She had felt herself angry with Giles, because of the injustice of his anger towards herself; but as she faced him in the study, the grey January morning outside the window, the gas-fire creaking in its dismal mirth in the grate, her anger went down. She felt pity for him. He, too, had not slept; he, too, had had a horrible night; and if he looked at her thus sternly it was, she saw, more because he was suffering than because he was angry. He stood before her, his hands thrust deeply in his pockets, and what he said was: “Look here, Alix, were you lying last night?”
Astonishment almost bereft her of breath. Lying? Could he have thought it possible that she was not lying? Could he have thought it possible—turning it over and over in his mind during the night—that she did not know about Captain Owen’s leaves? It flashed across her that, if she could find another lie, now, for him, and say that she had not been lying, he might believe her. He would have no knowledge with which to contradict that lie. But, while she looked at him, feeling her face getting whiter and whiter, what strangely came to her was that she could not lie to Giles. It was better to share whatever pain there was to be shared with him than to be shut out, with her lie, in loneliness, if in safety. So, keeping her eyes on him, in a steady voice she said: “Yes. I was lying.”
Giles at this contemplated her for a long time and it seemed to be with deep thoughtfulness rather than with any other feeling.
“Why?” he said at last.
“How could I not?” asked Alix.
“How could you not?—You can invent such a story, in every detail, and then come and ask me how not? What in Heaven’s name do you mean?” said Giles. “Have you no sense of truth?”
“Your mother did not know. Captain Owen never told your mother.” Alix’s voice was trembling, for she heard the emotion in his. “Would you have had me say to her, after he had kept silence, that he had been with us three times in Paris?”
Giles’s expression altered. “Three times?”
“Yes. Three. Not the once she thought. That time in February was the first. He came twice afterwards. You did not know?”
“No,” said Giles, “I didn’t know that. I thought it was only the once.”