“Oh, she was so good to him! I know!” Toppie exclaimed, her eyes still fixed on the distance. “I don’t know what he would have done with himself if it hadn’t been for her kindness. He had been so frightfully lonely there at Cannes. He found it such a dismal place until you came; perhaps because it is supposed to be so gay; and that, in war-time, must have been dreadful. No shade, I remember he said; only sun and shadows.” “Yes; I remember that he found so much sun depressing, and that seemed very strange to us, for we so love the sun. But there was real shade in our garden under the trees. The fuchsias, too, were in bloom everywhere, I remember, and I associate them so much with him; gay, delicate flowers.” “Fuchsias?” said Toppie. “But that’s a soulless flower. How strange that he should have been associated with them in anyone’s mind.—Fuchsias”—she seemed to be forcing herself to see them, too. “They grow so much in the Riviera, of course. But I always think of Owen with daffodils. Our woods are full of them here in Spring. Fuchsias. Yes? What else? You all laughed together? Your mother is so gay. He was happy?” “Very happy, I think. We all laughed a great deal. Maman is not what one would call a gay person; but she can make gaiety. He teased me a great deal. I have never cared for dolls and he teased me about them. He said a girl must be made to care about dolls, and he bought dreadful little ones with small feet in painted boots and hid them in my napkin at dinner or even under my pillow, where I found them at night. I used to fling them at him—rush down to the salon where he and Maman sat, and fling them at him.—For I was already fifteen, and at that age one is not supposed to care about dolls, in any case. We had great games, it was a happy time, in spite of all the sadness. He was a happy person.” “Happy. Yes. A happy person,” Toppie repeated. She turned her strange shining eyes on Alix. “He is happy now. He is here, you know. We are not parted. I feel him every day; always; near me. His happiness shines round me.” Alix was struck to dumbness. She felt afraid. Such thoughts were so alien to her that she even wondered if Toppie were quite sane. Toppie went on. “You believe that, too, in your church, don’t you?—that the dead are near us; not far away; not shut into a hard golden heaven we can’t reach; but quite near and caring.” “We have purgatory. I do not understand all these doctrines. But I am not _dévote_,” said Alix after a moment. “Purgatory? That’s only a name. That’s only a symbol, like the golden heaven. And those who have died, giving their lives for us, will not have to pass through such an intermediary state.—You are too young. You have never lost anyone you loved.”