“Yes. It’s true.” Giles was thinking of the French sunlight; of monsieur de Maubert’s philosophy; of the _pâtissier’s_. The difference went down to the very roots of things. “We are discontented and clumsy and romantic, compared to you; it’s our very religion to be discontented, with ourselves and what we can see. We are rebels; that’s what it comes to. Rebels are the people who refuse the seen for the unseen.” “And yet who pick up the seen, in their stride, as it were, and then don’t know what to make of it.—It is that with which we reproach you. You spoil one world in trying to reach the other.” “Ah, these are themes too profound for my tea-table,” madame Vervier interposed, while Giles, meeting André’s eye, felt, suddenly, something challenging, sword-like, beneath its blue smile. “We will not pass from history to metaphysics, if you please. Are you tired, Giles? Will you rest? I have some letters to write for the post. After that we might have a little walk if you felt so inclined.” Giles said there was nothing he would like better. He would unpack and rest a little and then join her. She was in the salon with mademoiselle Fontaine when he came down half an hour later, and on the verandah monsieur de Maubert sat alone, heavily, Giles still felt, in his sunny corner; not reading; looking out at the sea. Giles was aware of feeling sorry for him; but he did not want to talk to monsieur de Maubert. He went out quietly at the back of the house, and wandered through the garden, finding himself suddenly, as he came to the gate, bareheaded, his hands in his pockets, face to face with old madame Dumont and madame Collet. They sat in a small wicker pony-chaise drawn by a ruminant stout pony, and Giles inferred, since there was only room for two that mademoiselle Fontaine had walked beside the pony’s head, taking her parents out thus for a peaceful airing. They waited at the gate for her. “_Ah. C’est monsieur Gilles_,” madame Collet simpered. “You remember monsieur Gilles, Maman.” Madame Dumont was not much altered. The vulture-like poise of her head was perhaps more sunken, and her raven eye less piercing; but a light came to it as she saw him; an old resentment and a present glee. “_Charmée, monsieur, charmée de vous revoir_,” she assured him, and as her eye measured the morsel thus presented to its greed Giles seemed to see the vulture roused and rustling its feathers. “You are just arrived?” Giles told her that he was. “You find your friends again,” said madame Dumont, and there was a quaking note of hurry in the majesty of her tones. “You will, however, find them changed.—Ah, changes are sad; disastrous. She has had much to bear. It tells; it tells upon her. You find madame Vervier aged? Altered? Sadly altered?”