"He gave her--his love. Ah, yes, he loved her,
his Crefinne Gigantesque."
"But----"
The teller of the tale drew a blue silk sock over her hand and poked at
the hole in its heel with a thoughtful needle. "He always loves
them--for the time, my dear. He is of a sincerity, my man!"
Since the evening of the dragon-skin frock Brigit had done nothing to
charm Joyselle; he saw her through his own eyes now, and she, knowing
that the game was in her own hands, could afford to wait; when the day
came when she wanted to hurt him or to further gratify her own love, she
could make him love her almost in a moment. So, so far as she knew, he
still enjoyed her beauty without _arriere pensee_, although he saw her
through his own eyes, not Theo's. Yet now, at this phrase of his wife's,
"He always loves them--for the time," she started, half angrily.
When--if--the day came when he loved her, would this "clean old
peasant," as Carron had called her, sit and darn his socks and say to
herself--"for the time"?
"You are very--placid about it."
"Yes. In the beginning--no. Then I was jealous, and angry. But a jealous
woman is always ridiculous, my child, and men are so vain that the
implied homage upsets them.
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