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 realise the futility of trying to force one’s inclinations in such matters?  Again she could only shake her head; she was out of her depth.  Meantime, behind her, Theo was waiting for his answer.  Suddenly the horrors of the situation seemed to burst on her from all sides.  What had she done?  Accepted this boy because he had money, and because she disliked her mother and her mother’s friends; then she had, finding that she loved her future father-in-law, deliberately torn from his eyes the veil of family sentiment that had protected him from her, and later, when he had by an accident learned that she was to be loved, and that he loved her, she had by an ignoble trick kept him in England, refusing to let him play the decent part he had chosen.  What was she, then, to have done this abominable and traitorous thing?

“Brigit—­is it so—­horrible to you?”

There was in his voice something like a repressed sob, and she had an extravagant horror of melodrama.  If he wept she would, she knew, lose her temper.

“Listen, Theo.  I—­I will tell you to-night.  I mean, I’ll set a date.  Only you must go now.  I—­I have an engagement.”

“Then——­”

“Then you are a goose to be so upset!  I must think it over.  I know I’m queer and—­rather horrid, but—­I have not changed.  You knew what I was when you asked me to marry you.  And—­I never pretended to be—­romantic, did I?”

He watched her dumbly.  She had never looked to him more beautiful than at that moment in her simple blue frock, her hands behind her, her eyes almost deprecating.  He rose with an effort.  “All right, then.  To-night.  Thank you, Brigit.”

As full of humble doubts as he had been the night he asked her to marry him, his honest eyes shining with the tears she had arrested in their course, he kissed her hand and withdrew.

When she had heard the front door close she went to a mirror on the wall and looked at herself.

“And now, you loathsome creature,” she said aloud, fiercely, “you must make up your mind what you are going to do.”

Like many nervous people, she had a habit of walking while she thought hard, and now after a few turns up and down the overcrowded room she went upstairs, put on a hat, and, leaving the excited Tommy a prey to a most maddening attack of thwarted curiosity, left the house.

She walked rapidly, looking straight ahead, seeing nothing, a rather ferocious frown causing many people to stare at her in surprise.  She wore a delicately hued French frock and a mauve hat covered with blue convolvuli, but in her extraordinary self-absorption and intentness of thought there was something uncivilised about her.  Her clothes were unsuited to her, and she walked as if quite alone in a vast plain.