Giles saw now what his greatest fear had been. And he knew that it was groundless. Toppie would never ask him a question. The past was over; not forgotten; but over. That was what her departure, her silence, had won for them. She could not, at that past time, have kept herself from pressing against the swords of every fullest realization. She could not have kept herself from seeing, as balefully as he had seen them, the figures of Owen and madame Vervier. She would never ask those questions now. And presently it was of Owen himself that she was speaking. “I wanted to tell you what peace it has given me, Giles, to feel that he did love me,” she said. The soft sweet flowers of the lilac were behind her head, the shadowy green of its leaves. He seemed to see, as her eyes dwelt on him, what Toppie would look like as a very old nun. Not so different from now. Nuns had changeless faces. “He loved me,” she said. “But not as I loved him. When one accepts the truth, Giles, it gives peace. And now I see that we are not meant to ask for the same love back. It is enough to love; and I shall always love him.” “He always loved you, Toppie,” Giles murmured. “He was swept away.” After he had said these words he remembered that they were the words of madame Vervier. “Yes,” Toppie accepted quietly. “Swept away. And he was alone; in a strange country; in a time of dreadful strain. And she was so kind and so lovely.—And she does not believe the things we believe—I have seen it all, Giles. I have forgotten nothing of all that you tried to tell, to explain to me on that day. Wrong, you said, not wicked. And Alix is her child.—I have seen it all—and how he suffered. He has suffered, Giles,” said Toppie, looking deeply at him. “But now, with him, too, there is peace. I believe it. With all that has come between, we are not separated, he and I.” Looking into Toppie’s eyes, Giles could not but believe it, too. They were silent for a little while. Then Toppie said: “And you, dear Giles?” “I? Oh, I’m getting on quite nicely, Toppie, dear,” Giles smiled back at her. “I shall take my First, I think.” “Yes. But I didn’t mean you only, you alone. I mean you and Alix. What are you going to do with our dear little Alix?” “Ah, there’s a long story there,” said Giles. “Have you heard anything about Jerry Hamble?” “Only what your mother wrote about some trouble that Alix felt it better to be away from.—I knew it could not be only that. I knew what other trouble there was.—Oh, Giles—I was so cruel to Alix.—I could not think of what I said.—But tell me about Jerry.”