Giles, standing where she left him, had the sensation of feeling his heart break. “Toppie,” he said in a choking voice.
She stopped and looked round at him. Her grey form among the birches was almost invisible, but he saw the thin oval of her face.
“Toppie.”—Only this—He could hardly speak. He was not thinking. Only that stifling pressure in his heart seemed to break its way out into words—“I do so love you.”
He saw that he touched her. If not his words, then his face of anguish. For the first time that day, if only for a moment, her thought was given to him alone and he felt rather than saw pity in her eyes.
“Giles—I’m so sorry,” she murmured.
“I do so love you,” he repeated, gazing at her. But, even as he gazed, the worst of the anguish was to know that something in his love was changed for ever.
“Dear Giles,” Toppie murmured again. “Forgive me.” And again she repeated, and the phrase was like a fall of snow: “I’m so sorry.”
PART III
CHAPTER I
What had happened to Giles?