Now she was able, since Mrs. Bradley said no more, to come to the surface, alive and apparently uninjured, but to her own consciousness floating like a helpless, battered object. Something dreadful had happened to her; she knew that; and to Maman; and to them all. But she could not see it clearly. Only by degrees, as Mrs. Bradley wound her last loops of wool and said, “Thank you, dear,” and her hands could fold again in her lap, did it come to her that the dreadful thing was something that Captain Owen had done; and most of all to Maman. He had been with them; staying with them; three times; the cherished friend; and he had never told his family. She sat there, very still, and tried to think why it could have been, and the picture that came to her was of Captain Owen sitting on one side of the fire in the little salon of the rue de Penthièvre; sitting as Giles now sat; looking across at Maman who, her finger in the pages of a half-closed book, returned his gaze with a strange sadness. And from this picture, lifting her eyes, she met Giles’s fixed upon her and saw that Giles knew, too. She looked back at him. All she could do was to look. To pretend not to see that he knew, to look away while she pretended, would only be to reveal more glaringly to him her sense of their mutual misfortune. Giles, too, knew that Captain Owen had been with them in Paris; he would not have looked at her like that if he had not known; with that dark and heavy look. “Oh, I say!” groaned Rosemary, stretching herself out in her chair with a wide yawn of fatigue, “why was I such a fool as to take out this sleeve! It was well enough long, and I’ll never get it in properly again.” “I told you to cut it kimono shape; you’d have had no trouble then,” said Ruth. “Where’s your house in Normandy, Alix? We were in Houlegate, years ago, when we were kids. I never thought of you in Normandy somehow. Only in Cannes, among the orange-trees you know, romantic child.” “It is at Vaudettes-sur-Mer,” said Alix. “I like Normandy better than the Riviera.” “I never heard of Vaudettes-sur-Mer,” said Ruth. “Is it pretty? Has it got a sandy beach?” “No; it is _galets_, not sand; not until the tide is low; and Vaudettes is up on the cliff so that one has a long climb down to get to it. But the village is very pretty.” “Most French seaside villas are such hideous gimcrack things; worse than ours, I always think. Is your house an old one?” “Yes; quite old; quite unspoiled. There are no modern villas yet at Vaudettes.” Giles got up. “Are you going to bed, dear?” Mrs. Bradley asked. “No; I’m going to read in my room.” “Do we make too much noise?” “A little too much. Good-night everybody,” said Giles. “How tired Giles looks,” said Mrs. Bradley. “He’s grinding too hard at his work,” said Ruth.