“Yes; I understand,” said Alix. “We saw him first on the great road that runs above the sea. Maman and I were going up and he was coming down, so that we saw him tall against the sky; limping a little as he came. He looked at us, and we looked at him;—it is almost as if one recognized the people who are destined to be our friends, is it not, Mademoiselle?—and when we had passed, I looked back at him and he was looking round at us. It had been a mutual impression. We talked of it afterwards. We saw him against the sky and he saw us against the sea; as if we had risen from it, like people in a fairy-tale, he told us; and Maman laughed and said that people didn’t rise from the sea carrying parasols. I remember so well the expression of his eyes”—Alix felt still shyer, but she forced herself through the shyness—“gay and searching like a dog’s; out-of-door eyes. He had field-glasses in his hand. And that very evening, at the Casino, a friend of Maman’s brought him and introduced him to her. So it all began.” “Tall against the sky. Out-of-door eyes. Yes, I can see him.—Don’t call me mademoiselle, Alix; call me Toppie.—And with his bird-glasses. He would have been watching birds. I see it all,” said Toppie, her eyes before her. “And then?” “Then he came to see us every day. It was of birds we talked on the first day that he and I and Maman went for a walk. I knew them a little; not their names; but their songs and their habits, from having been so much in the country; whereas Maman is so much the _parisienne_ that she was very ignorant and she laughed at us and said they were all much alike; small, grey silhouettes in the leaves. And he used to say that I was like a black-cap and she like a nightingale; though we did not see those birds at Cannes.” “And then?” Toppie repeated as Alix paused. “He was still very lame,” said Alix, “so that he could not play tennis, but he used to come with us and watch Maman play; she is one of the finest players at Cannes; did he tell you? It is beautiful to watch her; she is perhaps at her best when playing tennis. And he used to write his letters in the garden of our little villa;—it was lent us, that Autumn, by friends; a charming little place; he will have told you of it. He must often have written you letters from the garden. And he and Maman sat there and read. He would read to her and she would correct his French, and she would read to him so that his ear might become accustomed to the correct accent. And sometimes it was I who read while he held, I remember, a skein of silk on his hands for Maman to wind to balls; lemon-coloured silk for a little jacket she was knitting me. She is so clever with her fingers.”