On the verandah Alix sat beside monsieur de Maubert reading “Bérénice,” aloud to him. André was stretched near them in a deck-chair, his eyes following the smoke of his cigarette, and madame Vervier emerged from the salon, a little sheaf of letters in her hand. She laid them down on a table and André said that he would presently post them. “Yes. You and I would rather go by the cliff, Giles,” said madame Vervier. She wore a white dress, not the tennis dress; this was fashioned differently, with floating panels and long loose sleeves. She was bareheaded, a sunshade in her hand. “Alix reads to him every afternoon,” she said as they went towards the cliff. She spoke of monsieur de Maubert, but her heart, Giles knew, must be shaken by the interview with mademoiselle Blanche.—Mademoiselle Blanche could only have come to measure her pangs, surreptitiously, against madame Vervier’s. “His eyes trouble him of late, _le pauvre cher_. He enjoys hearing Alix. He is very fond of her.” They walked along the little path beaten in the grass at the edge of the cliff. The sea was the Botticelli sea and against the sky went a flock of young goldfinches. “Our birds,” said madame Vervier, pointing to them, and he still heard the breathlessness in her voice. What had she succeeded in concealing from mademoiselle Blanche, and what had mademoiselle Blanche succeeded in concealing from her? “See the pattern made by the triangles of gold on their wings,” she said. “We call such a flock, a charm of goldfinches,” said Giles. “Isn’t it a pretty name?” “A charm. A charm of goldfinches. And what a happy name. They look that.” Madame Vervier’s eyes followed the flight of the bright birds. “I wish one did not have to think of snares and cages when one sees them. Our people are so cruel for birds. I wish such happy things might escape the snare.” “A great many do. We shouldn’t be seeing that charm now unless a great many escaped,” Giles tried to smile at her. “But it is the way of life, is it not, to snare and spoil happiness,” said madame Vervier. They left the woods of Les Chardonnerets behind them. Before them was the great curve of the cliff and the empty sky. “So, you see me punished,” said madame Vervier. Giles walked beside her and found no word to say. “Even you, stern moralist as you are,” madame Vervier pursued, “could hardly have foreseen such a punishment.—To know that I have ruined my child’s best chance of happiness; all that I could have hoped for her.—To know that she is suffering because of me.” “No, I didn’t think it would come like that,” Giles murmured.