“I am a little jealous of Giles, you know, mademoiselle Alix,” smiled André, just raising his eyes to hers. “As a Frenchman, I am jealous of his unconscious proselytizing. Once or twice yesterday I was afraid for France. Do not forget, when you listen to him, that our French roots are the most tenacious in the world. Perhaps that is why we do not found empires. Sever us from our soil and we bleed to death—or else, a worse destiny, wither. Do not forget that the unconscious is crafty.”
Alix, opposite her mother, sat silent. Whether, in her mother’s presence, she had lost her readiness Giles could not divine. But she made no reply.
“Alix has learned in England to be dispassionate,” said madame Vervier, her lovely russet head a little bent downward. “She has learned to combine love for another country with loyalty to her own. That is something England has given her.”
“Ah—but that’s impossible;—impossible, for our French hearts, you know!” laughed André. “We are not dispassionate. To be dispassionate is to be tepid, sleepy, indifferent;—to be withering, in fact. No, no, no, if mademoiselle Alix transferred her love, it would be to transfer her loyalty also. It is for that that I beg her to stand firm;—to remember that England can never give her what France can give.”
“Encore du café, Maman, s’il vous plaît,” said Alix. She passed her cup to her mother. She did not look at André at all. Her voice, for all its disconcerting matter-of-fact, conveyed no provocation. But, glancing over at André, Giles saw that he suddenly blushed hotly, and then, as she took Alix’s cup and poured out the milk and coffee, that a deep colour mounted also to madame Vervier’s brow.
Yes. It would probably rain, thought Giles. He waited for Alix on the cliff. It was a sunny, yet tumultuous and menacing day. Great clouds piled themselves along the horizon; the sails of the fishing boats were bent sideways as they went, on a ruffled sea, before the wind. “Yes. Rain is coming,” he muttered to himself, though he was not thinking of the weather. They had all parted in silence at the breakfast-table. Even madame Vervier had found no words.
Suddenly André came down the steps of Les Chardonnerets. He had his cigarette and an odd bright smile was on his lips; yet as he approached he reminded Giles of the sails on the sea. André might still try to keep up appearances; but the wind was blowing him.
But he was not going to keep up appearances. “So,” he said, “to-day is a day of destiny. You are not at all unconscious, are you, Giles? You have come to plead the cause of your laggard young friend the Englishman?”
Well, was the thought that went through Giles, let him have it, then. “Why do you call him laggard?” he inquired, and he knew that the anger that boiled up in his breast was so violent that he could have struck André as he stood there. “Would you be eager to take into your family a young girl placed as Alix is placed?”
André became very pale, but his eyes lighted. His sail scooped the sea.