“We feel it strange; very strange and dreadful,” said Mrs. Bradley with as much vehemence as she ever displayed on any subject. “And you will, too, I am sure, darling, when you are older and understand what it means to trust someone with your life.—No, no; such a thing would have been impossible with Owen and Toppie. All that I meant was that his love was different in quality from Giles’s. Giles’s nature, in some ways, is deeper than dear Owen’s was.” “Oh, yes. Deeper. One feels that at once,” Alix murmured, while the thought, seen at last clearly, pierced her through that Giles was held from his happiness by an illusion since Toppie might not have cared for Captain Owen had she known how much he cared for Maman. “Perhaps in time she will come to see what Giles is and love him. Do you not think so?” “It’s what I hope for more than anything, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Giles has had such a sad life. You wouldn’t think it, perhaps. He doesn’t show it, unless one knows him very well. Even as a little boy I always felt him rather frustrated and sad. He adored Owen, who didn’t pay much attention to him; and he adored Toppie who never gave him a hope. And then the war came and ended his youth and he saw worse things than Owen saw. He saw the worst things. His best friends were killed beside him. He went through everything. They all had to face the problem of it, the boys like Giles. It was never such a problem to men like Owen. They accepted it and didn’t try to understand. Giles hasn’t been embittered, as some of our young men have; but there is such a weight of grief on his heart. I feel it always. I so long for some happiness to come to him.” It was all true. Alix had seen it in Giles’s face. Under his vehemence, his gaiety, he carried dark memories in his heart; and there were darknesses his mother did not know of. Perhaps it helped him to be less lonely that she should know of them and that they should be her darknesses, too. It gave Alix courage to bear the weight of perplexity and fear, during the winter, to feel that she shared the weight with Giles. She missed him so much at Heathside; yet he was there, too, in her sense that she was helping him with Toppie, that she, too, was shielding Toppie from hurt.