“You think that no one will have you. It is not so.—Have you tried?”
“No.” Giles shook his head. “I don’t think I want to try, really—I don’t think I want her different.”
“Dieu!” madame Vervier now breathed. “You will embrace a celibate life?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I shall. I never thought about it,” poor Giles muttered. “I’ve never thought about Toppie in that way. I’ve always loved her—ever since I was a boy—knowing that she could only be for somebody else.”
“But then”—madame Vervier in a slight bewilderment groped her way among these unfamiliar shapes—“if you have never thought about her in that way—perhaps you will be able to think about Alix. She, too, cares so much for your Toppie. Toppie would become your patron-saint. Together you would worship at her shrine.—Does it interfere with what I had planned for you and Alix?”
“I’m afraid it does. I’m afraid it absolutely interferes.” Giles, his face suffused with red, sat looking down, struggling with difficulty to master a sense of tears. “It’s impossible, you know; quite impossible. Dear little Alix. All I ask, you must see that, is to take care of her.”
“I have blundered,” said madame Vervier. “Forgive me. We will speak of it no more.”
“But you’ve spoken of it beautifully. I’m glad to have you know,” said Giles, and the strange sense that this was so made part of his amazement.
“We will speak quite differently, then, of Alix,” said madame Vervier. “We will talk of her, not as your future wife, but as your little friend. Even so she is fortunate. And I!—how fortunate I am—for I know that I can count upon you absolutely. You will help me as no one else can help me. If not you, then another English husband. Who is this Lady Mary of whom Alix has written to me? She has sons?”
It was like being borne on the wings of a great aeroplane from continent to continent;—one nearly as strange as the other. Giles really felt inclined to gasp and ask for mercy. He could not go so fast or rise so far without a sense of giddiness.