I am so sorry."

There was such convincing sincerity in her every tone that Brigit could
not even pretend to be angry.

"You must think me very silly," she murmured.

But the little woman shook her head, "_Non, non_, it is not silly to
love. It is unwise, or wrong, or heavenly, or mad, but silly, _non_. And
he is very attractive, _mon homme_." This tribute she added reluctantly,
as if from a sense of fairness. "And many have loved him."

Suddenly Brigit's anger flamed up.

"And--I am so insignificant that you are not afraid of me," she cried.
"What if he had _not_ got over it? What if he loved me as much--_more_
than I love him?"

Felicite smiled serenely and sweetly.

"No, I know him. I saw it come--and go. But do not be angry and proud,
my dear. I wish only to help you."

And Brigit, touched by her kindness as well as terrified by her own
indiscretion, sat down by her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

When Joyselle came in at eight o'clock he went straight to his room to
dress. He was still very angry, but his anger was less poignant than his
sense of helpless defeat. Brigit's attitude was absolutely
incomprehensible to him, and hurt him in an almost unbearable degree.
That she should defy him, grow as angry as he himself, he had already
learned was not impossible; but the cruel hardness of her face as she
had sent him away had shocked him more than anything in his whole
experience.

He was a shrewd man, and his love for her had never blinded him as to
her faults; often he had corrected her for unfilial behaviour, for a too
sharp word, for selfishness. But the one quality which to a strong and
tender man is unendurable in the woman he loves, cruelty, he had never
before realised in the girl, and his discovery that it lay in her to
hurt him as she had done, had nearly broken his heart.

For hours he had walked rapidly through the streets, seeing no one,
avoiding being knocked down by a kind of subconscious attention and
alertness of mind, his brain struggling desperately with its problem.

In a few words, all life seemed to him to have reduced itself to the
question, "How could she?" As yet he had not got further than this, and
it did not occur to him to wonder whether or no her mental attitude was
definite or only temporary. "How could she? How could she so rend him?
Of what was her heart made that it could allow her so to wound his?"

When he reached home the incomprehensibility of this problem was fast
out