Giles had never in his life seen anything so beautiful. He knew that she was not beautiful if computed or examined by standards of exactitude; that her eyes were small, her nose a little flattened, her mouth clumsily drawn; but power so emanated from her gaze, magic so pervaded her lips and brows, sweetness lay with such a bloom of light upon her, that every imperfection was dissolved in the unity that made a sort of music in his mind. She was like an embodiment of music—and what was that urgent, searching rhythm, that evocation of flowers and dew and night? The melody of Brahms’s “Sapphische Ode” surged into his mind and with it a deep, an almost overpowering sadness. With the song he remembered everything; everything was evoked. The Spring day in the Bois; Owen’s face of love; and Toppie, far away, betrayed and forgotten, fixed in her trance of fidelity. To see madame Vervier, to remember Toppie, was almost to feel that he himself was Owen. “You know, then,” said madame Vervier. Her arm lay along the table beside her. She looked across at him and held the stone in her upturned palm. That was the way she began; those the very first words she said after she had led him in, after their long silence, when they found themselves alone together. The throb of André’s car had long since faded down the lane. The house was still; and Giles felt that his heart was trembling. “Yes. I’ve known from the beginning,” he said. “Alix told me,” said madame Vervier. “You saw us one day in the Bois.” “Yes,” said Giles. “And she tells me that you feel him to have been unfaithful to his betrothed.” “Yes,” Giles repeated. He was amazed yet not overwhelmed by her direct approach. He kept his eyes upon her. “Unfaithful.” There was a weight in the word that madame Vervier would not feel, for André was now entangled with his thought of Owen. It was hardly eighteen months ago; and André had succeeded Owen. But all unaware, as she might well be, of his further knowledge, her next words answered, by implication, the charge. If she admitted contemporaneity in love, why not succession? “There,” she said, “you were mistaken. We were lovers, it is true; but he knew that it was not to last. He knew that if not death, then life must part us. In his heart he was not unfaithful. He would have gone back to her.” “Do you mean with a lie?” asked Giles. “With a lie? Yes; I imagine it would have been with a lie,” madame Vervier did not hesitate. “But the essential would be there. He had not ceased to love her.—It was not his fault. He was swept away,” she said.