“If there’s anyone in England that Alix could have fallen in love with, it’s you. And it’s the person she can be in love with who can make her happiest. That’s our English belief, isn’t it?” said Giles. “I am in love with Alix, Jerry. It’s perfectly true. But it’s you I want her to marry. And I’ve never felt so sure of it as now.” “I’m living up to your ideal, what? Well, I’d like to do that, you know. I like you to think me worthy of her even if I’m not. I leave it in your hands, then,” said Jerry, getting off the table and turning his head away while he stared before him. “I’m such a silly rotter that I want her a great deal more, now that I know she may really be in love with someone else.” “Unless”—Giles had got up, too, and was gazing intently at his young friend—“unless Jerry, after all, you went yourself.” “No; I leave it to you.” Jerry shook his head, moving to the door. “I leave it to you and Alix.” “I don’t know; I don’t know,” Giles pondered. “It might be better. I kept you back before. That may have been my grievous mistake. I don’t believe in wooings by proxy.” “Well, I didn’t make much headway when I wooed in person,” Jerry remarked. “No. Clear away the other fellow if you can. And then we’ll see. After all”—Jerry had actually got outside now, but he put his head around the door to utter these last words—“you’ve never asked her yourself yet. She’s never seen you as a lover.” CHAPTER VI Giles, as he leaned out of the train, almost expected to see the white form of madame Vervier awaiting him on the platform as she had awaited him and Alix last year. His heart then had been like a load in his side, and how much heavier was the clogging weight upon it now; but, from the fact that his sensations were so much the same, all the pageant of last year’s arrival was summoned back into his memory with its climax in Hélène Vervier’s uplifted gaze. But she was not there. On the sunny platform it was Alix and André de Valenbois who stood side by side looking towards the train, and Giles knew that it was sheer terror that he felt as he saw them there together. Something in their stillness, their silence, made part of it. Tall and white they stood, side by side, and in their demeanour he read, with the sharp intuition of a first impression, the curious quality of a constraint that expressed at once familiarity and withdrawal. They stood so still because they did not care to stroll up and down together, and they were silent because there was nothing that they could say. Was it already as bad as that? Giles asked himself, feeling the hot blood of the surmise beating up into his neck and mounting to his face as he turned to pick up his bag and gather his coat over his arm.