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 r