She turned away her head and looked before her; and again she did not speak.
“Please tell me. Was it true? Do you love someone else, Alix?” Giles pleaded.
She was terribly pale. Did she expect him not to have heard? Not to ask, since he knew? “Please, Alix,” he repeated; and then, once more, she bowed her head.
“Well”—Giles did not know how he forced his voice along—“One more question. Will you tell me this—Is it André de Valenbois?”
“Oh, Giles!” said Alix.
She stopped short there in the wind, turned to him. The wind blew her hair across her face and mechanically she put up her hand and pushed it back while she gazed at him. “Oh, Giles!” she repeated, putting back the short tresses that whipped across her eyes and lips. “Can you ask me that?”
Her face was like a beacon set against the storm, high in the sky. In its light he read all the monstrousness of what he had asked, and her hand, still holding back her hair, seemed to clear it for him so that he could receive the full illumination.
As he read her look and saw the tears that suddenly welled up into her eyes, Giles, with an overwhelming lift of the heart, felt himself sobbing. “Forgive me! Forgive me, darling.—It was all that I could think.”
“Oh, poor Giles,” she said brokenly.
They were walking on, quickly now. Somewhere, near by, Giles was conscious of a great brightness approaching him.