“What have I done to you!” Alix muttered.
Maman went beside her, in her white dress, with the heelless shoes such as she wore at Vaudettes, and bare-headed. It was not blame. Maman’s look had passed beyond all thought of blame; it had passed even beyond pity. Alix saw suddenly that what it meant was that she was waiting to see what Alix would now say to her.
“I must think. I must think,” Alix muttered to herself. But she did not need to think. It was as if in a kaleidoscope, turned in her hands, memories, till now unrelated, fell suddenly into a pattern. “La belle madame Vervier. Divorcée, vous savez.”—Grand-père’s eyes. Giles’s silence, when they had met. That strange, deep blush that had dyed Giles’s face when, in the study, they had spoken of Captain Owen’s leaves in Paris; André de Valenbois. Maman’s lie to André about Toppie. All the things she had read in poetry, in novels, of beautiful guilty women who had lovers. And, creeping through her young heart like a slow surreptitious flame—falling into place, curving with darts of ardent colour into the pattern—most recent, most intimate intuitions of what a woman’s love might mean. “Maman!” she moaned. She fell at Maman’s feet in supplication. Yet, while she implored her forgiveness, she was sheltering her, too. She was putting her arms around her to protect her from the world’s cruel scrutiny. She was promising her—oh, with what a passion of fidelity—that their love, the love of mother and child, was unharmed, set apart, firmly fixed and sacred for ever.
When she reached Heathside she heard that the little boys had returned. They were shouting in the garden with the dogs, and Alix retraced her steps, skirting the kitchen-garden wall, going softly in by the little gate, creeping along the back passages past kitchen and scullery unobserved. Here was Giles’s study. She turned the handle and went in.
Giles was there, sitting at his desk and writing. He had a sick, dogged look; but he had recovered his composure. He even, as he turned his head and looked at her, tried to summon a smile of welcome and she knew that he felt ashamed for having broken down before her.
Alix shut the door and stood against it. “Giles, I have done a dreadful thing,” she said. Only when she leaned against the door did she know that she was almost fainting. She felt that all that she desired was sleep. To tell Giles and then to fall into oblivion. Far away, in France, she saw where she and Maman, in a sunny garden, walked hand in hand. They both seemed very old. They were very sad. Yet they smiled at each other. But this vision was far away. The black ordeal was before her. “I have done a dreadful thing,” she repeated. “Perhaps you will not forgive me.”
Giles had risen to his feet and stood, over against the window, tall and dark with his ruffled head. He was looking at her and his eyes were frightened.
“I have been to Toppie,” said Alix. “I have told her everything.”
He did not find a word to say.
“It was for your sake I did it, Giles,” said Alix in a dry, unappealing voice. “I told her so that she might know it was you who loved her; not he. Perhaps you will not forgive me.”