“But do come with us, Giles,” she now said, and he replied that he really had letters he ought to write. “Letters home. You see my time here is up.”
“Up? Indeed? Why up?” monsieur de Maubert inquired very kindly.
“Well, I’ve stayed already longer than I intended and they all expect me back in time to start next Monday on a walking tour around the coast of Cornwall.”
“Next Monday? But that means that you will leave us the day after to-morrow. You will miss our Sunday excursion to Caudebec.”
“I’m afraid I must.”
Alix was looking at him; wondering, he knew, whether his resolve was sudden.
After he had written his letter to his mother, he went out into the village to post it, and coming back by the cliff he was able to see that even if Annette had been an improvisation the drama of the shrimping was being carried out. The two girls were pushing their nets before them on the sands, bare-legged, in the shallow water. Their voices, bell-like, came to him through the evening air. Alix laughed.
Her faculty for fraternizing with the people seemed to him a charming gift. Neither Ruth nor Rosemary would have known what to do with Annette in tête-à-tête. They could have dealt with her coöperatively; in the Girl Guides or one of Aunt Bella’s clubs; but not as an individual. And Toppie, full of still solicitude, would have dealt with her as a soul. The difference was that Alix was not dealing with her at all. She was enjoying Annette as much as Annette was enjoying her. They were simply two girls engaged in a pastime delightful to them both; and Giles surmised that such easy intercourse was perhaps only possible in a country where caste was a thing so impassable that intimacy lent itself to no misinterpretation. Caste in France, he was coming more and more to see, centred itself on the question of marriage. In a country where the romance of the mésalliance, so dear to English hearts, was nearly unknown, there was little likelihood of its disintegration. How little do those know France, thought Giles, who imagine her republican at heart!
Madame Vervier did not return from her drive till supper time, and after supper, during which she talked cheerfully, if with a certain languor, she established herself in the drawing-room with monsieur de Maubert. There was no moon to-night and the light streamed out over the verandah from the drawing-room window. Giles, from his place on the steps, could see that madame Vervier, beside the lamp, had her embroidery and that she spoke to monsieur de Maubert in low tones.
Alix brought out a saucer of milk for a stray kitten that she and Annette had found. “I shall take it to Paris with me,” she said, stroking the back of the little creature, while it drank, half choked with purrs and lapping.