“Owen always wrote of her as though she were a widow,” said Toppie, going slowly. She was not bewildered. She looked carefully, if with shrinking, at the figure he had placed before her in his foolish haste. “But you know so much more about her than Owen ever knew.—In those few days you saw and learned things he never saw. Perhaps you do know about monsieur Vervier. Perhaps you know that he isn’t dead; that she isn’t free. If that is so—doesn’t it explain even more?—Oh, Giles—I am afraid”—She stopped. She looked away. He saw the blood rising in her cheek as she checked the speech that must give him too much offence. “I suppose what you mean,” said Giles gloomily, thrusting his hands into his pockets as he looked down at her, “is that I do know she isn’t free, and that, therefore, being in love with her, my love is a guilty passion. Something of that sort, what? Well, if you won’t take my word for it, there’s no more for me to say, is there?” Resentment had come into his voice. “We’d better be going.” “I accuse you of nothing, Giles,” said Toppie, still dyed with her blush; “only I am sure that I am right in feeling that something has happened. I am sorry, but I can’t help feeling it. From the moment you spoke of madame Vervier I heard that your voice was changed;—so strained and strange; so full of reluctance. You wanted to say all against her that you could find to say. You wanted to guard yourself against your own feeling. But what came through, from the beginning, was that you found her—beautiful; mysterious; compelling.” Toppie found the words, a strange tremor in her voice. “What came through was that she was a goddess.” Giles stood motionless, gazing down at her. He was seeing, suddenly, straight into Toppie’s heart; straight into the heart of their situation. How futile were his denials, when he could deny only for himself—and not for the other. The vein of piercing intuition in Toppie had led her to the portals of the truth. The name she saw inscribed there was the wrong name; that was all. Change Giles to Owen, and the truth was in her grasp. She knew that madame Vervier was beautiful, mysterious, compelling. She knew that both he and Owen had felt her a goddess. A chill of fear crept about Giles’s heart. “Come; we’d better be going,” he repeated. He heard that his voice was harsh. He would discuss no further and he held out his hand to her. Toppie took it and rose to her feet. She meant to be kind to him. She meant to be his friend;—Giles said it to himself as, silently, they went down the hill together. But in spite of all his compassionate understanding of her, his fear for her, what came over him, in wave after wave of grief and resentment, was that she was cold and hard. He had made her suffer because of what she had felt as false in him; but it was now, as it had always been, of Owen that she was thinking. He had cast, thank Heaven, no shadow on Owen; but perplexity, mystery, pain had come into her vision of Owen’s friend.