"Beau-papa! Beau-papa! Where is Theo?"
For she knew now that she would not break her engagement to-night. The
end was not yet. And by the strange laws that govern things emotional
between men and women, her self-control, hitherto utterly lamed by his
presence, was now, in face of his involuntary, as yet evidently
unconscious awakening, restored to her tenfold strong. She could have
spent weeks alone with the man without betraying her secret, now that
she had established her power over him. It had been his acceptance of
the fact of her future relationship to him, his unexpressed feeling that
she was a being of another generation, his tacit refusal to see in her
the woman _per se_, that had beaten her. Now she had, by the plain
assertion of her beauty, the enforcing of the appreciation of it as a
thing appertaining to her as a woman, not a daughter, got the reins--and
the whip--into her own hands.
"Where," she repeated, still smiling, "is Theo?"
"He is in his room; he will come--ah, _mon Dieu_!" Kneeling by his
violin, which luckily had fallen on a bearskin, he took it up and
looked at it shamefacedly. "See what you made me do," he said to Brigit,
"you and your golden dress! _Mon pauvre_ Amati.
Pages:
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144