“And Bossuet,” said Giles, grinning, “and ‘Les Pensées de Pascal.’ Awfully jolly, isn’t it! Unfortunate child;—or, rather, fortunate, since you _can_ read us.” Alix reflected, a little vexed. “Here’s another kind of sauce,” said Giles, as a portion of apricot tart was placed before each of them surrounded by a yellow glutinous substance. “I’ll grant you your cooking if you’ll grant me the best books for everybody.—Anyhow, I see you’re too tired to argue. We’ll fight it out some other time.” “But how did you come to appreciate our cooking so well?” Alix asked. “It is made with flour, this sauce, not properly cooked;—that is the trouble.” “The trouble is that it’s the same sauce as the one that went with the fish, only coloured to look different.—I travelled in France when I was a boy, you see. And I’m just back from nine months there. I was in the East before that, for the first years of the war.” “In France for nine months? Why did you not come to see us?” Alix asked. She asked it without stopping to think, for it was so strange that they should not have seen Captain Owen’s brother. “I was at the front, and wanted all my leaves at home,” said Giles, and he smiled very brightly at her. He did not look at all embarrassed now; yet she had a surmise. He stopped himself from showing embarrassment. Surely he could have come? Had he not wanted to come? And he was going on talking, while he paid the bill, as if he felt she might be asking herself that question: “My aunt lives in a part of London called Chelsea. At the time ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was written, it was all gardens there; it’s mostly flats now. We’ve changed very much, in all sorts of ways from the England of ‘Pride and Prejudice’; just as you have from the France of Lamartine.” Everything was dimmed with fog as they drove through the streets and she was suddenly very sleepy, yet she kept on thinking, as she looked out, of those nine months that monsieur Giles had been in France. He must have been there, then, when Captain Owen was killed. How strange that he had never come, and that Captain Owen had never spoken of him. She was too sleepy, however, to think of it very carefully and, when they stopped at the brightly lighted door of a large building, she stumbled in alighting so that Giles, with a steadying “Hello, hello,” put a hand under her elbow and guided her into a lift; and, still so sustained, she was presented a moment later to a stout, rosy lady with _pince-nez_ and smooth grey hair who herself opened the door of a white and green _appartement_ and said: “Poor child, she must be put to bed at once.” From Giles she passed to Aunt Bella, who smelt of toilet vinegar and had a seal ring on her small glazed-looking hand.