“I know it must seem strange,” said Alix. “When you have had so much to bear. But I had to come. No, Giles did not send me. He would not have let me come if he had known. He does not think of himself. He thinks of you—only—always. Giles would never lift a finger to save himself—although his heart might be breaking.”
“Alix—this is impossible.” Toppie was scanning her face with stern yet startled eyes. “No one knows as well as I do what Giles would do for me.—You are not yourself.—You seem to me to be hysterical.”
“No; you do not know what he would do,” said Alix. She felt that her heart had begun to knock with heavy thuds against her side and a shudder passed through her as she sat there straightly, her hands pressed together in her lap, her gaze fixed on Toppie; but she saw her way to the end of what she had to say and she could say it. “You cannot know it. No one knows but he and I—and my mother. He has spared you; and he has spared someone else. But I must tell. Toppie, your lover was not true to you. He did not love you as you love him. He did not understand love as Giles understands it, or love you with a tenth of the love that Giles has given.—Oh, Toppie—I am sorry”—Toppie had started to her feet and was drawing away with a look of horror—“But you must know. You must not shut yourself away from life because of someone who is not with you at all.—It was my mother that Captain Owen loved. He was with us three times in Paris and he kept it from you.”
“You are mad! You do not know what you are saying. Go away. Go away at once.” Toppie stood there as if she had been a snake—ghastly with disgust and repudiation.
“I am not mad. It is true. Giles knows. I lied to Mrs. Bradley when she asked me why we had never seen Captain Owen again. When I saw that he had hidden it, I lied. I did not understand why he had kept it from you all and it was Giles who told me—that it was because he had betrayed you by loving Maman most. Three times he was with us in Paris that Spring before he died.”
“Do you know what you are saying?” Toppie stared at her with dilated eyes. “Do you understand what you are saying? Owen with you? Before he died?—Why not? Why not?—He was your mother’s friend.”
“It was friendship in Cannes. In Paris it was different. Giles made me see why it was different. He would not have kept it from you if it had been friendship.”
“Giles? Giles made you see?” Toppie put her hands to her head as if her skull cracked with the dreadful blows Alix dealt her, and, while a deathly sickness crept over her, Alix went on relentlessly: “He had seen them together in Paris. They did not see him, but he saw them walking in the Bois. That was why, when I lied to his mother, he knew it was a lie. Last Winter, Toppie; when I first came. And I was to help him in keeping it from you always.”
Toppie stood still, up there in the thin bright sunlight, her hands pressed now before her face; and, with the growing sickness, Alix suddenly seemed to see another figure beside her. It was as if Maman, too, was standing there, in the bright sunlight, with that intent look; dumb, like a figure in a nightmare; yet in her stillness conveying a terrible reproach. “It was not Maman’s fault,” Alix muttered. “She cannot help it if she is loved. She did not know that he had kept it from you.”
From behind Toppie’s hands now came a strange voice. It was as if it spoke from the pressure of some iron vice screwed down upon it.