It was not only that she spoke and moved as they did not and that her clothes were differently adjusted. These signs were only the expression of a deeper divergence. Her face, still almost the face of a child, had, notwithstanding, an almost alarming maturity. It was at once more primitive and more civilized than English faces, but the primitiveness was nothing shapeless or unpredictable; it was preserved and used; it was, perhaps, only a deeper layer of civilization. Druidess or Roman virgin, who could tell which underlay the something resistant, enduring, in the structure of her head, sweet in glance as an Alpine flower, remote and inaccessible as the mountain?—and, glancing at her as she sat beside him, Giles could gauge something of the change in his own feeling towards her by the fact that he was afraid of Alix. Not only that; France had already done more to him; for it was as if he were afraid of himself, too. As they sped out into the radiant landscape and he felt the breeze blow strong and sweet from the sea, he was aware of currents of strange feeling in the tide which bore him; bitter, dark, delicious, and tumultuous. “I am dreadfully sorry about Blaise,” he said—“André was telling me.” “Yes,” said Alix, looking down at her parcel, “it is sad.” “The comfort is that he had a very happy life,” said Giles, feeling foolish, for indeed he was not thinking of poor Blaise. “I never feel that a comfort,” said Alix. “I think it most sad of all; that happiness should end.” To this Giles found no answer. “And have you taken your degree, Giles?” Alix inquired, with the air of leaving an untimely subject. “Are you now a distinguished philosopher?” “Well, I’ve taken my First all right,” said Giles. “I’ve done pretty well. Next term will see me settled in Oxford. But it will need a great many years, I am afraid, to make me distinguished.” “And where will you live?” Alix inquired. “Still in the same rooms, high up, looking at those rather sad grey stones?” “Oh, I shall be a Fellow of my College and have rather beautiful rooms; quite a vast sitting-room looking on a beautiful garden. I’ll be rather a swell. You’ll be surprised when you see.” “Oh, I am glad of that,” said Alix, smiling and passing by his allusion to her return. “And there, in the beautiful rooms, you’ll teach philosophy for the rest of your life?” “Well, I expect I shall. And write it, you know; and play cricket, and sing in the Bach choir. Sometimes I’ll go up to London and see pictures and a play; in the Summers I’ll walk round the Cornish coast or climb Welsh mountains. It’s just the life that suits me.” “Yes. It will suit you admirably,” said Alix. André, white against the blue, drove in front of them and, turning his head, smiling, he now observed: “Alix has been reading philosophy of late. She must tell you. She has been reading Bergson.”