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!