“Oh—our hostess would be able to meet even that contingency,” said André with, perhaps, the slightest flavour of irony. “A daughter, with us, knows too well that she may trust her mother to do the best for her happiness.” But, as Giles remained sitting on, hearing in the drawing-room the low murmur of consultation and André’s repeated “_Je suis désolé_,” it became disastrously clear to him that, more than Maman’s intended accommodations of the truth, Alix would resent André’s admission to Maman’s confidence. How, indeed, could she interpret that? The murmur in the drawing-room ceased, madame Vervier rose and went upstairs, and, before André could rejoin him, Giles had taken refuge in his own room. He could not face André; he could not face monsieur de Maubert, or madame Vervier herself, again that evening. None of them, not even madame Vervier, could see as he saw the disaster that had befallen his poor little friend. He leaned at his window feeling hot and sick, but even here, though the windows of Alix’s room had been closed, the voices of mother and daughter came to him through the flimsy barrier of the wall. He could not hear the words, but in their sharp passionate rhythm he discerned what the words must be. “Why to him, Maman! What are his rights! He was a stranger to us when I left you!” But madame Vervier would, indeed, never lack resource. Unready as she must feel herself to face this further predicament, Giles heard the muffled murmur of her voice, rising, falling, expostulating; urgent, tender, invulnerable. She would find answers to everything. Or was it that there were some questions her child would not ask of her? When, at last, she ceased, there was no reply. He heard that Alix was crying. CHAPTER XIII Next day, his last at Les Chardonnerets, dawned high, blue, beautiful, and looking out at sunrise Giles saw his wonderful hostess, as he had seen her on his first morning, walking back to the house across the grassy cliffs, wrapped in her bathing-robe. She came slowly. Her tread had not the buoyancy of the first day. Her head was bent; she meditated gravely. But she made him think of a goddess who had sought inspiration and sustainment from immersion in her own elements of sunlight and sea-water. Power breathed from her as she moved, and Giles, looking out at her, was filled with a deep yet beautiful sadness. It was like looking at a goddess. Madame Vervier seemed separated from him by thousands of years. She might have been a figure of myth and legend walking there, the outlines of her ruffled hair all haloed by the sunlight, her white arm crossed upon her breast.