“She is very beautiful,” Giles repeated, almost dully; as if that were all he could find to say.
“Oh, Giles, if you could only know her!” said Alix. It was possible to speak like this to him now. And his back was turned to her and that made it easier. She leaned her forehead on her hands and looked down at the table while she went on: “Let me tell you what Maman makes me think of always. A mountain torrent. We have them in the mountains near Montarel. So swift, and dark, and clear, with such deep pools among the rocks; and such great leaps. Oh, more than beautiful! I saw an eagle once when I was kneeling by a pool. As I looked down into the water, it was as if I looked down into the sky and there was an eagle, wheeling in the blue—far, far below me. It gave me the strangest feeling; like Maman sometimes. And her lovely, small things; like the little pinks and campanulas that grow along the banks; so sweet and tiny; and little mésanges with bright blue heads, hanging upside down in the birches. There is no one like her. Everyone else is still and dull beside her. Who could help loving her? Toppie would love her, I am sure. You would love her, too, Giles, if you knew her.”
He had turned, while she spoke, and was looking at her and, lifting her head, she met his eyes and saw how deeply she had touched him. Deeply touched, deeply troubled, Giles looked across at her; but she saw that he was thinking of her and not of Maman. It was as if he were so sorry for her, and so fond of her, that he hardly knew what to say. And what he did say at last was: “You are rather like a mountain torrent yourself; eagles and campanulas and all!”
“I? Oh, no.” She was glad that Giles should think that of her, but it was of Maman she wanted him to think. “I am one of the still ones; one of the dull ones, beside Maman. And I never have great shattering leaps.” She looked away from Giles as she saw further into her simile, saw things she wanted him—oh! so wanted him—to see and understand. “Let me tell you, Giles. When one loves her, that is what one fears for her—those great leaps down from the rocks. So splendid; so bright and splendid; but so dangerous. There is danger for her always. When one loves her, that is what one fears.”
He said nothing. He stood there, leaning back against the window. Never in her life had she so spoken to anybody. For no one but this young Englishman, so lately a stranger, could she have found such words. They rose up from her heart unbidden, and the impulse beneath them was the deepest impulse of her life. More than the child’s love for its mother. There was in it a maternal love, watchful and succouring, for a creature cherished and in peril.
She had not looked back at Giles, and he came presently to her table and stood above her, moving the objects upon it here and there, as if he could not find the words to use. And at last he said: “You are right to love your mother. Never think I don’t understand that.”
“Perhaps we both love in the same way, Giles,” said Alix, still not looking at him. “You think of Toppie—and I think of Maman—perhaps in the same way.”
Giles stood very still. Then he said gently: “Perhaps we do. I feel Toppie in danger; in dreadful danger of being hurt; if that’s what you mean.”
“Yes, that is what I mean. And I can help you with Toppie. I can help you to keep the things that would hurt her from her. And perhaps, some day, if the time came, you would help me with Maman.”
Giles had ceased to move the inkstand and candle-sticks. He put his hands in his pockets. “What do you think of as her danger, Alix?” he brought out.