After that Alix was only drowsily aware of a little pink bedroom where a row of pink, blue and green water-colours framed in gilt hung upon the walls. Her head sank into a pillow and all the troubled thoughts into sleep; but, just before she was quite oblivious, a little tap came to the door; it opened softly and a tall head, silhouetted on the lighted hall, looked in, and Giles said, “Good-night, Alix.” It was treating her as a child and it made her feel very safe. CHAPTER III For many hours the little French girl slept on dreamlessly, and when she woke it was as if an abyss of space and time lay between her and yesterday morning. As she gazed up at the dim ceiling, only the most recent memories wove themselves softly into her returning sense of identity: the yellow sauce that Giles had told her to scrape off; his faded khaki necktie; Aunt Bella’s small, glazed hands. Kindness, security, lay behind these appearances, and an apprehension of pain seemed at first substanceless and irrational. Then, with a gathering effort, it shaped itself: France; Maman; what was she doing and was she happy?—She had not been really happy yesterday morning. Why had monsieur Giles been so troubled when they met? And why had he never come to see them in all the nine months he had been in France? There was a tap at the door and an elderly maid came in, neatly capped, bearing a brass hot-water-can, which she stood in the basin. Then she drew the curtains and turned up the electric light and placed by the bedside a very amusing little tea-set on a tray. It was Alix’s initiation into early-morning tea, and for a moment, as she gazed at it, she feared it was to be all her breakfast until the maid, withdrawing, said, very distinctly, as though she might be deaf: “Breakfast at nine, Miss; and the bathroom is opposite.” That was all right, then. Alix lifted the lid of the little pot and sniffed at the tea and decided that the afternoon was the only time at which she felt drawn to it. And as for the two slices of bread and butter, they were very thin, but she would rather save her appetite. Meanwhile there was a real _brouillard de Londres_ pressing close against the window, so close that one could see nothing—Alix had jumped up to look—except the spectral top of a tree below the window and, below the tree, a blurred street-lamp. It was interesting, exciting, to get up like this as if it were after dinner instead of before breakfast, for there were lights in the hall and bathroom and one’s morning face had such a curious look as one combed one’s hair under an electric bulb. She forgot her waking apprehensions as she dressed, and when she went into the dining-room and found Giles there, the day seemed to have started really well.