“But then”—madame Vervier in a slight bewilderment groped her way among these unfamiliar shapes—“if you have never thought about her in that way—perhaps you will be able to think about Alix. She, too, cares so much for your Toppie. Toppie would become your patron-saint. Together you would worship at her shrine.—Does it interfere with what I had planned for you and Alix?” “I’m afraid it does. I’m afraid it absolutely interferes.” Giles, his face suffused with red, sat looking down, struggling with difficulty to master a sense of tears. “It’s impossible, you know; quite impossible. Dear little Alix. All I ask, you must see that, is to take care of her.” “I have blundered,” said madame Vervier. “Forgive me. We will speak of it no more.” “But you’ve spoken of it beautifully. I’m glad to have you know,” said Giles, and the strange sense that this was so made part of his amazement. “We will speak quite differently, then, of Alix,” said madame Vervier. “We will talk of her, not as your future wife, but as your little friend. Even so she is fortunate. And I!—how fortunate I am—for I know that I can count upon you absolutely. You will help me as no one else can help me. If not you, then another English husband. Who is this Lady Mary of whom Alix has written to me? She has sons?” It was like being borne on the wings of a great aeroplane from continent to continent;—one nearly as strange as the other. Giles really felt inclined to gasp and ask for mercy. He could not go so fast or rise so far without a sense of giddiness. “Lady Mary Hamble? Sons? I’m sure I don’t know,” he said, staring at the pilot. “You do not know her? You have no _relations_ with her?” “I’ve seen her only once in my life. Alix, as far as I remember, has seen her only once. Last winter. She’s a nice woman. That’s all I know about her.” “Yes. It was last winter. But she asked Alix to go to them. It was very foolish of her not to have gone. If I had been there it would not have happened so. Alix wrote of her with much liking. I gathered from the impression Alix had of her that it would be a good _milieu_.” “Oh, excellent I should say. Much better than ours, of course.” Giles was able to recover something of his own broad smile, the farce of it, to his seeing, breaking through too strongly. “You’re quite right about us. We’re not brilliant at all.” “So I had inferred.” Madame Vervier considered him with kind and lucid eyes. “She is a _femme du monde_.” “Very much so, I imagine. I don’t know any _femmes du monde_, except you,” said Giles. “Ah, my claim to the rôle would be disputed,” madame Vervier remarked. “She will, I think, have sons. Since it is a position, there will be a son to inherit it.” “Well, yes. There certainly might be,” said the laughing Giles. He leaned back, clasping his ankle with his hands, and took open possession of his mirth.