It would never have given her so much pain Giles, with a sudden glow of indignation, felt, as it had already given her daughter. What Alix had suffered in wrestling with her problem was in her voice. “Blame you? I? You poor kid!” he exclaimed. And he added: “After all, his silence meant devotion to herself.” “Do you think so?” said Alix. “I am afraid she will not feel it so. I am afraid she will feel that it meant cowardice and lack of loyalty;—as it does to me.” Giles was now aware of an uncomfortable astonishment. He had to remember that Alix was nearly seventeen. A woman could not have spoken with a more secure assurance of putting him in his place; and if, by the same token, she put Owen in his place, was she not, from her own point of view, her woman’s dignity veiled only by her child’s ignorance, justified in doing so? For if Owen had really kept madame Vervier in the dark she might have a right to resentment. The two culprits should have had no secrets from one another. “I see,” he repeated, lamely, as he felt. “And you would not like to spoil her memory of him?” “We kept it from your mother and from Toppie because it would spoil their memory of him,” said Alix. “I know; but you’ll own, won’t you, that it would be a far worse spoiling for them?” “Yes. For them it would be worse. But why should anyone feel pain now, when it is all over? Why should anything be spoiled?” “It’s only,” said Giles, going carefully, “that it seems unfair to your mother to let me come and keep her in ignorance of what I know. It’s for you to judge, Alix; but since you love your mother so much, I rather wonder that you can bear to keep such a secret from her. And, quite apart from me, oughtn’t she to know just what she does send you back to?” “Send me back to?” Alix echoed, and her eyes met his strangely. “Yes. Before you come back in the Autumn, don’t you think she ought to know?” “Do you really imagine, Giles, that if Maman knew, she would send me back?” “Well”—he felt that he flushed. He had not foreseen this emergency—“since I know, and since I want you back;—why not she?” “Do you count Maman’s pride for nothing, Giles?” Madame Vervier’s pride had never for a moment engaged his attention, and did not now. His attention was fully engaged by Alix’s pride, facing him with a look of granite. “I don’t really see why she should take it so hardly,” he said after a moment; but he was horribly uncomfortable, for he was not speaking with frankness to his young friend. “Your relation to us has, really, nothing to do with her relation to Owen. It’s a new thing; and that’s an old one; and as you say, it’s all over.”