“And because she is too sure,” said Alix. They had entered the birch-wood and their footsteps rustled in the fallen golden leaves. They went forward, aimlessly, not thinking of where they went, Alix intent on her reading of Toppie, Giles listening. “Too sure of what she loves and believes in. She has had to be too sure, because she is so unhappy.—Is that it, Giles? And the things she loves and believes in are not the things she sees. Perhaps that makes us hard—if we can only think of the things we love and never see or touch them—makes us hard, I mean, to the things we have with us.” Giles was, she knew, keeping his eyes on her as she put together these suggestions, and as he meditated for a little pause, her thoughts, in the silence, while she watched the golden leaves, took a long flight to France and she found herself suddenly wondering if perhaps Maman and André de Valenbois were wandering under the autumnal trees in the Bois—as Giles had seen Maman and Captain Owen wander under the Spring trees. And with the thought came such a pang of fear and grief. “You’re right, I think,” Giles said. “And I see no help for it. She’ll grow more and more away from the things she has with her and shut herself more and more into her solitude—where she is safe with the things she can’t see.—What can we do about it, Alix?” said Giles gently, a little as if he spoke to a child from whose ingenuous wisdom he sought an oracle.—“Who can help Toppie in any way in which she’d accept help?” Suddenly it was very easy, there in the twilight woods, to be courageous. She was so near Giles. It was as if her heart beat in his side. “No one can do anything for her but you, Giles. You must marry her and make her happy.” “Oh, my dear little Alix,” he said, smiling bitterly, not even pausing to assess her daring, just as she herself had not needed to pause. “There’s no hope for me. No one can help her less than I.” “Do you mean there never was hope;—or is none now?” “There never was, perhaps;—but there’s less now. Her heart is full of Owen.” “Yet if he had not been there, it would have been you she would have loved.” “Who can tell? Perhaps.” “And is it because of him that there’s less hope, even, now?” “Put it like that if you choose,” said Giles. “Yes. Because of him.” CHAPTER III