Giles got up.
“Are you going to bed, dear?” Mrs. Bradley asked.
“No; I’m going to read in my room.”
“Do we make too much noise?”
“A little too much. Good-night everybody,” said Giles.
“How tired Giles looks,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“He’s grinding too hard at his work,” said Ruth.
Alix felt that it was not his work. Giles, too, had had a blow; and he was angry with her; darkly, heavily angry; why she could not tell. Only her heart swelled with a suffocating sense of resentment and of tears.
She did not go to the study next morning. She had thought and thought in the night, and she saw now that if Giles knew something that she knew, he also knew something she did not know. She was afraid of Giles and his knowledge; afraid of what they might have to say to each other. And she was angry with him, too, for making her afraid. Pain, dark and mysterious, pain that seemed to have come to her from his eyes, pressed upon her. And it made her think of the suffering that Grand-père’s eyes had conveyed; and of Maman. What she feared was that he would speak to her of Maman.
She did not go; but Giles came to her. She was curled up in her scarf on the sofa in the cold drawing-room, and it made her think of the time that she had waited at Victoria and Giles had been so late. He was not late now; he was early; and he said at once, making no pretence about it: “Come, please, I want to talk to you.”