This was the first time she had succeeded in seeing Victor alone during
all the five days of his stay. Unobtrusively but effectively he had
avoided her, shutting himself, when he was not in the sick-room, in his
own room, under the pretext of fatigue or correspondence. And she had
not submitted to this without repeated efforts to foil his intentions.
Again and again she had made little plans to catch him alone, but she
had invariably failed, and as the days passed and she realised his
strength of determination, a dull, slow fire of anger had begun to burn
in her.
Théo, who had been down twice, had found her manner very unsatisfactory;
she was strikingly different from what she had been in Falaise, and the
young man was puzzled and hurt. While Tommy was still very ill he had
borne with her change of mood with great patience, but the time was
coming when he must demand an explanation. All this she felt and
resented.
She looked, as she stood by the rose-bush, very tired, and older than
her years, but she looked remarkably handsome; pallor and heavy eyelids
did not disfigure her as they do most women.
Joyselle took out his silver box and made a cigarette.
"He was talking to me about it," he went on, disregarding the final
quality of her negative. "And I find it very good. It is that Tommy
should live much with--_you_--when you are married. Your mother does not
know how to bring him up; he is delicate and high-strung, and Théo is
very fond of him."
"I am not going to marry Théo!" she burst out, exasperated beyond
endurance.
He looked up. "Are you mad?" he asked quietly.
"No. But--you seem to be trying to make me mad. I can't understand you,
Victor."
"Can't you, Brigit? I should think it was very easy. You remember what
we agreed at Falaise? That----"
"That I was to marry Théo and 'live happy ever after'? Oh, yes, I
remember. But do you remember how miserable you were the day before--and
the day of--the wedding? And why that was?"
He was silent for a moment.
"Yes," he answered humbly. "I know. I was--jealous."
"Well--and you expect me to be happy and content while you behave as you
are doing now? You never speak to me; you never look at me; you fly from
me as if I were an infectious disease. It is--unbearable," she ended
passionately. "I can't bear it."
He smoked in silence for some seconds. "I am--sorry to have hurt you,
Brigit."
"Sorry to have hurt me! I don't believe you love me. If you were
jealous, so am I! I will _not_ be treated like this."
His white face was like a mask. "I am sorry," he repeated, with a kind
of dogged patience.
"Then if you are--be good to me. I love you, Victor."
He met her eyes and his did not falter in their steady gaze. "Please do
not excite yourself," he said very gently, "and--I think I will go in
now. It must be breakfast time."
Driven beyond her own control by his tone, she caught his arm and
pleaded with him, her voice harsh and broken, and she could not stop,
although she saw that she was, besides annoying him, injuring herself in
his eyes.
"Please--Brigit----"
"Then tell me that you love me. You can't have stopped--it is only a
week since the wedding--I--can't bear this----"
But her mistaken line of conduct brought its inevitable punishment.
"This is--absurd," he said coldly, "and--undignified. I told you at
Falaise that I was ashamed of myself for being jealous of my son. It was
monstrous and hideous. I think I have been not quite in my right mind
for some time. But I have a strong will and can force myself to
anything----"
"And you are forcing yourself to kill your love for me----"
"No. I am trying to learn to love you as a--a daughter, and I am
beginning to succeed. But if you insist in making scenes like this----"
He broke off and gave his shoulders an expressive shrug. "It is--not
womanly."
Then, breaking the yellow rose from the bush, he drew its stem through
his button-hole and strolled leisurely away, whistling under his breath.