She moved to them, and passed her arm in Alix’s, so that they stood, all three, linked together, and, smiling on, she remarked: “You must not give your good friend cause for such fancies, darling.” She spoke in English and her English was almost as perfect as Alix’s. The _r_ of “darling,” just rolled, like the almost imperceptible ripple on the smooth surface of a shell, made the word at once more playful and more caressing. And she went on, looking from one to the other: “You must not seem to forget him in finding me. Our kind allies must have no cause, at any time, for suspecting that we French have not faithful hearts.” “But I have just told him, Maman, that I should never forget him,” said Alix as they moved towards the door. “And there can be no question of that, Giles, for you will come often and often to Les Chardonnerets, will you not?” Giles did not answer this question. It was unexpected, and its sweetness was unexpected. His mind, however, was occupied with the discomfort that came to him at seeing himself made to appear so personally involved in regrets for Alix’s removal. It was not himself, first and foremost, he had been thinking of at all when he felt those regrets; it was of England; of his mother and Toppie; of the noisy, untidy, but devoted family life; of the birch-wood at evening where he had taught Alix the song of the willow-warbler; of his beautiful Oxford and “The Messiah” on Winter evenings. These were the things he wanted Alix to remember, and it could not console him to know that she expected to see him again when he felt sure that she would see his England disappear from her life without one pang. CHAPTER IV A table had been laid in a corner of the verandah, and a stout woman, bareheaded and in _savates_, was carrying out tea and coffee.