“Giles? Giles made you see?” Toppie put her hands to her head as if her skull cracked with the dreadful blows Alix dealt her, and, while a deathly sickness crept over her, Alix went on relentlessly: “He had seen them together in Paris. They did not see him, but he saw them walking in the Bois. That was why, when I lied to his mother, he knew it was a lie. Last Winter, Toppie; when I first came. And I was to help him in keeping it from you always.” Toppie stood still, up there in the thin bright sunlight, her hands pressed now before her face; and, with the growing sickness, Alix suddenly seemed to see another figure beside her. It was as if Maman, too, was standing there, in the bright sunlight, with that intent look; dumb, like a figure in a nightmare; yet in her stillness conveying a terrible reproach. “It was not Maman’s fault,” Alix muttered. “She cannot help it if she is loved. She did not know that he had kept it from you.” From behind Toppie’s hands now came a strange voice. It was as if it spoke from the pressure of some iron vice screwed down upon it. “Your mother is a wicked woman. You do not know what you are saying; but I know that it is true. Your mother took my lover from me. She is a wicked woman and you are a miserable child.” Alix felt herself trembling now in every limb; but it was even more before Maman that she trembled than before Toppie. “Is it wicked to be loved? Is it wicked to be preferred?” “Yes. It is wicked,” said Toppie in the crushed and straining voice. “There is no greater sin for a woman than such stolen love. Your mother is an abandoned woman. She has lovers. No one is safe from her. I knew that already!—Oh, God, I knew it!” Was Toppie speaking on to her, or, in her agony, to herself? Alix, standing outside the torture-chamber, heard the cries of the victim. But she, too, was bound upon a wheel. “You are not wicked. You had a lover. Captain Owen was your lover.” She forced her trembling lips to speak. “Giles knows her. He knows that she is not wicked. It is false what you say. You must not say such false things of my mother.” “You do not understand,” Toppie moaned. She had fallen down upon a chair, her face still hidden in her hands. “It is terrible to be so ignorant as you are. You are too old to be so ignorant.—Yes, it is true—all true. She took him from me. Oh, I know now—I know what Giles was hiding from me!—Go away, Alix.—You drive me mad!—Go away, poor unhappy child!” Alix had risen to her feet, but still she could not go. To fly, to escape; to hide herself for ever; this was the cry of all her nature; but there was something else. It was not only upon herself, upon Maman, that she had brought this disaster. What had she done to Giles?