“Do you like Les Chardonnerets?” said Alix, standing in the door and smiling at him. She had changed her travelling dress for a white one, a straight white one made of a thin woollen stuff, like her mother’s; and her mother must have had it in readiness for her, for he had never seen her wear it before. Nor had he ever seen her look so happy. “I suppose,” he said, with his hands in his pockets, standing in the middle of the lovely room, “you feel England has ceased to exist; and a good job, too.” “But not at all, Giles,” said Alix, and there was a touch of gay malice in her smile. “How could I feel that when you are here?” “Will cease to exist, as far as you are concerned, once I’m gone,” Giles amended. “France has never existed for you at all,” Alix remarked, though her smile did not become less kind. “I beg your pardon, young woman, it existed for me from the moment I set eyes on you,” said Giles gloomily, “to say nothing of the year I fought over here.” Alix then did a very unexpected thing. She advanced into the centre of the room and clasped her hands around his arm and looked into his face. “Do not be heavy with me, Giles,” she said, “when I am so happy.” He looked down at her fondly and sadly. “I suppose it’s because I see you happy, for the first time, that I feel heavy.” “But why, Giles? Why? Must not a child be happy at finding herself again with her mother; in her own country? Would you not be happy in such a case? Were you not happy when you returned to your home and to your mother after the war?” “That’s not quite the same,” Giles objected. “After all, you’ve not been in daily peril of your life. Of course you’re happy. But try not to show me, too plainly, how little we all mean to you. Try not to show me how quickly you’ll forget all about us when I’m gone.” “But I should never forget you, Giles, even if I never saw you again!” said Alix, holding his arm and looking into his face. Madame Vervier, as they stood thus, passed along the corridor and paused and looked in at them; looked, Giles felt, with surprise. Alix smiled round at her. “He thinks I do not care for England any longer, Maman, or for him, because I am so happy to be back in France with you,” she said. Madame Vervier, after her pause, advanced slowly into the room, and her smile did not conceal from Giles her covert examination of himself. It was a smile deep and soft; superficially acquiescent; but concealing much. Vigilance was in it, and the sense, perhaps, of a special need for vigilance; the recognition, too, perhaps, of something unforeseen that England had already done to her child. Such untroubled intimacy between young man and maiden was not, Giles divined, in the traditions to which madame Vervier was accustomed. Yet her smile suggested no reproof and seemed to acquiesce serenely in Alix’s demonstration of alien habits.