and then turning to her, caught her hands
threateningly.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Do?" She raised her eyebrows. "I am going, of course."

"Where?"

She smiled.

"_Sais pas._ Let go my hands, please; you hurt me--Beau-papa!"

He flung away from her and stood by the window, staring with blinded
eyes into the street.

"This is really no good, you know," she went on in a conversational
tone; "we quarrel and squabble and are no earthly use to each other--the
whole position is bad. I think I will tell Theo, and go."

He did not answer, and after a pause she added: "Or marry him by special
license the day after to-morrow, and make him take me--somewhere--for a
few months."

"A--ah!"

She smiled at his groan.

"You and I have made fools of ourselves, haven't we? But it was natural.
I am very beautiful, and you are a very great genius, so----"

Maddened at her tone of indifferent justice, he turned, his face drawn
with pain.

"So it was natural? A childish fancy on your part, a senile one on mine?
A thing to--laugh at already! Oh, how _can_ you torture me like this?
You--you----"

"Devil? Or demon?" Her voice was mocking, but her lips had paled, and
she gasped a little as if breathless.

"Let's not be melodramatic, _please_. Call it what you like. I was at
least perfectly sincere."

"You were sincere----"

"Yes. Listen." Advancing swiftly to where he stood, she had the amazing
courage to give a little laugh. Then she laid her hand on his shoulder.
"Seriously, let's be good friends and forget all--the rest. I have been
a fool, but you have not; for after all, I am fairly attractive, and you
are not the first! So let's make a bargain: I will never again attract
you; you will never again _play at me_. And then things will be quite
comfy. Shall we? I have been an awful pig to Theo, who is a darling, and
from now on I shall try to make up to him."

He shrank back from her.

"What are you?" he whispered painfully. "What are you made of? And do
you want to make me hate my own son?"

"_Eh, bien_, are things all right?"

Madame Joyselle had come in, followed by Theo. Joyselle, standing in the
shadow, did not answer, but Brigit laughed gaily, and her gaiety was
unfeigned, for she had assured herself, by watching him under torture,
of the strength of Joyselle's love for her.




CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


The next morning at half-past six Madame Joyselle, creeping quietly
downstairs, was, to her amazement, overtaken by Brigit.

"I have not slept," the girl explained, "and am going for a walk. I have
promised to take Tommy to see 'Peter Pan' this afternoon and must feel
better when I do."

"I am sorry you did not sleep. I am going marketing--and to Mass."

They opened the door and went out into the fresh morning air. Golden
Square was asleep as yet, and the well-kept grass in the garden looked
pleasantly fresh behind the brown railings.

"Come with me; it will do you good," said the older woman suddenly, "and
it will amuse you to see France in this old dark London of ours."

She carried a large basket, and looked, in her trim dark dress and
bonnet, so exactly what she was that it occurred to Brigit, by force of
contrast, how remarkably few people nowadays _do_ look what they are.

"I will come with pleasure," she said gently, as they turned to the
left. "Where do you go first?"

"To Notre Dame de France in Leicester Street. There's a Low Mass at
seven. Then I must go to the butcher in Pulteney Street, and to the Ile
de Java for coffee. Toinon," she continued, reflecting, pausing to give
a penny to a beggar, "is a very good girl, but she cannot _buy_. She
simply takes what they offer her, and no housekeeper can stand that, of
course."

Leicester Street is but a ten minutes' walk from Golden Square, and
Brigit felt as she walked that the world was meant for better things
than tragedy, after all.

Her torture of Joyselle the evening before had been infinitely cruel,
and yet her love for him had grown as she tortured him. She was as yet
quite unused to the dominion of her own emotions, and they, being so
much stronger than her self-control, had carried her away with them. It
had been a kind of mental fakirism, and as fakirs smile as they burn and
cut themselves, so she had been able to smile as she burnt and cut at
her own heart in Joyselle. Yet she was not an altogether cruel woman.

And this quiet walk with the homely, good, little Felicite tranquillised
and steadied her maddened nerves and brought reason to her mind.

Felicite left her basket in the vestibule of the church, and going in
dipped her fingers into the holy water fountain and held her hand out to
Brigit.

Unconsciously the girl touched it, and then, as the other woman turned
and knelt at one of the worn praying-desks, Brigit hastily touched her
own forehead and breast.

The drop of water stayed for some seconds on her forehead, and in its
coolness seemed to burn her.

After a short pause she walked down the aisle and sat down in the
second row of seats.

The priest came out as she took her place, and the Mass began.

Its very silence was restful to the girl, and as she watched, the sleep
that had refused to come to her all through the night touched her
eyelids and they closed wearily.

When she opened them it was as if a cool hand had been laid on her
aching heart. Here was peace.

The Good Shepherd in the round window seemed to mean much as he looked
down at her, and even the statue of the Mother and Child in the altar to
her left looked beautiful to her. "Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae,"
she read.

To the right of the main altar a group of tiny votive candles were
burning; an old nun in a kind of white sunbonnet, draped with a black
gauze veil, dropped her rosary with a little clatter to the wooden
floor.

There were only a dozen or so people in the church, but this made no
difference. The priest would not feel slighted, as an Anglican curate
might. He had a serious ascetic face, and seemed not to know that any
was present beside his God and himself.

"I am a brute," Brigit told herself, "a perfect fiend to torture him so.
Why cannot we be good to each other? And how will it all end? I will be
good to him in the future."

Then she shivered, for she was not a child and realised perfectly that
her "being good" to Joyselle was by no means altogether safe.

"It is playing with fire," she thought. "That is one reason why I _am_
so horrid, perhaps."

The priest had gone, and the little congregation, with last
genuflections, were hurrying out of the church. Busy people, these;
workers who before their day's labour begins have always time to say
_Bonjour_ to their God.

"A beautiful church, _hein_?" asked Felicite, as they came out of the
church. "You liked it, my daughter?"

"Yes. I liked it. Where do we go now, _petite mere_?"

More than one passerby turned to stare at the beautiful girl with the
weary eyes and her humble companion as they made their way towards
Rupert Street. With the violently sudden change of mood that was part of
her character, Brigit's spirits had gone up. She would be kind to
Joyselle; that would be being kind to herself, and therefore she would
be happy. In an hour they would be at home and she would see him. A
great longing to feel his strong arms round her came to her, and her
face flushed as she decided to go to him frankly and ask to be taken
back.

"It is a beautiful day," she said softly.

Felicite smiled up at her.

"Yes. And it is good to begin a day by going to Mass. It clears one's
mind of yesterday, and to-day is--ours, Brigitte."

For all her native shrewdness, it would not at all have surprised
Felicite if Brigit had suddenly become _devote_, and even now as she
watched the girl's radiant face it seemed to the Norman that the Mass
had helped even more than she had ventured to hope. "She is going to try
to fight it down," she thought gratefully, "and that is all that is
necessary."

M. Bourbon, charcutier, in Rupert Street, has a beautiful shop full of
wonderful things. Felicite bought a pound of galantine de volaille
truffee, for which she paid two-and-six, and for which in Piccadilly she
would have paid five shillings; she bought half a pound of jellied eel;
she bought Pont l'Eveque cheese; flat little Parisian sausages; she
bought a glass jar of preserved pears, brown with cinnamon.

Then they made their way to the Ile de Java, where they acquired a large
tin of coffee, on to the Boucherie Francaise, where Felicite had a long
discussion with M. Perigot _lui-meme_, whom she insisted on seeing, to
the disgust of the young man in attendance, who wished to look at
Brigit, and whom fate assigned to an ancient dame from Brewer Street.

There were other errands to be done, but at last they reached home, and
in the passage Felicite paused and set down the basket.

"You will find my husband in his study," she said, looking earnestly at
Brigit. "Go to him, my dear, and be happy. Remember, he is nearly an old
man, and loves you like his daughter. And remember, also, that because
it is not fitting in any way, your love for him will change sooner or
later, and become that of a daughter for her father. So don't worry."

Brigit stood looking after her for a moment, and then went slowly
upstairs. Joyselle, in the crimson-velvet garment, was writing a letter
as she entered; he looked ill and miserably unhappy.

"Victor," she began without preamble, laying her arm across his
shoulders and pressing her cheek to his hair. "Will you forgive me? I--I
love you."

Then she broke down and cried in an old-fashioned and weakly feminine
way that she could not combat, although she quite realised its absolute
inappropriateness to her character.

"How could you?" he whispered, holding her close with the greatest
tenderness, the torturing formula of yesterday coming to his lips. "How
could you?"

His eyes, too, were wet, but her breakdown had given him his strength
back. "I thought you did not care."

"Not care!"

"But you said so," he persisted, manlike.

"Victor--you don't know how much I love you, and I don't know how I can
be such a brute as I am. But--it hurts me the worst. It--it kills me.
Say you forgive me."

"Dear child--I forget," he answered, as gently as a father. And
Felicite, on her way upstairs, heard him through the half-open door, and
smiled.




PART THREE




CHAPTER ONE


Madame Bathilde Chalumeau, her black cotton frock tucked up round her
plump figure over her scarlet-flannel petticoat, was dusting the windows
of her shop in the Rue Dessous l'Arche.

It was only six o'clock and the air as yet was cool, but the trees
leaning over the wall of Avocat Millot's garden opposite were grey with
dust and parched with the heat of an exceptionally warm September.

Madame Chalumeau, who was standing on a chair energetically flopping her
feather-brush over the panes of her double shop-front, sighed as she
looked up at the brilliant sky. "It is to be a heat of the devil," she
thought.

Next door to her, _chez_ Bouillard, nothing was stirring. Poor Desire,
being a widower, was apt to oversleep himself, and it was bad for his
trade. Even now a small child in a black smock stood at his door,
waiting to fill his carafe with the black wine that had stained its
sides to such a beautiful violet hue.

"_Bonjour_, Christophe----"

"_Bonjour_, madame."

"You want wine?"

"_Oui_, madame."

"Then wait a moment and I will get it for thee."

Good Madame Chalumeau climbed down from her chair with a generous
display of fat, black woollen legs and unpinned her skirt.

"_Bon!_ M. Bouillard sleeps the fat morning, but I can get in, and you
will get a beating if you keep your excellent father waiting."

Taking the carafe, she passed under the archway that separated her house
from her neighbour's, and, her broad figure actually touching the wall
on either side, went to Bouillard's side-door and entered the house.

When she came out, the carafe full, Bouillard himself, fat and rosy with
sleep, was standing in his shop door. "Madame Bathilde, good day to you!
So you have again saved me from a commercial loss!" Desire Bouillard had
a witty way with him, his far shrewder neighbour thought--had thought
for years.

And then, quite without consciousness or amusement, they enacted the
little comedy that had been played by them every morning since poor
Madame Bouillard died.

"And your morning coffee, M. Bouillard?"

"_Tiens, mon cafe! Helas non_, Madame Bathilde, I am but this moment
awake--what time is it?"

Just inside the door of Madame Chalumeau's shop, Au Gout Parisien, hung
a clock.

"It is ten minutes to seven."

"_Eh, bien, au revoir_, Madame Bathilde--I must go and set things going
in my small household. Alas, poor Josephine!"

Madame Chalumeau shook her head with great gravity.

"A great loss, M. Bouillard; an irreparable loss. But--my coffee is
nearly ready. Will you not let me give you a cup? There are also an
Auvergnat" (a double twist of well-made bread) "and a Bourdon sent me by
my cousin, Madame Decomplet, of the Rue d'Argentan----"

And ten minutes later the two gossips, as the pleasant old phrase runs,
were seated in Madame Chalumeau's little sitting-room behind her shop,
breakfasting together.

Monsieur Bouillard's Josephine had been dead for seven long years, and
in her life she had tormented the good man full sore; even as the Church
invariably defers canonisation until long after the death of the saint,
so Desire's appreciation of his wife's splendour of character was a
post-mortem tribute to be accepted without a murmur by all the faithful.

"I recall to myself every morning, Madame Bathilde," he began, removing
a large blob of honey from the dimple in his pink chin, "how that angel
used to arise and prepare herself for her day's work. And of an economy!
Charcoal did for her four times what it will for me. And times are
hard!"

Bathilde sighed sympathetically. "My faith, yes; she was a wonderful
manager, _pauvre ange_. The milk is at your elbow, M. Desire----"

Outside in her tiny garden a bee boomed somnolently among the red and
yellow flowers, and somewhere near at hand a church bell jerked its
unmusical summons to prayer.

Madame Chalumeau's face, glossy and red-and-white like a Norman apple,
wore an expression of anxious expectation. Moreover, she had put on a
narrow lace collar and pinned it with a coral brooch. It was the fifth
of the month.

M. Desire ate his way through the generously laid meal with comfort and
deliberation, his small blue eyes, deeply embedded in pink flesh,
twinkling with ease.

As the clock struck half-past seven he laid his knife down and wiped his
beardless mouth.

"Bathilde," he said, "you are very kind to a poor afflicted mourner."

"Ah--Desire!"

She was a woman of much sense, and she did not try to be coy.

"My heart, as you know, lies in the grave with my poor Josephine----"

"But of course, my dear friend----"

"But--man is not fit to live all alone. And I am convinced that if I
could ask her, that angel would----" He paused and looked approvingly
round the tidy, comfortable little room.

"Yes--Desire? She would----"

"I think she would--wish me to do the best I can for myself. And that,
of course--I mean to say I imagine----"

Poor Bathilde's hopes died suddenly.

"She was always so generous-minded," she murmured, folding her plump
hands.

He rose and walked to the shop door.

"Anything new to show me, _chere_ Madame Chalumeau?" he asked briskly.

"Yes; some coloured tablecloths, very pretty, at one franc
seventy-five--and--some other things. But, Desire, you were saying about
living alone--that you thought Josephine would be glad----"

"I did not say she would be glad, Madame Chalumeau. My wife was never
_glad_ about anything. I said--in fact, I may as well be quite frank,"
he continued, turning to her, "I am a lonely man, and I am--greatly
attracted to you, dear friend. But as I have told you before, I--I
cannot quite make up my mind as to whether I should be happier if I
married you."

"I could make you very comfortable, Desire, and I, too, am lonely.
Besides, your accounts are very confused, and I could save you much
money in that way."

A shrewd woman, this, but greatly mistaken in her methods. A useless,
lazy, coquettish woman would have married the man years before, but poor
Bathilde's very frankness was her undoing.

"Yes, yes," he returned impatiently, "I know all that, and my affection
for you is great. But as to marriage--I cannot yet make up my mind. And
in the meantime I must leave you, dear friend, for it is late. A
thousand thanks for the delicious breakfast----" and he was gone.




CHAPTER TWO


The tragedy of M. Bouillard's indecision was very real to Madame
Chalumeau, but it was also one to which the good woman was thoroughly
accustomed. For over three years M. Bouillard had twice yearly, on the
fifth of March and the fifth of September, tried to bring himself to
make up his mind, but he had always failed, and after his attempts
things had continued as before.

Every morning he breakfasted with her, every Sunday and Feast-day he
accompanied her to Mass, and occasionally he took her to drink a glass
of Hydromel at the Cafe du Musee. He was a prosperous man in a small
way, and considered attractive by the widows and elderly maidens of
Falaise; but no one dreamed of disputing Madame Chalumeau's sway over
his heart. In time, Falaise thought, the two excellent people would
become one. But time is long.

So Bathilde, that fifth of September, felt a little sad as she worked in
her neat little shop. And so it is that Love is a troublesome little
vagabond, who ought to have his wings clipped and his bow broken.

There were few customers, for although her wools and silks were of
excellent quality, and her baby-linen most practical, the Rue Dessous
l'Arche is, after all, not the Rue d'Argentin. A little girl with a
bandage round her face came and bought six needles, and a Young Person,
whom Madame Chalumeau did not approve, spent several moments selecting a
pair of red stockings. Otherwise the shopkeeper's solitude remained
undisturbed until towards noon, when the door opened and a short,
brown-faced man, carrying a long whip, came in with a good deal of
noise, and waked her as she dozed over her knitting.

"_Bonjour_, Thildette! Frightened you, did I?"

"Oh, Colibris, it is you! And what brings you? You will breakfast with
me? But I am glad to see you, dear brother? How is Marie?"

"Ta, ta, ta, ta!" laughed M. Colibris, who looked like nothing in the
world less than he looked like a humming-bird, "so many questions, my
excellent Thildette! Yes, I will breakfast--a cheese omelet, my dear,
and a glass of cider--and Marie is as well as one could expect. Ah,
these children, these children! It is a boy, of course. A boy with fists
as big as his head."

Madame Chalumeau had risen, and had led her guest through the
sitting-room into her immaculate kitchen.

"And you have seen papa and maman?" she asked.

"Yes, I come from there. Papa is much pleased that it is a boy. His
eleventh great-grandson! One would think," continued the good man
garrulously, "that it was his own son. Maman is looking much better,
_pas_?"

"Mama is quite wonderful. But amazing! And the preparations are
something splendid. I suppose this new boy will contribute his share to
the wedding ring for maman?"

"But certainly. It is lucky there are no more of us men to contribute,
or we should have had to have the ring studded with diamonds. A fine
sight it will be, Bathilde. Think of papa and mama married at St.
Gervais by the same cure that married them fifty years ago! And twenty
grandchildren, to say nothing of their seven children, and counting this
boy of my Marie's, sixteen great-grandchildren. Falaise has certainly
much to be proud of."

Madame Chalumeau flopped her omelet again, slid it to a platter and set
a carafe of cider on the table.

"_La!_ Now eat, Colibris, and tell me more. How is Louis? And
Henriette?"

"All well, all well," returned her brother-in-law, who was apparently
full of the quality, the name of which is so often abused by English
people, _joie-de-vivre_. "Henriette has new upper teeth, and looks ten
years younger. Louis is as usual very silent, but otherwise is well. I
am curious to see Victor. It was a misfortune, my being away when he was
here last. He must have been greatly disappointed. He has always been
very fond of me, you will remember. Even as boys, we had much in
common."

Madame Chalumeau's eyes twinkled as she nodded. Colibris' harmless
vanity always amused her.

"Yes, yes, I know. He inquired very particularly for you. A great man,
Victor."

"Yes, yes. I remember once when we were boys a man came who felt the
skull and read the character. He said to Victor, 'You have great talent,
my little one,' and to me he said, 'You are going to be a very great
man, Colibris.' But I did not care to develop my talents. I was always
very modest and domestic. The cure at home always says, 'Now, Jacques
Colibris--_there's_ a man who is a model husband and father.'" He drank
a deep draught of cider.

"They arrive to-morrow," interpolated Madame Chalumeau hastily, with a
hunted expression, "Victor and Felicite and Theodore. Also Theo's
_fiancee_, an English girl. I have a letter from Victor--I will read it
to you."

Taking the letter from her pocket, and ruthlessly interrupting his
remarks on the English as viewed by himself, she began to read: