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 Introduction to
Computer Graphics
with OpenGL ES
 Introduction to
Computer Graphics
with OpenGL ES

JungHyun Han
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
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Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

© 2018 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

No claim to original U.S. Government works

Printed on acid-free paper

Version Date: 20180424

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4987-4892-6 (Hardback)

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Dedication

To my wonderful boy, Jihoon, who is embarking on a new journey in his life.

Contents

Preface xiii

Part I - Rendering Pipeline

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Computer Graphics Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Graphics API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Mathematics: Basics 7
2.1 Matrices and Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Coordinate System and Basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3 Dot Product . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4 Cross Product . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.5 Line, Ray, and Linear Interpolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3 Modeling 17
3.1 Polygon Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.1.1 Polygon Mesh Creation∗ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.1.2 Polygon Mesh Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2 Surface Normals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.2.1 Triangle Normals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.2.2 Vertex Normals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3 Polygon Mesh Export and Import . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4 Spaces and Transforms 31

4.1 2D Transforms and Matrix Representations . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.1.1 Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.1.2 Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.1.3 Translation and Homogeneous Coordinates . . . . . . 33
4.1.4 Composition of 2D Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.2 Affine Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.3 3D Transforms and Matrix Representations . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.3.1 Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.3.2 Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.3.3 Translation and Homogeneous Coordinates . . . . . . 41

vii
viii Contents

4.4 Application: World Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

4.5 Rotation and Object-space Basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.6 Inverse Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

5 Vertex Processing 53
5.1 World Transform Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.2 View Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2.1 Camera Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2.2 View Matrix for Space Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.3 Right-hand System versus Left-hand System . . . . . . . . . 60
5.4 Projection Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.4.1 View Frustum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.4.2 Projection Matrix and Clip Space . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.4.3 Derivation of Projection Matrix∗ . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

6 OpenGL ES and Shader 75

6.1 OpenGL ES and Shading Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.2 Vertex Shader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.3 OpenGL ES for Shaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
6.4 Attributes and Uniforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
6.4.1 Attributes and Buffer Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6.4.2 Uniforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6.5 Drawcalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

7 Rasterizer 87
7.1 Clipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7.2 Perspective Division . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
7.3 Back-face Culling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
7.3.1 Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
7.3.2 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
7.4 Viewport Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
7.5 Scan Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

8 Image Texturing 103

8.1 Texture Coordinates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
8.2 Surface Parameterization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
8.3 Texture Definition in GL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
8.4 Texture Wrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
8.5 Texture Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
8.5.1 Magnification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
8.5.2 Minification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
8.6 Mipmapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
8.6.1 Mipmap Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
8.6.2 Mipmap Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
8.7 Texture Filtering in GL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
 Contents ix

8.8 Mipmappig Examples in GL∗ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

8.9 Fragment Shader for Texturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

9 Lighting 127
9.1 Phong Lighting Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
9.1.1 Diffuse Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
9.1.2 Specular Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
9.1.3 Ambient Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
9.1.4 Emissive Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
9.2 Shaders for Phong Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

10 Output Merger 139

10.1 Z-buffering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
10.2 Alpha Blending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Part II - Advanced Topics

11 Euler Transforms and Quaternions 149
11.1 Euler Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
11.1.1 World-space Euler Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
11.1.2 Object-space Euler Transforms∗ . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
11.2 Euler Transforms for Keyframe Animation . . . . . . . . . . 153
11.2.1 2D Keyframe Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
11.2.2 3D Keyframe Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
11.2.3 Interpolation of Euler Angles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
11.3 Quaternions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
11.3.1 Quaternion Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
11.3.2 Rotations Using Quaternions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
11.3.3 Interpolation of Quaternions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
11.3.4 Conversion between Quaternion and Rotation Matrix 163

12 Screen-space Object Manipulation 167

12.1 Picking an Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
12.1.1 Screen-space Ray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
12.1.2 Camera-space Ray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
12.1.3 Object-space Ray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
12.1.4 Intersection between Ray and Bounding Volume . . . 171
12.1.5 Intersection between Ray and Triangle . . . . . . . . . 175
12.2 Rotating an Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

13 Character Animation 185

13.1 Skeleton and Space Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
13.1.1 Skeleton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
13.1.2 Space Change between Bones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
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x Contents

13.1.3 Character Space to Bone Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

13.2 Forward Kinematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
13.3 Skinning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
13.3.1 Vertex Blending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
13.3.2 Integration with Keyframe Animation∗ . . . . . . . . 198
13.4 Inverse Kinematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
13.4.1 Analytic Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
13.4.2 Cyclic Coordinate Descent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

14 Normal Mapping 209

14.1 Height Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
14.2 Normal Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
14.3 Shaders for Normal Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
14.4 Tangent-space Normal Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
14.4.1 Tangent-space Normals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
14.4.2 Shaders for Tangent-space Normal Mapping . . . . . . 219
14.4.3 Computing Tangent Spaces∗ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
14.5 Authoring Normal Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

15 Shadow Mapping 231

15.1 Two-pass Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
15.2 Shadow Map Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
15.3 GL Program and Shaders for Shadow Mapping∗ . . . . . . . 236
15.3.1 First-pass Shaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
15.3.2 Render-to-Texture and Framebuffer Object . . . . . . 238
15.3.3 Second-pass Shaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
15.4 Hard Shadow versus Soft Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

16 Texturing toward Global Illumination 249

16.1 Global Illumination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
16.1.1 Ray Tracing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
16.1.2 Radiosity∗ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
16.2 Light Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
16.3 Environment Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
16.3.1 Cube Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
16.3.2 GL Program and Shaders for Cube Mapping . . . . . 262
16.4 Ambient Occlusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

17 Parametric Curves and Surfaces 271

17.1 Parametric Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
17.1.1 Bézier Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
17.1.2 Hermite Curve and Catmull-Rom Spline . . . . . . . . 275
17.1.3 Application: Camera Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
17.2 Parametric Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
17.2.1 Bilinear Patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
 Contents xi

17.2.2 Biquadratic Bézier Patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

17.2.3 Bicubic Bézier Patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
17.2.4 Bézier Triangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288

18 Surface Tessellation 295

18.1 Displacement Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
18.1.1 GPU Tessellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
18.1.2 Shaders and Tessellator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
18.2 PN-triangles∗ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
18.2.1 Computing Control Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
18.2.2 Computing Control Normals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
18.2.3 GPU Tessellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
18.2.4 Shaders and Tessellator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

References 319

Index 321
Preface

OpenGL ES is the standard graphics API for mobile and embedded sys-
tems. Virtually every pixel on a smartphone’s screen is generated by OpenGL
ES. However, there exists no textbook on OpenGL ES which has a balance be-
tween theory and practicality. This book is written to answer that need and
presents the must-know in real-time graphics with OpenGL ES. This book
suits the advanced undergraduate and beginner graduate courses in computer
graphics.
Another primary group of readers that this book may benefit includes mo-
bile 3D app developers, who have experiences in OpenGL ES and shader
programming but lack theoretical background in 3D graphics. A few excel-
lent programming manuals on OpenGL ES can be found in bookstores, but
they do not provide a sufficient level of mathematical background for devel-
opers. Assuming that the readers have a minimal understanding of vectors
and matrices, this book provides an opportunity to combine their knowledge
with the background theory of computer graphics.
This book is built upon the author’s previous work 3D Graphics for Game
Programming published in 2011. Reusing roughly half of the contents from
that book, several new topics and a considerable number of OpenGL ES and
shader programs have been added. As OpenGL ES is a subset of OpenGL,
this book is also suitable for beginner OpenGL programmers.
The organization and presentation of this book have been carefully designed
so as to enable the readers to easily understand the key aspects of real-time
graphics and OpenGL ES. Over the chapters, numerous 3D illustrations are
provided to help the readers effortlessly grasp the complicated topics. An
important organizational feature of this book is that “non-core” details are
presented in separate notes (in shaded boxes) and in optional sections (marked
by asterisks). They can be safely skipped without incurring any difficulty in
understanding the subsequent topics of the book.
If the optional parts are excluded, the entire contents of this book can be
covered in a 16-week semester for graduate classes. For undergraduate classes,
however, this feat will be difficult. According to the author’s experience,
teaching Chapters 1 through 14 is a feasible goal.
The sample programs presented in this book are available on GitHub:
https://github.com/medialab-ku/openGLESbook. The site also provides links
to the full-length lecture notes as PowerPoint files and additional materials
including video clips.

xiii
xiv Preface

Acknowledgments

The author is deeply indebted to his students at the 3D Interactive Media

Lab of Korea University. Virtually all visual illustrations were generated by
Myoung Gon Kim and Seungjik Lee, who have exceptional talents in both
programming and visual arts. Inbum Park performed a lot of 3ds Max works
requested by the author, and JeongHyeon Ahn was in charge of all sample
programs. HyeongYeop Kang consistently helped the author reorganize the
chapters, and Paul C. Gloumeau proofread the beta version of this book.
The other lab members, Seungho Baek, SungIk Cho, Sang-bin Kim, Seung-
wook Kim, Jinwoo Choi, Geonsun Lee, Min Hyung Kee, Seongsu Kwon, and
Sun Young Park, always took time out of their busy schedules to respond
to my inquiries in real time. The content of this book has been gradually
built through the courses offered at Korea University. The students of the
classes provided the author with invaluable feedback with which the book
was improved.
My greatest appreciation goes to the brightest faces I have met in my life,
Kyung-Ok, Jeehee, and Jihoon. Thank you for always being with me. I love
you so much.

JungHyun Han
Computer Science Department
Korea University
Seoul, Korea
 Part I
Rendering Pipeline
Chapter 1
Introduction

Computer graphics refers to the process of generating images using com-

puters. Three-dimensional (3D) computer graphics takes as input 3D repre-
sentations of objects and performs various calculations on them to produce
images. The last three decades have seen a profusion of 3D computer graphics
in films and video games.
Computer-generated images are often called frames. An illusion of move-
ment is generated on the screen by displaying a sequence of changing frames.
The frames can be generated at real time. The best-known area of real-time
graphics is video games, which typically produce more than 30 frames per
second (fps). On the other hand, special effects in films often take as long as
minutes or hours for a single frame. In return, we may obtain images that are
hardly distinguishable from views of the real world. The algorithms and tech-
niques adopted in real-time graphics are fairly different from those in off-line
graphics. This book presents the essential components of real-time graphics.

1.1 Computer Graphics Production

Computer graphics production is often described in five steps shown in
Fig. 1.1, where graphic artists and programmers are the key players. Model-
ing, rigging, and animation are off-line tasks performed by the artists. At run
time, computer programs replay the animation and perform rendering and
post-processing.
A model is referred to as a computer representation of an object, and model-
ing is the process of creating the objects comprising the virtual scenes. Con-

Fig. 1.1: The major steps in computer graphics production.

1
2 Introduction to Computer Graphics with OpenGL ES

Fig. 1.2: Almost all 3D models in real-time graphics are represented in polygon
meshes.

sider a baseball game. We need players, bats, balls, etc. They are usually
represented in polygons, as shown in Fig. 1.2. Such polyhedral objects are
named the polygon meshes.
The scope of modeling is not limited to constructing 3D models but includes
creating textures. The simplest form of a texture is an image that is pasted
on an object’s surface. Fig. 1.3-(a) shows an image texture created for the
baseball player model. The texture is pasted on the surface of the player at
run time to produce the result shown in Fig. 1.3-(b).
The baseball player should be able to hit a ball, run, and slide into a base,
i.e., we need to animate the player. For this purpose, we usually specify
the skeleton or rig of the player. Fig. 1.4 shows a skeleton embedded in the
polygon model. We then define how the skeletal motion deforms the player’s
polygon mesh such that, for example, the polygons of the arm are made to
move when the arm bone is lifted. This process is often referred to as rigging.
The graphics artist creates a sequence of skeletal motions. At run time, the
skeletal motions are replayed “per frame” and the polygon mesh is animated
over frames. Fig. 1.5 shows a few snapshots of an animated player.
Rendering is the process of generating a 2D image from a 3D scene. The
image makes up a frame. Fig. 1.6 shows the results of rendering the dynamic
scene of Fig. 1.5. Realistic rendering is a complicated process, in which lighting
as well as texturing is an essential component. For example, the shadow shown
in Fig. 1.6 is a result of lighting.
The final step in the production of computer graphics, post-processing, is
optional. It uses a set of special operations to give additional effects to the
rendered images. An example is motion blur shown in Fig. 1.7. When a
camera captures a scene, the resulting image represents the scene over a short
period of time. Consequently, rapidly moving objects may result in motion
 Introduction 3

Fig. 1.3: Image texturing example: (a) This texture is a collection of small
images, each of which is for a part of the baseball player’s body. The texture
may look weird at first glance, but Chapter 8 will present how such a texture
is created and used. (b) The texture is pasted on the player’s polygon mesh
at run time.

Fig. 1.4: A skeleton is composed of bones and is embedded in the polygon mesh
for animation. This figure illustrates the bones as if they were solids, but the
bones do not have explicit geometric representations. They are conceptual
entities that are usually represented as matrices. This will be detailed in
Chapter 13.

blur. It is a desirable effect in computer graphics, without which the moving

objects would appear staggered or jerky. Another example is the depth-of-field
effect, which makes objects outside of the camera’s focus appear blurry.
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4 Introduction to Computer Graphics with OpenGL ES

Fig. 1.5: The polygon mesh can be animated by controlling the skeleton
embedded in it.

Fig. 1.6: Results of rendering the animated player.

Fig. 1.7: Motion blur effects.

 Introduction 5

1.2 Graphics API

The artists perform modeling, rigging, and animation in an off-line mode.
Dedicated programs such as Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya are pop-
ularly used. In contrast, run-time animation, rendering, and post-processing
are executed by an application program. In games, the application is typi-
cally built upon a game engine. See Fig. 1.8. A game engine is a development
tool that provides a suite of indispensable modules for animation, rendering,
and post-processing. Modern game engines provide additional modules for
physics-based simulation, sound, artificial intelligence, and so on. Well-known
game engines include Unity Technologies’ Unity and Epic Games’ Unreal En-
gine.
In general, a game engine is built upon graphics APIs (Application Pro-
gramming Interfaces). Two popular APIs are Direct3D [1] and OpenGL
(Open Graphics Library) [2]. Direct3D is part of Microsoft’s DirectX API
and is available only for Microsoft platforms. OpenGL is a cross-platform
API managed by a non-profit consortium for open standards, the Khronos
Group. OpenGL ES (OpenGL for Embedded Systems) is a 3D API for hand-
held and embedded devices and is defined as a subset of OpenGL. It is widely
used for mobile graphics programming.

Fig. 1.8: Software and hardware hierarchy for mobile games.

Graphics APIs provide 3D applications or game engines with essential

graphics functions. Today, such functions are implemented in GPU (Graphics
Processing Unit). It is a processor specialized for graphics. A graphics API
can be taken as the software interface of the GPU. The API translates the
application’s graphics commands to instructions that can be executed by the
GPU.
Chapter 2
Mathematics: Basics

This chapter delivers an explicit presentation of the basic mathematical

techniques, which are needed throughout this book. Matrices and vectors are
indispensable tools in computer graphics and we start with them.

2.1 Matrices and Vectors

Shown below is a matrix with m rows and n columns:
 
a11 a12 · · · a1n
 a21 a22 · · · a2n 
(2.1)
 
 .. .. . . .. 
 . . . . 
am1 am2 · · · amn
Its dimensions are denoted as m×n. If m = n, the matrix is called square.
Two subscripts of an element specify where it is located. For instance, a12 is in
the first row and second column. Two matrices A and B can be multiplied if
the number of columns in A equals the number of rows in B. If A’s dimensions
are l×m and B’s dimensions are m×n, AB is an l×n matrix. See the example
shown below:
 
a11 a12  
b b b
AB =  a21 a22  11 12 13
b21 b22 b23
 a31 a32  (2.2)
a11 b11 + a12 b21 a11 b12 + a12 b22 a11 b13 + a12 b23
=  a21 b11 + a22 b21 a21 b12 + a22 b22 a21 b13 + a22 b23 
a31 b11 + a32 b21 a31 b12 + a32 b22 a31 b13 + a32 b23
A 2D vector is usually represented as (x, y) and a 3D vector as (x, y, z).
They are often called the row vectors. Alternatively, we can use the column
vector representation, e.g., a 2D column vector is written as
 
x
(2.3)
y
Vectors are special matrices. The above vector is a matrix with a single
column and its dimensions are 2×1. Then, the method of matrix-matrix

7
8 Introduction to Computer Graphics with OpenGL ES

multiplication applies to matrix-vector multiplication. If M is a 3×2 matrix

and v is a 2D column vector, for example, M v is computed as follows:
 
ab  
x
Mv =  c d 
y
e f  (2.4)
ax + by
=  cx + dy 
ex + f y

Given a matrix M , its transpose denoted by M T is obtained by interchang-

ing the rows and columns of M . For example, the transpose of M given in
Equation (2.4) is defined as  
ac e
(2.5)
bdf
The same applies to vectors. If v is a column vector, its transpose, v T , is the
row-vector counterpart.
The matrix-vector multiplication in Equation (2.4) can be represented in a
different way. Instead of the column vector, v, we can use the row vector, v T ,
and place it at the left of M T :
 
T T

ac e
v M = xy
bdf
(2.6)
= ax + by cx + dy ex + f y

The result is the same as in Equation (2.4) but is represented in a row vector.
(Whereas OpenGL uses the column vectors and the vector-on-the-right repre-
sentation for matrix-vector multiplication, Direct3D uses the row vectors and
the vector-on-the-left representation.)
The identity matrix is a square matrix with ones on the main diagonal (from
the upper-left element to the lower-right element) and zeros everywhere else.
It is denoted by I. For any matrix M , M I = IM = M , as shown in the
following examples:
    
a11 a12 a13 100 a11 a12 a13
 a21 a22 a23   0 1 0  =  a21 a22 a23  (2.7)
a31 a32 a33 001 a31 a32 a33
    
100 a11 a12 a13 a11 a12 a13
 0 1 0   a21 a22 a23  =  a21 a22 a23  (2.8)
001 a31 a32 a33 a31 a32 a33
If two square matrices A and B are multiplied to return an identity matrix,
i.e., if AB = I, B is called the inverse of A and is denoted by A−1 . By
the same token, A is the inverse of B. Note that (AB)−1 = B −1 A−1 as
(AB)(B −1 A−1 ) = A(BB −1 )A−1 = AIA−1 = AA−1 = I. Similarly, (AB)T =
B T AT .
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sometimes wished—” Mrs. Bradley’s voice dropped to a musing
uncertainty.
“Giles was much younger than Captain Owen, was he not?” said
Alix.
“Not so much younger. He is a year older than Toppie. Twenty-
five. But it wasn’t that. She would, I’m afraid, never have thought of
him, with Owen there. Perhaps she had always been too sure of him
and taken him too much for granted, while with Owen, until he did,
at last, fall in love with her, she was never sure. He was fond of
several people, you see, before he was fond of Toppie. I’m afraid she
suffered, poor darling. And that’s what one feels,” Mrs. Bradley
mused on, while Alix knew a growing discomfort in hearing her.
“Owen could have been happy with so many girls; it wasn’t, with
him, the one great thing only; whereas with Giles it was.”
“And perhaps if she had married him,” said Alix, her thoughts
held by that sense of something painful, twisted, difficult to see
plainly, “she would have suffered even more. If he continued to be
fond of other people.”
“Oh, but that couldn’t have been after they were married!” Mrs.
Bradley exclaimed, and with a shock of surprise in her voice, while
her eyes, almost scared by the suggestion, turned to scan the
meditative face of the little French girl beside her. “That couldn’t
have been after he loved her at last; after they were engaged. Oh,
no; Owen would have been faithful, always.”
“But all men are not faithful, are they?” Alix commented, keeping
her eyes before her and her voice quiet and impersonal. She felt that
she would like to know what Mrs. Bradley thought on this subject.
Had not Giles’s horror been somewhat misplaced? “So many wives, I
mean, from what one hears, have unfaithful husbands.”
Mrs. Bradley continued to scan her and with even more alarm.
“But I hope you don’t hear of such dreadful things, dear child. No
good husband is unfaithful.”
“Is it so very dreadful? Can one govern one’s heart? I see that it
is different for a wife,” said Alix. “She is at home and has the
children. But a man—out in the world—May he not form many
attachments without so much blame?—I do not understand these
things, but I cannot see why it is so dreadful.”
“You are too young, dear, to understand them. Yet even you, I
am sure, can imagine how terrible it would be to know that your
husband, whom you loved and trusted, loved other people.”
“It might be very sad.” Alix considered the remote contingency. “I
see that it might make me sad—if I loved him very much. But I
should have the children, the foyer. And then he might still love me
most, while loving others, too. Do you not find that possible, here in
England? In France, I am sure, we do not feel it so strange a
thought.”
“We feel it strange; very strange and dreadful,” said Mrs. Bradley
with as much vehemence as she ever displayed on any subject. “And
you will, too, I am sure, darling, when you are older and understand
what it means to trust someone with your life.—No, no; such a thing
would have been impossible with Owen and Toppie. All that I meant
was that his love was different in quality from Giles’s. Giles’s nature,
in some ways, is deeper than dear Owen’s was.”
“Oh, yes. Deeper. One feels that at once,” Alix murmured, while
the thought, seen at last clearly, pierced her through that Giles was
held from his happiness by an illusion since Toppie might not have
cared for Captain Owen had she known how much he cared for
Maman. “Perhaps in time she will come to see what Giles is and love
him. Do you not think so?”
“It’s what I hope for more than anything, Alix,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Giles has had such a sad life. You wouldn’t think it, perhaps. He
doesn’t show it, unless one knows him very well. Even as a little boy
I always felt him rather frustrated and sad. He adored Owen, who
didn’t pay much attention to him; and he adored Toppie who never
gave him a hope. And then the war came and ended his youth and
he saw worse things than Owen saw. He saw the worst things. His
best friends were killed beside him. He went through everything.
They all had to face the problem of it, the boys like Giles. It was
never such a problem to men like Owen. They accepted it and didn’t
try to understand. Giles hasn’t been embittered, as some of our
young men have; but there is such a weight of grief on his heart. I
feel it always. I so long for some happiness to come to him.”
It was all true. Alix had seen it in Giles’s face. Under his
vehemence, his gaiety, he carried dark memories in his heart; and
there were darknesses his mother did not know of. Perhaps it helped
him to be less lonely that she should know of them and that they
should be her darknesses, too. It gave Alix courage to bear the
weight of perplexity and fear, during the winter, to feel that she
shared the weight with Giles. She missed him so much at Heathside;
yet he was there, too, in her sense that she was helping him with
Toppie, that she, too, was shielding Toppie from hurt.
He wrote to her, and though he did not ask her for news of
Toppie, she knew that was what he wanted and gave him every
detail when she answered. Toppie went away to Bath at the end of
February, but until then Alix sent Giles her bulletins. She and Toppie
often walked together; they read together, too; and she often made
Toppie laugh with her stories about the people at Montarel, the
funny things they did and said. Giles was told of all this, and about
the Greater Spotted Woodpecker that she and Toppie saw in the
birch-woods, tapping with stealthy fierceness at a tree-trunk,
beautiful in his Chinese white and black and vermilion; and about
Jock who always came with them on their walks and had really
adopted her as his most authentic mistress. She had not much to
say about the High School and Ruth and Rosemary. But then it was
Toppie Giles wanted to hear of.
Spring came at last, the early flowers, the returning birds, Toppie
back from Bath and the Easter holidays hovering on a near horizon.
And one day at tea-time Mrs. Bradley handed her a letter she had
just received from Lady Mary Hamble, a letter in its unexpectedness
and sweetness that was like the Spring. Could Mrs. Bradley lend Alix
to them for a week-end, Lady Mary asked. There were to be young
people in the house and a little dance and they would all enjoy
having her.
At first, in her pleasure, strangely compounded of a sense of
relief, escape, and the soft breath of a familiar balm wafted towards
her, Alix did not notice the dates. Then, after Mrs. Bradley had said,
“How delightful; of course you must go, dear,” she saw that the
Monday of Lady Mary’s dance was the Monday of Mrs. Bradley’s; the
dance to which Toppie had promised to come; the dance for which
Giles would be back; the dance to show her white taffeta dress; her
dance; the invitations all out and all accepted. “But our dance is on
that Monday,” she said.
“It can’t be helped,” said Mrs. Bradley. “We’ll have to give
another smaller one some day later on. I don’t think you ought to
miss the much prettier dance at Lady Mary’s. You have us always,
you see, dear.”
“But Giles.”
“Giles doesn’t really count at a dance,” smiled Mrs. Bradley. “And
he will be at home all the holidays. You won’t be missing Giles.”
Toppie was with them, and she smiled, too, looking at Alix and
said: “You’re right not to go. Giles will be coming home that very
Saturday. You couldn’t miss his coming home even if you did miss
the dance.”
“But she really mustn’t miss the week-end at Cresswell Abbey,”
said Mrs. Bradley. “It’s such a lovely place, I’ve always heard. And
she’ll be back on Tuesday.”
“They’ll ask her another time,” said Toppie. “People would ask
Alix another time,” and she smiled on at her young friend, well
pleased with her, Alix saw.
“Of course they’ll ask her, Mummy!” cried Ruth who, with
Rosemary, had sat transfixed with indignation while the invitation
was thus discussed. “And it makes no difference if they don’t. Who
are the Hambles, anyway! What does Alix care about them? She
doesn’t know them and doesn’t want to. I’ve seen your Lady Mary’s
picture in the ‘Daily Mirror’—drooping around with bare shoulders
and a plume and pretending not to know she’s being snapped. I
hate such empty-headed creatures, and Alix would be bored stiff by
them. Of course she can’t go! Of course she must be here for our
dance!”
Alix was quite sure that she would not be bored by Lady Mary;
but she was also sure that she could not go. No one at Heathside
would appreciate the white taffeta as Lady Mary would. There would
be no one at the Heathside dance she would like as much, she felt
sure of it, as those young people at Cresswell Abbey—no one, that
is, except Giles; and he, as his mother had said, truly she felt sure,
did not count at dances; but all the same she could not go, and Ruth
and Rosemary might think, if they pleased, that it was for their
reasons.
She did not tell Giles in her next letter about the visit to Cresswell
Abbey; but when he came home, Ruth told him, the first thing, at
tea-time, all assembled as they were in the drawing-room, Toppie
and herself in their accustomed places on the sofa beside Mrs.
Bradley, and Ruth sitting on the arm of her brother’s chair.
“Only think of it, Giles! Mummy actually thought she ought to go,
because Cresswell Abbey is such a lovely place! The day of our
dance, mind you! Toppie’s cousins here and all!”
Giles seemed taken aback. “The week-end? She’d have been
going to-day,” he said.
“And missed your coming home, Giles! As if she could!” cried
Rosemary.
“And Amy expecting her puppies any day now,” said Jack. “I
thought they’d have come this morning. She’d want to see them as
soon as they were born, wouldn’t you, Alix?—only we must be very
careful not to look at them too often. Amy’s awfully nervous when
she has her pups.”
“Mummy,” said Giles, eyeing his contented sisters, “you ought to
have made her go. Alix is over here to see England, all she can of it.
And she really doesn’t see so very much of it with us, you know.”
“I did my best, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley, pouring out her tea. “She
quite refused. And Toppie aided and abetted her.”
“Yes. I aided and abetted her, Giles,” said Toppie, and she smiled
now at him with more sweetness than Alix had ever yet seen on her
face for Giles. “She can go another time to Lady Mary’s.”
“Oh, one never knows about that,” Giles murmured. But now he
was thinking more about Toppie’s smile than about Alix’s frustrated
visit.
“Didn’t you want to go to Cresswell Abbey?” he asked Alix next
morning in the study, and with the question the time of their
separation collapsed and, his eyes on hers, she felt him near and
familiar once more, concerned, as always, for her welfare.
That was it. He understood that it might have given her so much
pleasure and Ruth and Rosemary didn’t understand that at all. And
he wanted her to have gone because he wanted her to have
pleasure. He was like Maman in that.
She confessed. “Yes, I did. But not so much that I could miss you
and our dance. The dance was planned for me, Giles.”
Giles rubbed his hand through his hair.—His mother should have
corrected him of that trick, though Alix rather liked to see him do it;
it left his hair very much on end.
“It’s decent of you; awfully decent of you. But you wanted to go,
of course, you dear little kid. And I’d like to think you were to get a
wider look at England than you get with us.”
“I think she will ask me again, Giles. Your mother wrote and
explained it to her and she wrote back and said it must be for
another time. I think she likes me,” said Alix. “And I like her, too.
Though Ruth and Rosemary find her empty-headed. Perhaps it is
empty-headed people that I do like,” Alix smiled. “Perhaps I am
empty-headed myself.”
“I saw you took to each other. I saw you belonged with each
other,” Giles mused. “I’m awfully sorry you didn’t go.”
“Would you rather I were staying with her than here with you,
Giles?”
“No; I’d rather you were staying here. But I’d like you to have a
slice of cake now and then after all the thick bread-and-butter. Now
you, of course, would like to have the cake all the time,” and Giles
smiled at her, summoning her to confess to her frivolity. But when he
asked her like that, there in the study, with the gas-fire and the
untidy heaped books and the Greek temples and the foolish animals
on the mantelpiece, Alix did not feel so sure. She liked Lady Mary.
She loved the balm she wafted. She felt sure that no one here would
appreciate her white taffeta; they would think Ruth’s pink silk ninon
with the embroidered edges just as pretty. But there would not, she
felt even surer, be any one at Cresswell Abbey who would
understand as Giles did.
PART II
 CHAPTER I
“C’est la France,” said Alix. She leaned beside him on the railing
of the Channel steamer and looked through the blue of the July day
to where the town thinly shaped itself, like a line of grey-white shells
floating between sea and sky. Her phrase was spoken in a tone of
quiet statement, unstressed by any emotion, yet Giles, while they
watched the shore together, felt its echoes stretching back
revealingly into the past and out towards the future.
That was really what had been at the bottom of her heart during
all her time with them; France. And if she had talked about it so little
that must merely have been, he reflected, because she cared about
it so much. Of course she loved her own country; he could not
expect or wish anything else; but had she, he wondered, any more
love for England now than when she had first come among them?
And he felt, when he asked himself the question, a little rueful and a
little vexed. She was not a shallow child; that he knew; it was
because she was not shallow that he minded her imperviousness to
all that meant so much to them. With the imperviousness went an
oddly mature security, as of a creature formed and fixed and not to
be altered by circumstance; and it was when he thought of this
security that Giles felt a little angry; for, after all, what had France
given her, poor kid?
Giles did not think of his family, in particular, as benefactors to
the little French girl. That side of her indebtedness was not one to
engage his attention. It was England as a whole that he had hoped
would by this time have crept about her heart; England with its
gentle days of Spring, its balmy days of Summer; all the happy
family life they had just come from; tennis, dogs, strawberries on
the lawn, and long bicycle rides over the hills; England’s sweetness
and fidelity embodied in his mother; its holiness in Toppie.
The starlike image of Toppie rose before the young man’s mind
and with it his deepest doubt of the little French girl beside him. He
had come from pity for the child’s unconscious plight, pity for the
cruelty of her position there among them—a little creature so proud
that it would have been to her a burning humiliation could she have
guessed how her mother had dealt with her and them in foisting her
upon them—he had come, from this initial pity, to feel affection, then
an odd, perplexed respect, and finally a profound, a tender
solicitude. It was upon her future in France, with her mother, that it
centred; but that was the outward aspect of the inner fear; for when
he thought of Toppie and of holiness the question he had also to ask
himself was whether Alix was impervious to holiness, too?
Giles felt that he would be better able to face that question, and
with it the whole problem of the child’s future, when he had seen
“Maman.” That was why he was here. That was why he had said
“yes,” on the morning, a fortnight ago, when Maman’s letter at last
had come summoning Alix home. Since their interview, long ago in
the Winter, he and Alix had never spoken of their mutual secret, that
dreadful one-sided secret that Giles visualized as an unexploded
bomb lying there between them and liable at a touch to go off and
scatter the family happiness to fragments. The interview had ended
in a pact. She was to help him; she had, poor little creature, helped
him; he still felt stung with shame to think how much; to think how
he had profited, how they all had profited, by her falsehoods. And
he was bound to help her. He knew, when Maman’s letter came, all
that lay behind the appeal as she said: “Oh, Giles, could you not
come with me? and stay if only for a little while; so that at last you
and Maman may meet?”
She felt that it would help if he were to know Maman. And it
might well be that he could only effectually help Alix if he faced at
last the baleful woman who had brought the hidden disaster to their
lives. It was better that he should know, in regard to Alix’s future,
what they were “up against.” It had not been of Maman he was
thinking when he assented; it had been, as on that day last Winter,
of Alix herself. And that was why he was here, on his way to
Normandy and the village on the cliff, and it was Dieppe that was
showing now, along its wharves, façades of sunlit houses.
“Don’t you think, Giles,” said Alix, “that the air in France is very
different? Like golden wine?—There was a wine made at a little
mountain village near Montarel—Vernay-les-Vouvières it is called—
and the wine after it. I wish you could see that village. So high and
steep it is, the road climbs for miles before you reach it; and higher
still, above the village, is an old, old statue of la Sainte Vierge,
looking down over the vineyards and blessing them. When one
stands beside her one sees over all the crests of the mountain-
ranges; like blue rolling waves. We used to drink Vernay-les-
Vouvières at Grand-père’s. It was very cheap, for it could not travel;
it lost its bouquet at once if it travelled. And it was a delicious wine;
so pale, so light, so delicate. One felt like singing when one drank it.
I think the air of France makes one feel like that.”
Mrs. Bradley’s household, though not pledged to teetotal
principles, eschewed all alcoholic drink, and Giles, as he listened,
seeing the Virgin, the vineyards, the ingenuous piety, the pagan
gaiety that Alix’s words conjured up, wondered what her impressions
of their unenlivened meals must have been.
“I wish I could see Vernay-les-Vouvières,” he said. “A beautiful
country yours must be, so near the Alps.—We have sunny days in
England, you know. It’s a French superstition to think that English
people go staggering about in a fog all the year round. You ought to
have got over that,” he added. “Our weather is as good as the
weather in Northern France; every bit.”
“But different, Giles. As good; but not so happy. Never like wine,
I think. Always there is something soft and sleepy in the air. After
the air of France it is like milk.”
“Milk is a very excellent thing.”
“Yes. Excellent. As a food. But it does not make one want to
sing.”
To this Giles said nothing.
“For a French town Dieppe is not so specially beautiful,” Alix took
up presently; for she and Giles knew each other so well that a
disagreement could be allowed to fall between them disregarded. “I
do not think that for a French town it has special beauty; yet, seen
like this, with the harbours, and the wharves, and houses—all so
golden, do you not think it is very lovely?”
 Giles had just been thinking so. “Yes. Quite lovely,” he admitted.
“For a French town it’s rather rambling and shambling, too, and I like
that.”
“Ah, but it keeps its dignity all the same,” said Alix. “It has gone
where it meant to go and when it got there it stood up well.”
“We have dignified towns,” said Giles. “Edinburgh; you must see
Edinburgh one day, Alix; and Bath; and Ludlow. Of course, as to
ramble, London is a bad offender; but London is beautiful all the
same.”
“Beautiful, do you think, Giles? Beautiful you mean, then, as one
might find the face of a dear, funny old great-grandmother beautiful,
for what it means; but not for what it looks; I think it a very ugly
town,” said Alix in her tone of happy statement—for Alix was very
happy to-day. “It is like an old great-grand-mother over a tea-pot;
and Paris is like a goddess with a wreath.”
“I like old great-grandmothers much better than goddesses,” said
Giles.
All the same he understood. She was initiating these comparisons
—and it was so uncharacteristic of her to make comparisons—not
from any desire to disparage, but from the deep, joyous excitement,
the love and pride that could not be repressed and that she could
not overtly have expressed without expressing emotion as well. She
thrilled with it, he knew, leaning beside him, her profile, forcible,
intent, golden against the sea. It looked golden like that because the
sun fell on it and the sea was blue; but he had always thought Alix’s
skin a queer colour and never knew whether he liked or disliked it.
Sometimes it was grey, like pussy-willows: and sometimes it was
green, making one think of olive-trees or the patina on an old
bronze; and sometimes, as to-day, it was pure gold; and always it
seemed to be the final expression of significant structure rather than
a decorative bloom, and to go with her blue eyes and black hair
whichever tint it took. But, as he told himself, he was a sentimental
Englishman and liked girls to be the colour of apple-blossoms.
Alix had fallen to silence now, and he was keeping his mind
rather consciously on their friendly altercation, and even on Alix’s
profile, because he did not wish to reflect on what lay before him.
He had not an idea of what he was to say to Alix’s mother, or to do
with her; and it was no good thinking about it until he saw her; saw
her again.
Saw her again! How the phrase brought back the unforgettable
pang and misery. How the unforgettable image floated in his
memory, vivid yet unseizable; irrelevant as it were and not to be
woven to any secure conclusion. It had been the stillest day, that
Spring day in the Bois. The purpling grey of branches, above, behind
the wandering pair, had melted to shroud-like distances and they
had emerged before his astonished eyes like the spectral creatures
of a clairvoyant vision; silent, and with linked arms. He had gazed at
them, and as he gazed his impulse to go forward and greet his
brother was checked ere it was formed. Owen here in Paris: Owen
with madame Vervier—he had known at once that it was she; Owen
to look like that. Rooted among the thinly scattered saplings of the
wood he had remained, gazing until they passed away and the white
distance received them into its folds as it had given them up—
ominous disappearance of the brother he was never to see again.
Rooted he stood, and heard the wild, monotonous phrase of a
missel-thrush ring forth suddenly from overhead and felt his mind
slowly take possession of the icy grief that crept upon it. Owen’s
face had given him all the truth; its rapture; its terrible stilled
restlessness. And though she was so quiet, walking there, her head
bent down a little, her eyes fixed before her, Giles had felt, for all the
innocence of his chaste boyhood, that she was so quiet because she
possessed him so completely.
How clearly he could see her still, with her brooding brightness,
her soft gloom. He could not see her as baleful; he could not see her
as guilty; he only saw her walking there secure in power and
loveliness. And this was the irrelevance, the tormenting discrepancy;
for she was the woman who had taken Owen from Toppie; she was
the woman who, after her lover’s death, had placidly made use of
what assets he had left her; his family; and its trust in him and her.
And she was the more baleful to him from the fact that, though he
remembered her so vividly and knew such portentous things about
her, herself he did not know at all.
 There was one thing about her, however, that he could and ought
to know at once, and the thought of it worked its way up into his
mind while he and Alix leaned there. They had never again spoken
of their secret, but, before he met her mother he ought to know
whether Alix had told her what he knew of Owen’s stays with them
in Paris. Before he saw madame Vervier he ought to know what she
knew about him; and suddenly, his eyes fixed upon the wharves and
houses of Dieppe, he said: “You think she’ll feel it all right that I’m
come?”
“I wrote to her that you were coming,” said Alix. Her mind had
perhaps been following some train of thought not far removed from
his, for she spoke as if they were continuing a theme rather than
taking it up. “She will be delighted.”
“Will she? Look here, Alix”—Giles gazed down over the railing at
the sea—“she couldn’t be delighted, I take it, if she knew that I had
a grievance about my brother on her account.”
He had spoken very abruptly, yet he had, he felt, put it well. In
the little pause that followed his words, he was pleased with himself
for having found any so colourless and unprovocative.
“What we know of your brother,” said Alix after her pause, “would
not give her a grievance against you; only against him.”
“Against him?”
“Did he not deceive her, too?”
“Deceive her? Oh, I see. You think he didn’t tell her that he’d
kept us in the dark?”
“He could not have told her, Giles; if that is really what you are
asking me.”
Giles, a little confused, retraced his steps. “What I’m really asking
you is whether you’ve told her. I want to know where I stand with
her. Haven’t you felt that she ought to be told?”
Again Alix was silent, and for a longer time. Then she said: “It
has been my great perplexity. She does not know. Of course she
does not know. But I wrote to her at once, that time last Winter, and
begged that I might come home; and when I found she could not
have me, I thought it best to say nothing then. Perhaps I was
wrong. Perhaps you will blame me, Giles. But I thought it best to
wait. It will give her such pain when she knows.”
It would never have given her so much pain Giles, with a sudden
glow of indignation, felt, as it had already given her daughter. What
Alix had suffered in wrestling with her problem was in her voice.
“Blame you? I? You poor kid!” he exclaimed. And he added: “After
all, his silence meant devotion to herself.”
“Do you think so?” said Alix. “I am afraid she will not feel it so. I
am afraid she will feel that it meant cowardice and lack of loyalty;—
as it does to me.”
Giles was now aware of an uncomfortable astonishment. He had
to remember that Alix was nearly seventeen. A woman could not
have spoken with a more secure assurance of putting him in his
place; and if, by the same token, she put Owen in his place, was she
not, from her own point of view, her woman’s dignity veiled only by
her child’s ignorance, justified in doing so? For if Owen had really
kept madame Vervier in the dark she might have a right to
resentment. The two culprits should have had no secrets from one
another.
“I see,” he repeated, lamely, as he felt. “And you would not like
to spoil her memory of him?”
“We kept it from your mother and from Toppie because it would
spoil their memory of him,” said Alix.
“I know; but you’ll own, won’t you, that it would be a far worse
spoiling for them?”
“Yes. For them it would be worse. But why should anyone feel
pain now, when it is all over? Why should anything be spoiled?”
“It’s only,” said Giles, going carefully, “that it seems unfair to your
mother to let me come and keep her in ignorance of what I know.
It’s for you to judge, Alix; but since you love your mother so much, I
rather wonder that you can bear to keep such a secret from her.
And, quite apart from me, oughtn’t she to know just what she does
send you back to?”
“Send me back to?” Alix echoed, and her eyes met his strangely.
“Yes. Before you come back in the Autumn, don’t you think she
ought to know?”
 “Do you really imagine, Giles, that if Maman knew, she would
send me back?”
“Well”—he felt that he flushed. He had not foreseen this
emergency—“since I know, and since I want you back;—why not
she?”
“Do you count Maman’s pride for nothing, Giles?”
Madame Vervier’s pride had never for a moment engaged his
attention, and did not now. His attention was fully engaged by Alix’s
pride, facing him with a look of granite.
“I don’t really see why she should take it so hardly,” he said after
a moment; but he was horribly uncomfortable, for he was not
speaking with frankness to his young friend. “Your relation to us has,
really, nothing to do with her relation to Owen. It’s a new thing; and
that’s an old one; and as you say, it’s all over.”
“But she could not have me there on false pretences, Giles,” said
Alix. The pride had dropped now. It was as if with sudden sadness
she saw too well the reasons for his misunderstanding. “I could not
be there on false pretences. You have a right to think it of me since I
have never told her. But it is all over now; the new as well as the
old. I need never tell her. For I am at home again and I shall never
go back to Heathside.”
“Never come back to Heathside!” Actually for the moment
Maman, Owen, Toppie, all the grief and perplexity that hung about
these figures, were swept from Giles’s mind by his deep
discomfiture. “But this is only your holiday. Your mother’s letter said
so.”
“She thinks it is only my holiday. But I am older now. I shall see
to it that I do not return to England.”
Ass that he had been not to realize the impasse to which their
talk was leading them! Too obviously, from Alix’s side, this was an
inevitable decision. And Giles saw that from his side it should have
been so, too. With Alix safely back in France, there would be no
more danger of pain for his mother and wreckage for Toppie;
Owen’s memory might sleep in untarnished peace.
But Alix herself had come to count for far too much. It was as if
he saw her walking away into a dark forest where dreadful creatures
prowled. Ever since that day in his study, she had counted for too
much. She was too fine, too brave, too loyal a little creature to be
given up to her fate. He had felt that day that he would fight her
fate for her, and he felt now that the moment had come for the first
grapple. But the worst of the problem was that in fighting Alix’s fate
he must fight her. He could not tell her the fact that would have
turned her pride to dust and ashes. He could not tell her that her
mother had sent her to them on pretences so false that the minor
falsity she repudiated paled beside them. Horribly handicapped as he
was for the contest, he seized his bull by the horns: “Look here, my
dear child,” he declared, speaking with all the elder brother authority
he could summon up, “you said to me that day when we talked that
you were going to trust me. Well, I ask you to trust me now. I want
you back. We all want you back. Let that suffice. No; wait a
moment. I know what you are going to say;—if Toppie knew would
she want you? I’ll take the responsibility of answering for Toppie.
She is so fond of you that I know she would. Isn’t that enough,
really? Can’t we leave it at that? And you’re quite right not to tell
your mother. Let the whole thing rest for ever.”
Her eyes were on his while he spoke to her and she listened to
him gently; but her face still kept the invulnerable look strange in
one so young. “You are kind, dear Giles,” she said. “I do trust you.
But you can’t answer for Toppie. You can’t answer for anybody. And
I have not only myself to think of. I have Maman. I can answer for
Maman in this matter. She would not let me come.”
“Are you so sure of that?” broke from Giles. And now, pushed to
it, he ventured far; he ventured very far, indeed. “After all she must
have known that he kept a great deal from us. After all she must
have known that he cared more for her than he did for Toppie; that
he had been faithless to Toppie because of her.”
Poor little Alix. It was not fair. She paled in hearing him. And for a
long moment she stood silent beside him, looking down at the sea.
“May he not have kept that from her, too?” was what she found at
last to say.
“Do you think that possible?” Giles asked; but he was sorry now,
seeing the deep trouble on her face, that he had spoken.
 “Perhaps it would not have been possible,” she said slowly. “But
things may be known and yet remain unspoken, Giles.”
He could not question her further. He could not ask madame
Vervier’s young daughter if she really believed that those things had
been unspoken between his brother and her mother. There had been
an element of desecration in going even so far as he had gone. And
he had gained nothing by it, for after the little pause that fell
between them, Alix added, in no spirit of retaliation as he saw, but
as though she put up a final barrier against his persistence.
“And even if they were not there, Giles; even if all the difficult
things we know of were not there, I should still not come back to
Heathside. I do not care, ever, to leave France again. I could not,
again, leave Maman.”
 CHAPTER II
The train moved slowly, almost ruminatingly, along the golden
landscape, a little local train stopping at every station. The crops
were still uncut and their vast undulations were broken only by lines
of lonely, poplared road, or marshalled woods venturing out, here
and there, upon the plains. Empty and rather sad, for all the
splendour of the gold beneath, the blue above, it looked to Giles;
but that might have been, he knew, because of its associations for
him with scenes of the war; and he was feeling a little sick, too,
apprehensions of the approaching future seizing him as he and Alix
sat silent in the second-class carriage, where both the windows were
tightly shut. Alix had widely opened hers on entering, but at the first
station a lady had got in—little shopping people of the local
bourgeoisie the passengers were, more estranged from fashion,
Giles thought, than their equivalent English types—and, wrapping a
scarf at once about her neck, she had complained of the effect of
the courant d’air upon her névralgie. Without comment, Alix at once
closed her window. No doubt she knew her compatriots and
recognized the futility of discussion on this theme; but Giles reflected
that Ruth and Rosemary would not so have submitted. They would
have entered into altercation with the lady in the scarf and found
pleasure in demonstrating her folly to her even if they did not
succeed in keeping the window open. But to Alix altercation had no
charms. Even when the lady, still mysteriously aggrieved in her
furthest corner, murmured resentfully on about les anglais qui
viennent nous déranger, Alix glanced meditatively at her for a
moment and then resumed her survey of the landscape, indifferent
to the misapprehension; and since Giles could not repress a smile,
the lady, who still held up her scarf in retrospective protest, kept
indignant eyes upon him.
“Now, you know, you are a worse-tempered people than we are.
She’s still nursing her wrongs,” Giles murmured, and Alix, glancing at
the lady of the névralgie, answered, “She is negligible.”
 Two men sat further on; one young, with high, ardent, excited
eyes, like a collie’s, in a thin head; the other obese and red with
white hair en brosse and a purple nip of ribbon in his button-hole.
They leaned across the carriage towards each other and talked
without cessation, rapping each other on the chest to a constant
refrain of: “Puis—il me dit;—Et—je lui dis.” Passionately swift and
even vindictive in utterance as they were, their personal geniality
remained unimpaired.
A little boy on his mother’s lap ate chocolates, smearing his
cheeks and palms. Clambering down, he was permitted, unchecked,
to lurch towards Alix, staying himself on the knees he passed, and
when he reached her he stretched forth his hand with assurance for
the box of apricots she held. “Est-il mignon!” exclaimed the fond
mother. But Alix did not even turn her eyes from the landscape. The
disconcerted child stood gazing at her, too much astonished even to
weep, and Giles, taking pity on him, offered the tick of his watch and
jingled his bunch of keys in an attempt to distract his attention. But
the little boy gave him no heed, and after a prolonged stare at Alix
he made his way back to his mother; his first encounter, Giles
imagined, with an unresponsive universe.
“I say, you are really rather hard-hearted,” he remarked. Here
was another difference, for neither Ruth nor Rosemary could have
remained so impervious to even such a repulsive little boy.
But Alix said: “I cannot look at a dirty face like that. If his mother
had cleaned his face, I would have given him one.”
“Well, since he’s gone back to her, and you needn’t look at him,
may I give him one?” said Giles; and, as Alix smiling, assented, Giles
handed an apricot to the little boy, who took it without thanks and
ate it, staring solemnly at Alix the while.
A thin blue crescent of sea cut into the fields on the right. In the
distance, on a rise of country, a pale pink château stood with wings
of sculptured woodland on either side, a long green lawn in front.
“It cannot be far now,” said Alix. The lady with the scarf, the
mother with the little boy, the stout marketing lady, had all left them
by now and she could open her window and stand by it to look out.
“Vaudettes is four miles from the station. Maman will come to meet
us, with monsieur de Maubert.”
“Who is monsieur de Maubert?” asked Giles. He had never heard
the name before. But then he had never heard any names
connected with Maman. How could he, since he never spoke of her?
“He is an old friend of ours; a very old friend,” said Alix. “I do not
remember the time when we did not know monsieur de Maubert.”
“You like him?”
“Oh, very much. C’est un homme fort distingué,” said Alix,
relapsing into French, with the effect, to Giles, of not sparing more
than convention for their conversation. Her thoughts were fixed in
anticipation. He could almost see her palpitate in her stillness with it.
She might have been kinder to the little boy had she not been so
unaware of everything but the approaching figure of Maman.
“How distinguished?” Giles, however, persisted.
“Oh, I am so ignorant, Giles. Wise things do not interest me, you
know.” Alix smiled slightly down at him over her shoulder. “He has
excavated cities; Persian; Mongolian;—que sais-je. He writes on
antiquities. He has a beautiful appartement in Paris with collections
of gems and bronzes. He is at once savant and homme du monde.”
“And will he be the only guest except me?”
“Ah, that I do not know. There are three chambres d’invités at
Les Chardonnerets. But I have not heard that there is, as yet,
anyone else.”
“Chardonnerets? That means?”
“It means goldfinches. That was a bird we always knew, even”—
Alix paused—“even before your brother told us more of birds. Flocks
come in Autumn to the thistles on the cliffs outside our gate. When
they all fly together one sees the squares of gold on their wings—it
makes a pattern on the sky, like a chain of golden coins; monsieur
de Maubert’s strange old square coins. And their little twitter is like
the chink of thin gold. We love them, Maman and I, and there is a
tall ash-tree in the garden where they often perch in summer. You
will see them, Giles. You will like Les Chardonnerets, I think.—Oh,
now—I recognize now—I know those woods. We find daffodils in
them, in Spring, among the faggots. You have not in England, have
you, Giles, our great woods with all the ranged faggots that the
woodmen pile so carefully in winter. And in Spring, at the edge of
the wood, one sees around one the great plain, champagne-
coloured. The next station will be ours,” said Alix.
 CHAPTER III
He could hardly find again the face of the February day in the
Bois. It was her form, her poise that gave her to one now, and
Giles’s first impression of the white, sunlit figure waiting on the
platform was of a Greek Victory, splendid, strong, exultant. Her face,
under the falling lines of a white hat, was almost dissolved in a
transparent shadow; only its grave, fixed smile, like a pearl in golden
wine, remained, as it were, shaped and palpable.
He had seen her as the Parisienne; the creature of elegance and
artifice; but he found her almost primitive, set here in the sea-
breezes, and so much more robust than he had remembered; if
anything so delicate could so be called. Freshness and force
breathed from her, and the classic analogies she brought to his mind
were emphasized by her straightly falling dress—a tennis-dress,
perhaps, for her arms were bare—tying at the breast with tassels
and at the waist with a loosely knotted sash.
“Ma chérie! Ma petite chérie!” she said.
The train had come to a standstill and it was as if Alix had flown
into her arms. She had been as silent as a spectre on that spectral
day when he had first seen her. Her voice now startled him, as the
missel-thrush’s voice had done. Tears were in it and tears were in
her eyes as she clasped her child. And then, again, as they stood
embraced, it was of something Greek they made Giles think; some
beautiful relief on the pediment of a sunlit temple; garlands above
them and happy maidens in procession on either side carrying
baskets of fruit and chanting the reunion of mother and child. Ceres
and Persephone it might be. Happy little Persephone, escaped at last
from the kingdom of Dis.
Giles stood by, holding Alix’s dressing-case, and felt himself a
modern tourist gazing at the masterpiece. Just as little difference, he
saw it suddenly and clearly, any knowledge of his would make to
madame Vervier. She was lifted, how or why he did not know, far
above the dusty impressions of the throng, impervious to their
comments, whether of blame or admiration. Even when in another
moment her lovely eyes turned on him and, holding Alix against her
with one arm, she stretched out a welcoming hand to him and said
“Soyez le bien-venu, monsieur Giles. My little girl has had only good
things to tell me of you”—even then he could not feel that he had
gained in significance. So a queen might have received the young
equerry who had safely restored to her the princess royal. They had
been good to her child, the dusty throng. That was the importance
they had in madame Vervier’s eyes; that, and no more.
Struggling with many thoughts Giles followed mother and
daughter. The ghost of Owen walked beside him, and did it whisper:
“You see: how could I have helped myself?”
Two other young men were also following madame Vervier and
Alix. “Vous jouez le tennis, monsieur?” said one of them, the elegant
one, in a gentle voice. He was a charming white-clad person, tall
and slender, with eyes intensely blue, black hair brushed back from a
starry forehead; and a face like a fox for finesse and flair and like a
seraph’s for sweetness. Perhaps he had perceived the something
gagged and struggling in Giles’s demeanour and had wanted at once
to make him feel that, unimportant as any young man must be to a
goddess, he might count on having significance for a new friend.
Giles said that he did play, and he and the charming person
exchanged smiles. They might, somehow, have fought in the same
trenches, side by side, Giles felt. There was at once a link between
them. The other young man, who must, Giles thought, be an artist,
was dressed in brown velveteen and blue linen and had a dark,
square, suffering head.
The place outside the station was white and glaring, and the
noises that came from the café across it were glaring, too. Giles
reflected, with a certain satisfaction, that Alix need, at all events,
feel no pride in this typical scene, and it was disconcerting to have
his companion, as they made their way to the little waiting car,
indicate with a wave of the hand the dusty green trees, the dusty
white houses, the untidy green shutters, and the brittle lights on
glasses and brasses in the restaurant and say: “This is the subject
that our friend here has just been painting. You shall see it. A little
masterpiece of light and colour.”
Of course, Giles growled inwardly as he doubled himself up on
the strapontin at right angles to Alix and her mother—the two young
men in front—of course, the fact that a beautiful picture might be
elicited from the stimuli of the place did not make the place itself
more beautiful. And yet the memory of it, framed in this new
conception of its uses, grew vexatiously in his mind as they left it far
behind, eliminating the weary traveller’s impressions of noise, dust,
and disorder, and growing to a pattern of white and green and grey
wreathed harmoniously about a tawny ellipse. Yes, one could make
something æsthetic out of it, ugly though it was for practical
purposes; even inartistic he could see that—hang it!
The road counted off its sections in tall poplars. They passed
behind madame Vervier’s head, and, though Giles was so aware of
her, he looked at the poplars and the fields beyond them rather than
at her. She and Alix talked in French together and Alix’s voice was
revealed to him as like her mother’s when she spoke her native
tongue; musical; rhythmical; dipping; poising, and then rising to a
final lift, like a swallow’s flight. Their hands were clasped. Their eyes
were on each other.
He could look at Alix after all, and from the poplars he shifted his
eyes to her. He had never seen the child with that face before.
Tender, radiant, and with something of pride so deep that it hovered
on the brink of tears. Her glance met his and was tender for him,
too, as though with Owen’s ghost it said: “You see: how is it possible
not to love her?”
But was she as beautiful as all that? Giles gathered himself away
from the admission. Was she even beautiful at all? He would have to
look at her carefully if he were to say, and he stayed himself on the
conviction that if it came to structure and line she could not be
compared to Alix.
It was not what she looked like; it was what she meant that he
was so aware of now. He had never before found himself in the
company of a woman who seemed so to typify the femme du
monde, and if she were no longer of it, that fact was merely
accidental. With every glance, gesture, rise and fall of voice, it was
there that she belonged. He did not think that he liked the femme
du monde, so apt, he felt, at showing you no more than what she
intended to show you of her real purpose, so sure that for every
occasion she would know what to do far better than you could even
understand. And yet, more than the femme du monde she made him
think of the mountain torrent—Alix had been right—in its strength,
its splendour, and its danger, too. And he knew that he did not like
dangerous women.
He had expected to find her gay, and, in spite of the memory,
brooding, almost sombre, of the spectral spring day, to feel in her
something of artifice and allurement. But if artifice there were, it was
nothing added or adventitious; and of allurement there was none.
She stood in her place, a goddess, and watched her worshippers,
and when her human smile came, modelling her cheek to a sudden
childlike candour, it had the oddity of an unexpected weakness.
It was to Alix alone that she talked; she had no word for him. Yet
once or twice, as they drove, Giles was aware of being observed. All
unimportant as he was, he felt her dark eyes turned on him, resting
upon him, in meditation rather than in surmise. It was—he had
noted this already—a curiously widely opened eye. Its rounded
darkness gave to her contemplative gaze a fixed, abstracted quality.
When you found her observing you, she did not look away; so that
presently you wondered whether she was seeing you at all; whether
the soft, wide gaze had not travelled to spaces far beyond you,
including but forgetting you.
They had left the poplared road behind them and were among
great fields, stretching on one hand to the horizon and on the other
to the cliff-edge. A line of docile cows, tethered side by side, ate
their way into a strip of wine-coloured clover; meadow pipits
mounted from the turf and filled the salt, sweet air with myriads of
falling silver bells; in the distance the tall palisades of a wood rose
against the sky and it looked like an island floating on the level
sunlight of the plain. The glimmer of white houses among the grey
boles revealed, as they approached, an embowered village on the
cliff and Giles needed to make no mental reconstruction of beauty
here. He felt the authentic essence fill his breath as he gazed at the
picture, never to be forgotten, he knew, of the vast blue sky, the
vast sunlit plain, the tall trees green and silver, threaded with white
cottages. His eyes were full of his delight.
“You know our villages?” said madame Vervier. It was the first
phrase she had addressed him since they started.
“Only a few. Further north; and usually ruined ones,” said Giles.
“Only the tragic ones,” said madame Vervier. “Here we were
untouched by the war, and our villages, too, are more beautiful than
further north. In this part of Normandy they are often surrounded by
these great ramparts of trees. It gives much character, much charm,
does it not?”—and she smiled at him. She had noted his delight, and
Alix was smiling at him, too.
“I’ve seen French pictures like it,” said Giles.
“Yes; some of the early Corots give one the grey and green and
white.”
“Ah—it is too stately for a Corot.” The young man in white
flashed a smile round at her as he drove. “Corot would see its
intimacy, its charm, rather than its gravity. That great design against
the sky;—no; we must find somebody else.”
Madame Vervier smiled back, sure of her point. “He would not
look at the sky, my early Corot; he would look at the little white
houses nestling in the trees; he would look at the curve of the white
road with the whitewashed wall. That girl in the faded blue, with the
brown hoop of bread upon her arm, he would put her in. Oh, yes; it
is a Corot; an early Corot, André. I see the happy gentle touches of
his brush.”
“Elle a raison,” said the young man with the dark square head,
and André, driving with his easy skill, waved a hand of contented
concession.
When they had passed within the precincts, the little town
opened clearly to the sunlight and they were at once in the place
that circled round a large pond where patient men in large straw
hats sat fishing. Houses, stately in their modesty, looked over rows
of pollarded fruit-trees and high walls tiled in red. Built of pale old
brick and flint, with high-pitched roofs above dormer windows, they
seemed to speak of a delicious leisure that was, in itself, an
occupation. People who lived in such houses, Giles thought, would
never be idle; yet all their industry would have the savour of an art.
How darkly lustrous the windows shone; how unremittingly were
those bright gardens tended. He saw, as they passed an open gate,
a stout old man in a white linen coat tying muslin bags over the
pears that ripened on the wall. Under a charmille a woman sat
stemming currants. A family group in front of a shop were already
taking the afternoon repose, the father with his newspaper, the wife
and daughters with their sewing. Along the broad white street a
peasant girl, her bare head as neat as a nut, clattered in sabots,
carrying a great earthenware jar, and a small white woolly dog, of a
breed unknown to Giles, barked languidly from his doorstep as they
passed.
From the place the little town rayed out into leafy lanes and, as
they entered one of them, a sunny round of sky and cliff-edge at the
other end, framed in foliage, showed Giles that they were at their
journey’s end. High hedges and thickets of wind-swept trees
protected the little house, brick, flint, and tiles, from the gales that
must, in stormy seasons, beat upon it from the sea. Flowers grew
gaily, though untidily, beside the narrow flagged path that led from
the wicket-gate to the back door. They crossed a band of
cobblestones where oleanders grew in tubs, and, as they entered,
passed a kitchen gleaming with ranged coppers. Giles as he followed
madame Vervier and Alix, had the sensation of stepping into a fairy-
tale. The Three Bears and Goldilocks might have welcomed one to
such a bright, dark little house among its sunny thickets; its very
smell was a fairy-tale smell; beeswax, seashells, and coarse clean
linen. Such a smell as a child, once meeting it, would never in a long
life forget. A tall clock tick-tocked on the stair; there was a great
Normandy armoire, softly gleaming, old and worn, at a turning of a
passage; madame Vervier’s white figure went on before, and as she
bent her head to lift a latch he saw her russet hair twisted up from
the nape of her neck; and that, again, was like a picture he had
seen. And then they were suddenly out upon a broad verandah,
broad and wide, washed with sunlight and opening only on the blue.
Sea-gulls floated by, high above the sea, at the cliff’s edge, on a
level with the eyes. Vines fluttered, translucent, against the sunlight;
the scent of the honeysuckle came balmily; the sea was sprinkled
with white and russet sails.
A stately personage was reading in the shade. He was dressed in
white; he had thick hair and a grey divided beard. Lifting his
tortoiseshell eye-glasses from the bridge of his nose, he rose to
greet them, and Giles found himself penetrated by the deep gaze of
Jovian grey eyes set under a Jovian forehead; penetrated by the
gaze and appraised, for the first time in his life, by standards
mysteriously remote. This must be monsieur de Maubert, and Giles
had never seen anyone like him, except once, perhaps, at Oxford,
when a distinguished Frenchman had received a degree. Only the
distinguished Frenchman, black, shrill, and restless, had so much
less looked the part than did monsieur de Maubert. It was not
exactly sustaining to say to himself that, hang it, monsieur de
Maubert, after all, had probably never seen anyone like him; the
advantage, he felt, must seem only to be his. But, under all his
boyish perturbation, Giles knew that he was appraising monsieur de
Maubert, too. Monsieur de Maubert was a magnificent person—
magnificent, although his legs were short;—and he was a pagan. It
was rather magnificent to be a pagan and Giles knew just how well
he thought of the creed; but there were all sorts of things that
monsieur de Maubert—he felt sure of it—could never see, and the
difference between them was that, while Giles knew that he often
groped in mystery, monsieur de Maubert would remain unaware that
there could be anything significant unknown to him. Life, to him,
was bathed in la lumière antique, and anything not so bathed was
inessential. All sorts of things that Giles had only wondered about or
surmised were suddenly made clear to him as he looked at madame
Vervier’s other guest.
Monsieur de Maubert turned from Giles to put his hand on Alix’s
shoulder. He observed her in silence for a moment with a most
benignant smile, and then remarked: “Te voilà presque une grande
personne, ma chère enfant,” and, stooping his head, he kissed her
hand.
 “Now you will want to see your room,” said Madame Vervier.
She had taken off her hat, and Giles for the first time saw her
bareheaded. She stood there, looking at them, a little preoccupied,
her hat hanging against her dress as she held it, and the sun
flickered in upon her high-wreathed russet hair. Cut across her
forehead and half tossed back, it seemed as simply, as cursorily
done as that of a little girl who, for the first time, sweeps up her
tresses. She was looking at them all; at monsieur de Maubert, at
Alix, as he kissed her hand, and at Giles; but Giles felt, as he turned
to her, that it was upon himself that the wide, abstracted gaze was
dwelling. Monsieur de Maubert had appraised him; it was probable
that madame Vervier had appraised him, too.
“After you have had your tea,” she said, “you will perhaps like to
rest. Or would you care to come with us to Allongeville, where we
are to play tennis?”
Giles said that he would write some letters after tea. He did not
see his friend in white, who had apparently gone away with the car.
And the dark young artist, too, had disappeared.
With Alix’s arm passed in hers, madame Vervier led him up a
narrow staircase where the smell of beeswax, seashells, and linen
seemed to cluster yet more thickly, and along a passage carpeted in
matting where the sea-breeze, blowing in from windows at each
end, made a singing noise. “Is Giles to have the chambre rose,
Maman?” said Alix, and she exclaimed, as her mother, smiling, said,
“Yes,” “Oh, I am so glad! I hoped for that!”
It was at the end of the passage, and when one entered one had
before one in the windows nothing but sea and sky. Grey woodwork
framed panels of voile de Gênes, rose, white, russet, and sepia. The
little Louis Quinze bed was of grey painted wood, stately under its
pink and russet embroideries. A bowl of rose-coloured carnations
filled the air with spicy fragrance, and there was a tiny cabinet de
toilette with an ancient set of rose-and-white china. Giles had never
found himself installed in such a lovely room.
“Yes; this is your room,” said madame Vervier, as if she replied to
a question. “You will be happy here, I think.”
Giles could only murmur that he would.
 “We are very primitive,” said madame Vervier. “There are no
bells. If you want Albertine, you must go to the stair and call down
for her. She will hear and come.”
“Ah, she will not always come,” Alix demurred; whereat madame
Vervier smiled and said that in that case he must call Alix.
Then they left him, and he could go to the window, turning away
instinctively from the room and all it meant of madame Vervier, and
stare at the sea, and, with a rising sense of dismay and fierceness in
his heart, ask himself what he did there in the Circe sweetness. He
was there because of Alix, of course; but how far away Alix had
become. The process of removal seemed to have begun as they had
leaned on the railing of the deck and seen Dieppe emerge over the
water. In her declaration to him, when their talk so disastrously
ended, she had drawn still further away; and now he saw her almost
as a stranger, in a strange land. A foreigner; French; the daughter,
only, of madame Vervier; no longer his little Alix.
When she knocked at his door, twenty minutes later, and told him
that tea was ready, he felt that it was with a dull gaze that he met
her. She had asked him to come because of something he could do
to help her, but now her radiant demeanour seemed to demonstrate
that she had brought him so that he might be enchanted. Madame
Vervier was not a person in any need of help. There was nothing she
asked less of you. Circe, Circe; that was the word in his mind. Only
Circe, he supposed, allured; enticed; while madame Vervier only
gazed at you with those wide, intent, indifferent eyes.
“Do you like Les Chardonnerets?” said Alix, standing in the door
and smiling at him. She had changed her travelling dress for a white
one, a straight white one made of a thin woollen stuff, like her
mother’s; and her mother must have had it in readiness for her, for
he had never seen her wear it before. Nor had he ever seen her look
so happy.
“I suppose,” he said, with his hands in his pockets, standing in
the middle of the lovely room, “you feel England has ceased to exist;
and a good job, too.”
“But not at all, Giles,” said Alix, and there was a touch of gay
malice in her smile. “How could I feel that when you are here?”