her head, looked at him sideways, as the
so-called Fornarina looks in the Uffizi, in Florence.

"They are cheery, aren't they?" she asked hastily, and he, nodding,
turned away. For a few moments he was silent, and then he began to talk
rather loudly about nothing in particular, and in a few moments was
himself--the Joyselle of that particular day. Brigit realised that their
stronghold of reserves and lies had been dangerously threatened by his
mounting emotion. If he had broken down in his _role_--and she knew
that the playing of any kind of a _role_ was foreign to his nature, and
therefore perilous--she would have lost him.

His mind, of course, except in certain moments when it all unconsciously
was subjugated by her will, was a closed book to her.

For he was not only a man (and no woman can ever wholly understand any
man's mind), but he was nearly twenty years older than she, and he was a
Norman--a race very complicated, in its mixture of shrewd cunning and
simplicity, and difficult for even other French people to comprehend.
But groping in the dark though she was, the girl had grasped two
essential facts: if Joyselle learned that she loved him, he would go
away if it killed him; and if, though remaining in ignorance of her
love, he was led to betray his, the result would be the same.

So her aim must be to keep him well under his own control, and to avoid
betraying her personal feelings in the very least degree.

It was easy that first day. He was still more or less dazed and taken up
with his discovery that he loved her, and therefore not so shrewd as
usual. The future, she knew, would be harder.

But that one day was a delight to them both. He told her about his
youth--as truthful an account as his wife's, but oh, how infinitely more
picturesque and interesting.

His acquisition of the Amati was recounted with a wealth of detail that
enchanted her, and she closed her eyes the better to see the little
dark shop on the _quai_ at Rouen, and the old man who would not sell his
treasure, even for a good price, until he had heard the would-be
purchaser play on it. "And then, my dear, I tuned it, and played. It was
a bit from Tschaikovsky's Pathetic Symphony--the adagio movement. It was
dark in the shop, with the velvety darkness old places get on a sunny
day, and on the other side of the street lay the sunshine like gold. He
sat, _le vieux_, in his chair away from the light, for his eyes were
bad, and listened.