“How did he behave?” Giles, after a moment, inquired.
Alix’s flush was deepening. “He tried to embrace me. He tried to kiss me.—As if to be embraced and kissed would decide everything.”
In Giles’s gaze, bent upon her, she was aware of a growing wonder. “It does decide everything, sometimes, you know,” he offered her, as if, for the moment, it was all that he could find to say.
“But not for people of character, Giles,” Alix returned. She did not know from what deep tradition she spoke; but it was behind her, around her, in her very blood. She spoke for the order that was not there to protect her; for the sanctions that she lacked. Great events like marriage were approached with a certain austerity. So much more than oneself was involved. “It could only decide things for les gens sans mœurs,” she said. “It displeased me very much that he should seem to think of me as one.”
“But he didn’t think of you as one. We’re all like that, in England,” said Giles, gazing at her with his wonder. “We’re all sans mœurs when it comes to things like this. We think them so much more important than mœurs.—At least”—he stopped; he reddened:—“A man in love wants to find out, you see,” he finished.
“To find out what?”
“Why, if you care for him. If you’re in love with him.”
“Can it not be found out without kissing?”
“Well—if you don’t care enough for a man to kiss him—Oh, you’re right, perfectly right, Alix, dear; for yourself you’re perfectly right. I’m lost in admiration of your rightness. But didn’t his love touch you at all?”
Alix at this contemplated her friend in silence for some moments. It was not the effort to be frank with Giles that held her thoughts; she found no difficulty in being frank with Giles; it was the effort to read herself. And, finding the truth slowly, she said: “Yes; it did touch me. That was my difficulty. That has been my difficulty ever since, Giles; for I cannot feel it right. He troubled me,” said Alix, and she added to herself, in French, “Il m’a beaucoup troublée.”