“You _do_ see, Alix. That’s all I wanted. You see why he didn’t tell us. And that’s all we need say about it. He was my brother, and I was awfully fond of him. But he was very wrong. He did a great wrong. And you have lied for our sakes, and we’ve profited by it; if it is profit. All I pray is that you’ll never feel you have to lie, for anyone’s sake, again. There. That’s over. We’ll get to work. Have you everything you want?” Giles got up and took his pipe from the mantelpiece and his tobacco-pouch from his pocket. “And don’t let me ever see you afraid to come in here in the morning. It made me feel quite queer to find you crouched away in the cold as if I’d been an ogre.” “I thought you were angry with me, Giles; and I thought I was angry with you. It makes me angry, always, at once, if I think people are displeased with me unfairly. I am like that.” “Jolly well it may have made you angry. Of course I was fairly sick about your lying; and the house on the cliff; and the wire to Owen; on the top of everything else.” “And even the house might have been a lie, you know,” said Alix, looking up at him. “If it had needed to be invented, and if I could have invented it in time.” “I’m afraid it could. Yes; that’s what I thought. And it made me feel sick. But you’ve promised me about lies, haven’t you; and you must promise me, besides, that if you’re ever angry you’ll come and tell me so. To work, then,” said Giles, and he dropped into his chair and took up Bergson. Alix did not take up her pen. She sat above her paper, but she knew that the last thing she could think of doing that morning was to write to Maman. She might be able to read the book about birds, by Hudson, that Giles had given her, and she drew it towards her and opened it; but soon found she could not read. Her heart seemed to be trembling and her blood trembling. All her mind was shaken; and the picture that flashed, disappeared, and flashed again, was always that memory of Captain Owen’s eyes as he gazed across at Maman from his place before the fire. It was not Maman’s fault. How could she have averted, how could she have avoided such a devotion? A sense of intolerable grief broke down her silence. “Giles,” she said suddenly. “What?” He put down his book at once. He, too, was not really reading. Perhaps his heart was trembling, too. “May I say one thing more?” “All right.” “It is Maman, Giles. It is what you think of her. Perhaps I am always angry with you, because of what you think of her. Let me say it now, then. He cared for her most. But if you knew her you would understand; you would not blame her; perhaps you would not blame him so much.” Giles had turned in his chair and was looking at her over his shoulder, in deep astonishment. “I’ve never said a word against your mother, Alix,” he said in a low voice.