It was as if she had struck him. The violent red that mounted to his face was echoed in Alix’s cheeks. It was as if, with her innocent words, she had struck him, and in the silence that followed them, while he gazed at her, and she, helplessly, gazed back, she saw that what had underlain the confusion of yesterday had simply been suffering. She had laid it bare. She was looking at it now. He tried to master it; to conceal it; in a moment he stammered: “Oh, he talked most about Toppie, did he?” “Was she not his betrothed?” asked Alix in a feeble voice. She felt exhausted. He had struck her, too. “Of course she was,” said Giles, and his eyes now lifted from her face and fixed themselves over her head on Maman’s dressing-case. “And—is she not still living?” “Toppie? Living?” His eyes came back to her. “I should rather say so. You see,” he went on at once, though Alix could not see the relevance, “she was so horribly cut up by his death.” “Of course,” Alix murmured. “I am so sorry. I should not have spoken of him at all, when you have lost him. I did not mean to be stupid; unfeeling.” “But, good Heavens! you’re not stupid! Not a bit unfeeling!” cried Giles, and seeing her distress, his eyes actually filled with tears. “It’s not Owen at all. We often speak of him. It’s Toppie. And it’s I who am such a dunderhead. You see, she’s all that’s left of him. I mean, all that’s loveliest; most sacred. She cared for him so much. She’s like something in a shrine, to us all.” “Yes. Yes. I see. I understand,” said Alix; though, still, she could not see. “I spoke lightly. I do not forgive myself.” “But it’s nothing to do with you,” Giles almost shouted as he had shouted at her last night. “I always get like that when she’s talked about, with him. You poor, dear child, it’s nothing on earth to do with you. It’s absolutely my stupidity,” Giles assured her, their suffusion giving his eyes a strange heaviness. It must be left at that. There was nothing for her to say. He was suffering and he tried to conceal from her how much; but she had seen it too plainly. All unwittingly she had blundered, blundered horribly, in speaking of Captain Owen and his betrothed, and a sense of depression, dark, like the London fog, penetrating and bitter like the London smoke, settled upon her. “Here’s the station! There’s Mummy!” cried Giles. They had sat silent, and now he sprang up as if with great gaiety. He was doing his best. He was trying to make her forget; it was a little stupid of him if he thought he could succeed, Alix felt; but she summoned a responsive smile with which to greet Giles’s mother.