He could have sung with exultation. Not only André’s sinister shadow was gone; but that tumult in himself. He was a boy again, and Alix, his child, his darling, was beside him. They ran, with deep breaths, smiling round at each other. The long wooded _allées_ of the town stretched nearly to the cliff-top, and once beneath a steep, green tunnel there was no need to go so fast, for they hardly felt the rain, so dense was the roof of green; only heard it pattering heavily on the leaves above their heads. But, still running, they reached the emptied _place_, its cobblestones glistening with the wet, and as they passed Giles saw an astonished face at the toy-shop door, where stout madame Bonnefoix stood looking out between bunches of spades and buckets, string bags full of brightly coloured balls and festoons of dolls in stiff muslin chemises. The peaceful sculptured porch of the church was before them, and it seemed to Giles that it had been waiting for them—for centuries. When they entered, they found the church, with its whitewashed walls and innocently bedizened saints, light and smiling after the darkened day outside. A smell of incense, flowers, and cobwebs was in the air. Alix paused to cross herself with holy water from the _bénitier_ carved into the stone of a pillar and bent her knee before the High Altar as they crossed the nave, while Giles held his Protestant head bashfully high. They sat down on a bench far back in an aisle and smiled, tremulously, at each other. They were so much more alone than on the cliff with the rain and sea. No one was in the church; no one was in the _place_ outside. It was very still, and the sound of the rain falling straightly and steadily outside made the stillness more manifest. The wind had already dropped. It was a summer rain, now, full of sweetness. “May we talk in church?” Giles whispered. He looked away from Alix at the remembered statue of the Virgin, all white and blue, with pots of pink hydrangeas at her feet. “I think we may,” Alix said. “We disturb no one.” “Your saints won’t mind, will they?” Giles could not keep the tremor from his voice. “Such a good Catholic as you are, Alix!” “I think my saints are pleased,” Alix’s voice, too, trembled; though she was not as shy as he was. “You know, Toppie has gone into her convent,” Giles said, gazing at the Virgin, whose uplifted, blessing hands brought the image of Toppie so vividly before him. It was as if Toppie herself stood there, smiling down upon them. “Your mother wrote of it,” said Alix. “We met again in Oxford, only a little while ago,” said Giles. “She saw something that everybody has been seeing; even Jerry saw it.—You know, Alix, I love Toppie as much as ever; yet I’m so changed. It’s all so different. Can you understand that?” “I never dreamed you could be different about Toppie,” Alix murmured after a moment. “Was that why you thought I’d never guess, even if I saw your letter to Jerry?”