Giles stared at him. It was near enough to cause him to stare. “Well?” smiled monsieur de Valenbois. “How did you know I was thinking about Alix?” Giles demanded. “How did I know?—Because I was!” laughed monsieur de Valenbois. “And the same thoughts.” Madame Vervier was looking at them both, and again, Giles imagined, with her veiled vigilance. “The Russian ballet?” she questioned. “What has Alix to do with the Russian ballet?” “Forgive my execrable taste, _chère madame_!” exclaimed monsieur de Valenbois, “in making mademoiselle Alix the subject of these divinations! But did you remark the way in which she bounded out of the house just now? It was a remarkable bound,” smiled monsieur de Valenbois. “It started the same strain of thought in me and in monsieur Giles, you see. We were discussing the Russian ballet last night.” “But I wasn’t thinking about the Russian ballet,” Giles rather helplessly protested, and he felt madame Vervier not quite pleased. “That’s what I should have thought, no doubt, if it had come to my mind. But it didn’t.” “Ah; but the essential you will not deny,” said monsieur de Valenbois, and Giles, feeling his blushes mount again, wondered just how far the essential had indeed been divined. Alix was gazing first at him, then at monsieur de Valenbois and then at her mother; and her mother’s eyes, while they caressed and approved her silence, put her aside into the retirement suitable to a _jeune fille_. “Monsieur Giles has disowned the essential,” she remarked. “Do you like him, Giles?” Alix questioned when, after breakfast, she moved off with her friend to the cliff-path. Giles really felt a little abashed before her calm; felt that he deserved, rather than monsieur de Valenbois, madame Vervier’s implicit reproof. “Monsieur de Valenbois?” he questioned. “Very much. Don’t you? I think him charming.” “Charming,” Alix reflected. “Have you known him for a long time?” Giles inquired. “A long time? I?” Alix’s eyes came back to him surprised. “I never saw him before.” “Really. He’s a new friend of your mother’s, then.” “Yes. They met at Cannes last winter,” said Alix. “Charming. He is that, I suppose; but I think it a little _agaçant_ for anyone to look so sure of happiness.” “Sure of happiness? You think he looks that?” “Yes. As if, always, he had had everything he wanted. That is a little _agaçant_, I think. Though of course it is not his fault.” “It may be only a part of his intelligence, his general tact and taste, to look it,” Giles suggested. “He would always be thinking about his responsibilities towards his surroundings. If he wasn’t happy, nobody would know it.” “But would that not be for his own sake rather than for theirs? He would feel it a disadvantage to look unhappy,” said Alix. “But he’s so kind,” said Giles. “He seems to me, now that I come to think of it, even more kind than he is charming. He’s been most awfully kind to me already.”