He saw her maimed for life. Yes; it had, with André, gone as deep as that. She had unflinchingly performed the surgical operation, severed the limb and bound the arteries. He saw her bandaged, spotted with blood, drained of joy; but tranquil; moving forward.
“It was time,” she said as if to herself, looking before her. “When Alix returned to me, when I saw what I had done to her, I knew that it was time.”
He could not think of one thing to say to her; not one word of comfort or approbation. He would have liked to say that she would be happier; but he did not believe that she would be. He would have liked to say that she had behaved worthily; but the note of moral appraisal was repellent to his imagination. And under everything went that bitter memory of who André was, and whose successor.
“But there were further reasons for André’s acquiescence,” said madame Vervier suddenly.
They had gone for a long way in silence. A light breeze met them, now that they had rounded a headland, and the thin panels of madame Vervier’s dress were blown backward as she went. Goddess-like as he had always felt her, there was something disembodied, unearthly in her aspect now. It was as if, gliding through sad Elysian fields, beautiful, changeless, with gazing eyes, she contemplated the sorrows of the past. Yet her voice, as she spoke again, was not the voice of an Elysian spirit. He recognized as he heard it that a bitter humanity still beat at the heart of her confidences and that her tranquillity was not the shining of an inner peace, but a shield proudly worn. What she had to tell him was the thing most difficult to tell; the thing that throbbed and echoed in her, as the scar of the severed limb burns and remembers; and all her voice was altered as she spoke of it.
“There were further reasons,” she repeated, turning her face away from him to the sea. “He knows that it is best to go, since to remain would be to love Alix.”
And through all his fear, Giles saw it now; he had clung to the hope that it was an ugly dream. He measured, in a sense of physical sickness, the difference between an ugly dream and reality as in madame Vervier’s words his dread was made close and palpable.
“But isn’t that impossible?” It was his English voice that asked the question. His French understanding knew that it was possible.
“Why so?” madame Vervier’s French voice returned. All the acquiescence of her race spoke in it. “Alix is exquisite.”
Alix’s face swam before Giles. “But she is your daughter.”