“But what is it you don’t understand, Toppie!” Giles exclaimed, and he heard that it was with irrepressible fretfulness. He felt it so unfair that he should be displayed to Toppie as creeping and dingy when all that he was trying for was to shield her from any hurt. Yet that there was another reason for his fretfulness, he knew. His loyalty to madame Vervier had betrayed him to too much ardour. Ardour had been in his voice. And Toppie must have heard it. “That you should say such different things of Owen’s friend,” Toppie replied at once. “You contradict yourself. It’s as if you were hiding something from me.” Poor Giles. His hat-brim was drawn down, but that could not conceal from Toppie the helpless red that surged up over his face and neck as he heard these words. He felt it rise, the burning, dark confusion, while, with sudden fear and sickness of heart, he groped for an answer. And her blow had been so sudden and unlooked for that the only answer that came was as helpless as his blush, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. What could there be to hide?” But there was no escape for him in Toppie’s gaze. Giles, his eyes fixed on the heather, felt it dwell upon him, and when, at last, she looked away, it was as if she had seen the falsity between them. And all that she said, in accents of snow, was: “I’m sure I don’t know. Perhaps you will tell me.” “Toppie, this is absurd, you know,” Giles muttered, staring down. “You put me in a ridiculous position. It upsets one, naturally, to be cross-questioned as if one were a shifty witness in the witness-box. People are complicated and contradictory creatures. One can’t draw a consistent picture of them. On one side of her nature madame Vervier may be weak and erring and on the other she may be like a goddess. How do I know? I’ve hardly seen her.” And then Toppie made an astonishing statement. Turning her eyes from him, looking before her at the dull rose sky, coldly, though gently, and with a poise of tone that showed how deeply she was feeling, she said: “If you have fallen in love with her, Giles, why should you not say so? Why should you try to hide it as though you were ashamed? She is a widow, is she not? There is no reason, is there, why you should not love her?—It hurts me that you should speak like that—keeping things back; twisting your real feelings lest I should see them.—You speak of her as though you were ashamed of loving her.” CHAPTER XV Giles, while Toppie spoke, had started up, resting on his hand and staring at her with eyes aghast and stupefied. What folly, what madness was this? How could Toppie find it in her heart to speak like this; to him—to him of all people?