“I find him interesting, but I’m afraid that I do not understand him,” said Alix, and Giles saw that she slightly flushed as André thus addressed them. “He’s far too difficult to begin on,” said Giles. “He’s not for the beginning at all; he’s for the very end.” “But I thought that was just his point, that he started at the very beginning,” said Alix—“with germs, or atoms, or small things like that.” “Ah, those are the things one should end with,” Giles assured her, “because, you see, they are the furthest away from us. The beginning is an idea, and the end is an atom. You can’t understand an atom, that is, until you understand an idea. If you’ll come to Oxford and let me teach you, I’ll land you safely in Bergson after three years.” “No; I shall read no more philosophy,” said Alix. “I shall not go as far as ideas or atoms in either direction. I shall stay in between. All the nicest things are in between, I believe.” “Bravo! Bravo!” André smiled round at her, and Giles could not interpret his smile. Alix did not reply. She turned her head and looked out over the plains. Vaudettes-sur-Mer in its palisades of trees was before them now, painted in delicate washes of colour against the sky. “It looks like the beginning of a fairy-tale, doesn’t it,” said Giles and brought Alix’s eyes to Vaudettes. “Yes, like the place children find on the front page,” she said. “And a happy fairy-tale, isn’t it?” “But it can’t have the real fairy-tale pang and flavour to you,” said Giles. “It’s a place I find, but can never keep. You wake up to it and I wake up out of it. It’s my dream and your reality.” “But you can keep it, Giles, as much as the Cornish coast, or the Welsh mountains,” smiled Alix, “as much as we keep it, really;—for it is our fairy-tale, too.—You have only to come back and find us in it,” said Alix, and, while she looked before her steadily, he almost thought he saw a hint of tears in her eyes, as though what he said of her loved Vaudettes touched her too deeply. Did she see in it the fairy-tale place of childhood never to be regained? It was, as it had been last year at Les Chardonnerets, a blue and golden day. The gulls were floating past on a level with the cliff-top and on the verandah were monsieur de Maubert and madame Vervier. They had passed through the wind-bent thickets and seen the sunny flags with their oleanders and smelt again the fairy-tale smell Giles so passionately remembered. But—he knew it as he came out on to the stage, as it were, of the drama—the fairy-tale was spoiled for ever. Madame Vervier had been its centre; the wine-like sweetness of her smile, her Circe security, had been its atmosphere. And now the magic was broken. He could see nothing else as she came forward to greet them, so lovely, lovelier than ever to his eyes, so kind and simple, welcoming back with her wide, enveloping gaze the friend who knew so much.