That night the Marchesino failed in his search for Vere, and he returned to Naples not merely disappointed but incensed. He had learned from a fisherman in the Saint’s Pool that she was out upon the sea “with a Signore,” and he had little difficulty in guessing who this Signore was. Of course it was “Caro Emilio,” the patron of Maria Fortunata. He began to consider his friend unfavorably. He remembered how frankly he had always told Emilio of his little escapades, with what enthusiasm, in what copious detail. Always he had trusted Emilio. And now Emilio was trying to play him false—worse, was making apparently a complete success of the attempt. For Emilio and Vere must have heard his beautiful singing, must have guessed from whom that vibrant voice proceeded, must have deliberately concealed themselves from its possessor. Where had they lain in hiding? His shrewd suspicion fell upon the very place. Virgilio’s Grotto had surely been their refuge.

“Ladro! Vigiliacco!” Words of no uncertain meaning flowed from his overcharged heart. His whole hot nature was aroused. His spirit was up in arms. And now, almost for the first time, he drew a comparison between his age and Emilio’s. Emilio was an old man. He realized it. Why had he never realized it before? Was he, full of youth, beauty, chivalrous energy and devotion, to be interfered with, set aside, for a man with gray hairs thick upon his head, for a man who spent half his hours bent over a writing-table? Emilio had never wished him to know the ladies of the island. He knew the reason now, and glowed with a fiery lust of battle. Vere had attracted him from the first. But this opposition drove on attraction into something stronger, more determined. He said to himself that he was madly in love. Never yet had he been worsted in an amour by any man. The blood surged to his head at the mere thought of being conquered in the only battle of life worth fighting—the battle for a woman, and by a man of more than twice his age, a man who ought long ago to have been married and have had children as old as the Signorina Vere.

Well, he had been a good friend to Emilio. Now Emilio should see that the good friend could be the good enemy. Late that night, as he sat alone in front of the Caffe Turco smoking innumerable cigarettes, he resolved to show these foreigners the stuff a Neapolitan was made of. They did not know. Poor, ignorant beings from cold England, drowned forever in perpetual yellow fogs, and from France, country of volatility but not of passion, they did not know what the men of the South, of a volcanic soil, were capable of, once they were roused, once their blood spoke and their whole nature responded! It was time they learned. And he would undertake to teach them. As he drove towards dawn up the dusty hill to Capodimonte he was in a fever of excitement.

There was excitement, too, in the house on the island, but it did not centre round the Marchesino.

That night, for the first time in her young life, Vere did not sleep. She heard the fisherman call, but the enchantment of sea doings did not stir her. She was aware for the first time of the teeming horrors of life. There, in the darkness beneath the cliff, Peppina had sobbed out her story, and Vere, while she listened, had stepped from girlhood into womanhood.

She had come into the house quietly, and found Artois waiting for her alone. Hermione had gone to bed, leaving word that she had a headache. And Vere was glad that night not to see her mother. She wished to see no one, and she bade Artois good-bye at once, telling him nothing, and not meeting his eyes when he touched her hand in adieu. And he had asked nothing. Why should he, when he read the truth in the grave, almost stern face of the child?

Vere knew.

The veils that hung before the happy eyes of childhood had been torn away, and those eyes had looked for the first time into the deeps of an unhappy human heart.

And he had thought it possible to preserve, perhaps for a long while, Vere’s beautiful ignorance untouched. He had thought of the island as a safe retreat in which her delicate, and as yet childish talent, might gradually mature under his influence and the influence of the sea. She had been like some charming and unusual plant of the sea, shot with sea colors, wet with sea winds, fresh with the freshness of the smooth-backed waves. And now in a moment she was dropped into the filthy dust of city horrors. What would be the result upon her and upon her dawning gift?

The double question was in his mind, and quite honestly. For his interest of the literary man in Vere was very vivid. Never yet had he had a pupil or dreamed of having one. There are writers who found a school, whose fame is carried forward like a banner by young and eager hands. Artois had always stood alone, ardently admired, ardently condemned, but not imitated. And he had been proud of his solitude. But—lately—had not underthoughts come into his mind, thoughts of leaving an impress on a vivid young intellect, a soul that was full of life, and the beginnings of energy? Had not he dreamed, however vaguely, of forming, like some sculptor of genius, an exquisite statuette—poetry, in the slim form of a girl-child singing to the world?

And now Peppina had rushed into Vere’s life, with sobs and a tumult of cries to the Madonna and the saints, and, no doubt, with imprecations upon the wickedness of men. And where were the dreams of the sea? And his dreams, where were they?

That night the irony that was in him woke up and smiled bitterly, and he asked himself how he, with his burden of years and of knowledge of life, could have been such a fool as to think it possible to guard any one against the assaults of the facts of life. Hermione, perhaps, had been wiser than he, and yet he could not help feeling something that was almost like anger against her for what he called her quixotism. The woman of passionate impulses—how dangerous she is, even when her impulses are generous, are noble! Action without thought, though the prompting heart behind it be a heart of gold—how fatal may it be!

And then he remembered a passionate impulse that had driven a happy woman across a sea to Africa, and he was ashamed.

Yet again the feeling that was almost like hostility returned. He said to himself that Hermione should have learned caution in the passing of so many years, that she ought to have grown older than she had. But there was something unconquerably young, unconquerably naÏve, in her—something that, it seemed, would never die. Her cleverness went hand in hand with a short-sightedness that was like a rather beautiful, yet sometimes irritating stupidity. And this latter quality might innocently make victims, might even make a victim of her own child.

And then a strange desire rose up in Artois, a desire to protect Vere against her own mother.

But how could that be done?

Vere, guarded by the beautiful unconsciousness of youth, was unaware of the subtleties that were brought into activity by her. That the Marchesino was, or thought himself, in love with her she realized. But she could not connect any root-sincerity with his feeling. She was accustomed vaguely to think of all young Southern Italians as perpetually sighing for some one’s dark eyes. The air of the South was full of love songs that rose and fell without much more meaning than a twitter of birds, that could not be stilled because it was so natural. And the Marchesino was a young aristocrat who did absolutely nothing of any importance to the world. The Northern blood in Vere demanded other things of a man than imitations of a seal, the clever driving of a four-in-hand, light-footed dancing, and songs to the guitar. In Gaspare she saw more reality than she saw as yet in the Marchesino. The dawning intellect of her began to grasp already the nobility of work. Gaspare had his work to do, and did it with loyal efficiency. Ruffo, too, had his profession of the sea. He drew out of the deep his livelihood. Even with the fever almost upon him he had been out by night in the storm. That which she liked and respected in Gaspare, his perfect and natural acceptance of work as a condition of his life, she liked and respected in Ruffo.

On the morning after the incident with Peppina, Vere came down looking strangely grave and tired. Her mother, too, was rather heavy-eyed, and the breakfast passed almost severely. When it was over Hermione, who still conducted Vere’s education, but with a much relaxed vigor in the summer months, suggested that they should read French together.

“Let us read one of Monsieur Emile’s books, Madre,” said Vere, with an awakening of animation. “You know I have never read one, only two or three baby stories, and articles that don’t count.”

“Yes, but Emile’s books are not quite suitable for you yet, Vere.”

“Why, Madre?”

“They are very fine, but they dive deep into life, and life contains many sad and many cruel things.”

“Oughtn’t we to prepare ourselves for them, then?”

“Not too soon, I think. I am nearly sure that if you were to read Emile’s books just yet you would regret it.”

Vere said nothing.

“Don’t you think you can trust me to judge for you in this matter, figlia mia? I—I am almost certain that Emile himself would think as I do.”

It was not without an effort, a strong effort, that Hermione was able to speak the last sentence. Vere came nearer to her mother, and stood before her, as if she were going to say something that was decisive or important. But she hesitated.

“What is it, Vere?” Hermione asked, gently.

“I might learn from life itself what Monsieur Emile’s books might teach me.”

“Some day. And when that time comes neither I nor he would wish to keep them out of your hands.”

“I see. Well, Madre dear, let us read whatever you like.”

Vere had been on the verge of telling her mother about the previous night and Peppina. But, somehow, at the last moment she could not.

And thus, for the moment at least, Artois and she shared another secret of which Hermione was unaware.

But very soon Hermione noticed that Vere was specially kind always to Peppina. They did not meet, perhaps, very often, but when by chance they did Vere spoke to the disfigured girl with a gentleness, almost a tenderness, that were striking.

“You like Peppina, Vere?” asked her mother one day.

“Yes, because I pity her so much.”

There was a sound that was almost like passion in the girl’s voice; and, looking up, Hermione saw that her eyes were full of light, as if the spirit had set two lamps in them.

“It is strange,” Vere continued, in a quieter tone; “but sometimes I feel as if on the night of the storm I had had a sort of consciousness of her coming—as if, when I saw the Saint’s light shining, and bent down to the water and made the sign of the Cross, I already knew something of Peppina’s wound, as if I made the sign to protect our Casa del Mare, to ward off something evil.”

“That was coming to us with Peppina, do you mean?”

“I don’t know, Madre.”

“Are you thinking of Giulia’s foolish words about the evil eye?”

“No. It’s all vague, Madre. But Peppina’s cross sometimes seems to me to be a sign, a warning come into the house. When I see it it seems to say there is a cross to be borne by some one here, by one of us.”

“How imaginative you are, Vere!”

“So are you, Madre! But you try to hide it from me.”

Hermione was startled. She took Vere’s hand, and held it for a moment in silence, pressing it with a force that was nervous. And her luminous, expressive eyes, immensely sensitive, beautiful in their sensitiveness, showed that she was moved. At last she said:

“Perhaps that is true. Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Why do you try to hide it?”

“I suppose—I think because—because it has brought to me a great deal of pain. And what we hide from others we sometimes seem almost to be destroying by that very act, though of course we are not.”

“No. But I think I should like to encourage my imagination.”

“Do you encourage it?” the mother asked, looking at her closely.

Again, as Vere had been on the edge of telling her mother all she knew about Peppina, she was on the edge of telling her about the poems of the sea. And again, moved by some sudden, obstinate reluctance, come she knew not why, she withheld the words that were almost on her lips.

And each time the mother was aware of something avoided, of an impulse stifled, and therefore of a secret deliberately kept. The first time Hermione had not allowed her knowledge to appear. But on this second occasion for a moment she lost control of herself, and when, after a perceptible pause, Vere said, “I know I love it,” and was silent, she exclaimed:

“Keep your secrets, Vere. Every one has a right to their freedom.”

“But, Madre—” Vere began, startled by her mother’s abrupt vehemence.

“No, Vere, no! My child, my dearest one, never tell me anything but of your own accord, out of your own heart and desire. Such a confidence is beautiful. But anything else—anything else, I could not bear from you.”

And she got up and left the room, walking with a strange slowness, as if she put upon herself an embargo not to hasten.

The words and—specially that—the way in which they were spoken made Vere suddenly and completely aware of something that perhaps she had already latently known—that the relation between her mother and herself had, of late, not been quite what once it was. At moments she had felt almost shy of her mother, only at moments. Formerly she had always told her mother everything, and had spoken—as her mother had just said—out of her own heart and desire, with eagerness, inevitably. Now—well, now she could not always do that. Was it because she was growing older? Children are immensely frank. She had been a child. But now—she thought of the Marchesino, of Peppina, of her conversation with Monsieur Emile in the Grotto of Virgilio, and realized the blooming of her girlhood, was aware that she was changing. And she felt half frightened, then eager, ardently eager. An impulse filled her, the impulse towards a fulness of life that, till now, she had not known. And for a moment she loved those little, innocent secrets that she kept.

But then she thought again of her mother, the most beloved of all her world. There had been in her mother’s voice a sound of tragedy.

Vere stood for a long while by the window thinking.

The day was very hot. She longed to bathe, to wash away certain perplexities that troubled her in the sea. But Gaspare was not on the island. He had gone she knew not where. She looked at the sea with longing. When would Gaspare be back? Well, at least she could go out in the small boat. Then she would be near to the water. She ran down the steps and embarked. At first she only rowed a little way out into the Saint’s Pool, and then leaned back against the white cushions, and looked up at the blue sky, and let her hand trail in the water. But she was restless to-day. The Pool did not suffice her, and she began to paddle out along the coast towards Naples. She passed a ruined, windowless house named by the fisherfolk “The Palace of the Spirits,” and then a tiny hamlet climbing up from a minute harbor to an antique church. Children called to her. A fisherman shouted: “Buon viaggio, Signorina!” She waved her hand to them apathetically and rowed slowly on. Now she had a bourne. A little farther on there was a small inlet of the sea containing two caves, not gloomy and imposing like the Grotto of Virgilio, but cosy, shady, and serene. Into the first of them she ran the boat until its prow touched the sandy bottom. Then she lay down at full length, with her hands behind her head on the cushions, and thought—and thought.

Figures passed through her mind, a caravan of figures travelling as all are travelling: her mother, Gaspare, Giulia, with her plump and swarthy face; Monsieur Emile, to whom she had drawn so pleasantly, interestingly near in these last days; the Marchesino (strutting from the hips and making his bold eyes round), Peppina, Ruffo. They went by and returned, gathered about her, separated, melted away as people do in our musings. Her eyes were fixed on the low roof of the cave. The lilt of the water seemed to rock her soul in a cradle. “Madre—Ruffo! Madre—Ruffo!” The words were in her mind like a refrain. And then the oddity, the promiscuity of life struck her. How many differences there were in this small group of people by whom she was surrounded! What would their fates be, and hers? Would her life be happy? She did not feel afraid. Youth ran in her veins. But—would it be? She saw the red cross on Peppina’s cheek. Why was one singled out for misery, another for joy? Which would be her fate? Ruffo seemed to be standing near her. She had seen him several times in these last days, but only at evening, fugitively, when he came in the boat with the fishermen. He was stronger now. He had saluted her eagerly. She had spoken to him from the shore. But he had not landed again on the island. She felt as if she saw his bright and beaming eyes. And Ruffo—would he be happy? She hoped so. She wanted him to be happy. He was such a dear, active boy—such a real boy. What must it be like to have a brother? Gaspare approved of Ruffo now, she thought; and Gaspare did not like everybody, and was fearfully blunt in expressing his opinion. She loved his bluntness. How delightfully his nose twitched when he was pleased! Dear old Gaspare! She could never feel afraid of anything or anybody when he was near. Monsieur Emile—the poems—the Marchesino singing. She closed her eyes to think the better.

“Signorina! Signorina!”

Vere woke and sat up.

“Signorina!”

Gaspare was looking at her from his boat.

“Gaspare!”

She began to realize things.

“I was—I was thinking.”

“Si, Signorina. I always think like that when I am in bed.”

She laughed. She was wide awake now.

“How did you find me?”

“I met one of the fishermen. He had seen you row into the cave.”

“Oh!”

She looked at him more steadily. His brown face was hot. Perspiration stood on his forehead just under the thick and waving hair.

“Where have you been, Gaspare? Not to Naples in all this heat?”

“I have been to Mergellina, Signorina.”

“Mergellina! Did you see Ruffo?”

“Si, Signorina.”

There was something very odd about Gaspare to-day, Vere thought. Or was she still not thoroughly awake? His eyes looked excited, surely, as if something unusual had been happening. And they were fixed upon her face with a scrutiny that was strange, almost as if he saw her now for the first time.

“What is it, Gaspare? Why do you look at me like that?”

Gaspare turned his eyes away.

“Like what, Signorina? Why should I not look at you?”

“What have you been doing at Mergellina?”

She spoke rather imperiously.

“Nothing particular, Signorina.”

“Oh!”

She paused, but he did not speak.

“Where did you see Ruffo?”

“At the harbor, Signorina.”

“Tell me, Gaspare, do you like him?”

“Ruffo?”

“Yes.”

“I do not dislike him, Signorina. He has never done me any harm.”

“Of course not. Why should he?”

“I say—he has not.”

“I like Ruffo.”

“Lo so.”

Again he looked at her with that curious expression in his eyes. Then he said:

“Come, Signorina! It is getting late. We must go to the island.”

And they pulled out round the point to the open sea.

During the hot weather the dwellers in the Casa del Mare made the siesta after the mid-day meal. The awnings and blinds were drawn. Silence reigned, and the house was still as the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty. At the foot of the cliffs the sea slept in the sunshine, and it was almost an empty sea, for few boats passed by in those hot, still hours.

To-day the servants were quiet in their quarters. Only Gaspare was outside. And he, in shirt and trousers, with a white linen hat covering his brown face, was stretched under the dwarf trees of the little garden, in the shadow of the wall, resting profoundly after the labors of the morning. In their respective rooms Hermione and Vere were secluded behind shut doors. Hermione was lying down, but not sleeping. Vere was not lying down. Generally she slept at this time for an hour. But to-day, perhaps because of her nap in the cave, she had no desire for sleep.

She was thinking about her mother. And Hermione was thinking of her. Each mind was working in the midst of its desert space, its solitude eternal.

What was growing up between them, and why was it growing?

Hermione was beset by a strange sensation of impotence. She felt as if her child were drifting from her. Was it her fault, or was it no one’s, and inevitable? Had Vere been able to divine certain feelings in her, the mother, obscure pains of the soul that had travelled to mind and heart? She did not think it possible. Nor had it been possible for her to kill those pains, although she had made her effort—to conceal them. Long ago, before she was married to Maurice, Emile had spoken to them of jealousy. At the time she had not understood it. She remembered thinking, even saying, that she could not be jealous.

But then she had not had a child.

Lately she had realized that there were forces in her of which she had not been aware. She had realized her passion for her child. Was it strange that she had not always known how deep and strong it was? Her mutilated life was more vehemently centred upon Vere than she had understood. Of Vere she could be jealous. If Vere put any one before her, trusted any one more than her, confided anything to another rather than to her, she could be frightfully jealous.

Recently she had suspected—she had imagined—

Restlessly she moved on her bed. A mosquito-curtain protected it. She was glad of that, as if it kept out prying eyes. For sometimes she was ashamed of the vehemence within her.

She thought of her friend Emile, whom she had dragged back from death.

He, too, had he not drifted a little from her in these last days? It seemed to her that it was so. She knew that it was so. Women are so sure of certain things, more almost than men are ever sure of anything. And why should Vere have drifted, Emile have drifted, if there were not some link between them—some link between the child and the middle-aged man which they would not have her know of?

Vere had told to Emile something that she had kept, that she still kept from her mother. When Vere had been shut up in her room she had not been reading. Emile knew what it was that she did during those long hours when she was alone. Emile knew that, and perhaps other things of Vere that she, Hermione, did not know, was not allowed to know.

Hermione, in their long intimacy, had learned to read Artois more clearly, more certainly than he realized. Although often impulsive, and seemingly unconscious of the thoughts of others, she could be both sharply observant and subtle, especially with those she loved. She had noticed the difference between his manner when first they spoke of Vere’s hidden occupation and his manner when last they spoke of it. In the interval he had found out what it was, and that it was not reading. Of that she was positive. She was positive also that he did not wish her to suspect this. Vere must have told him what it was.

It was characteristic of Hermione that at this moment she was free from any common curiosity as to what it was that Vere did during those many hours when she was shut up in her room. The thing that hurt her, that seemed to humiliate her, was the Emile should know what it was and not she, that Vere should have told Emile and not told her.

As she lay there she cowered under the blow a mutual silence can give, and something woke up in her, something fiery, something surely that could act with violence. It startled her, almost as a stranger rushing into her room would have startled her.

For a moment she thought of her child and her loved friend with a bitterness that was cruel.

How long had they shared their secret? She wondered, and began to consider the recent days, searching their hours for those tiny incidents, those small reticences, avoidances, that to women are revelations. When had she first noticed a slight change in Emile’s manner to her? When had Vere and he first seemed a little more intimate, a little more confidential than before? When had she, Hermione, first felt a little “out of it,” not perfectly at ease with these two dear denizens of her life?

Her mind fastened at once upon the day of the storm. On the night of the storm, when she and Emile had been left alone in the restaurant, she had felt almost afraid of him. But before then, in the afternoon on the island, there had been something. They had not been always at ease. She had been conscious of trying to tide over moments that were almost awkward—once or twice, only once or twice. But that was the day. Her woman’s instinct told her so. That was the day on which Vere had told Emile the secret she had kept from her mother. How excited Vere had been, almost feverishly excited! And Emile had been very strange. When the Marchesino and Vere went out upon the terrace, how restless, how irritable he—

Suddenly Hermione sat up in her bed. The heat, the stillness, the white cage of the mosquito net, the silence had become intolerable to her. She pulled aside the net. Yes, that was better. She felt more free. She would lie down outside the net. But the pillow was hot. She turned it, but its pressure against her cheek almost maddened her, and she got up, went across the room to the wash-stand and bathed her face with cold water. Then she put some eau de Cologne on her forehead, opened a drawer and drew out a fan, went over to an arm-chair near the window and sat down in it.

What had Emile written in the visitors’ book at the Scoglio di Frisio? With a strange abruptness, with a flight that was instinctive as that of a homing pigeon, Hermione’s mind went to that book as to a book of revelation. Just before he wrote he had been feeling acutely—something. She had been aware of that at the time. He had not wanted to write. And then suddenly, almost violently, he had written and had closed the book.

She longed to open that book now, at once, to read what he had written. She felt as if it would tell her very much. There was no reason why she should not read it. The book was one that all might see, was kept to be looked over by any chance visitor. She would go one day, one evening, to the restaurant and see what Emile had written. He would not mind. If she had asked him that night of course he would have shown her the words. But she had not asked him. She had been almost afraid of things that night. She remembered how the wind had blown up the white table-cloth, her cold, momentary shiver of fear, her relief when she had seen Gaspare walking sturdily into the room.

And now, at once, this thought of Gaspare brought to her a sense of relief again, of relief so great, so sharp—piercing down into the very deep of her nature—that by it she was able to measure something, her inward desolation at this moment. Yes, she clung to Gaspare, because he was loyal, because he loved her, because he had loved Maurice—but also because she was terribly alone.

Because he had loved Maurice! Had there been a time, really a time, when she had possessed one who belonged utterly to her, who lived only in and for her? Was that possible? To-day, with the fierceness of one starving, she fastened upon this memory, her memory, hers only, shared by no one, never shared by living or dead. That at least she had, and that could never be taken from her. Even if Vere, her child, slipped from her, if Emile, her friend, whose life she had saved, slipped from her, the memory of her Sicilian was forever hers, the memory of his love, his joy in their mutual life, his last kiss. Long ago she had taken that kiss as a gift made to two—to her and to Vere unborn. To-day, almost savagely, she took it to herself, alone, herself—alone. Hers it was, hers only, no part of it Vere’s.

That she had—her memory, and Gaspare’s loyal, open-hearted devotion. He knew what she had suffered. He loved her as he had loved his dead Padrone. He would always protect her, put her first without hesitation, conceal nothing from her that it was her right—for surely even the humblest, the least selfish, the least grasping, surely all who love have their rights—that it was her right to know.

Her cheeks were burning. She felt like one who had been making some physical exertion.

Deeply silent was the house. Her room was full of shadows, yet full of the hidden presence of the sun. There was a glory outside, against which she was protected. But outside, and against assaults that were inglorious, what protection had she? Her own personality must protect her, her own will, the determination, the strength, the courage that belong to all who are worth anything in the world. And she called upon herself. And it seemed to her that there was no voice that answered.

There was a hideous moment of drama.

She sat there quietly in her chair in the pretty room. And she called again, and she listened—and again there was silence.

Then she was afraid. She had a strange and horrible feeling that she was deserted by herself, by that which, at least, had been herself and on which she had been accustomed to rely. And what was left was surely utterly incapable, full of the flabby wickedness that seems to dwell in weakness. It seemed to her that if any one who knew her well, if Vere, Emile, or even Gaspare, had come into the room just then, the intruder would have paused on the threshold amazed to see a stranger there. She felt afraid to be seen and yet afraid to remain alone. Should she do something definite, something defiant, to prove to herself that she had will and could exercise it?

She got up, resolved to go to Vere. When she was there, with her child, she did not know what she was going to do. She had said to Vere, “Keep your secrets.” What if she went now and humbled herself, explained to the child quite simply and frankly a mother’s jealousy, a widow’s loneliness, made her realize what she was in a life from which the greatest thing had been ruthlessly withdrawn? Vere would understand surely, and all would be well. This shadow between them would pass away. Hermione had her hand on the door. But she did not open it. An imperious reserve, autocrat, tyrant, rose up suddenly within her. She could never make such a confession to Vere. She could never plead for her child’s confidence—a confidence already given to Emile, to a man. And now for the first time the common curiosity to which she had not yet fallen a victim came upon her, flooded her. What was Vere’s secret? That it was innocent, probably even childish, Hermione did not question even for a moment. But what was it?

She heard a light step outside and drew back from the door. The step passed on and died away down the paved staircase. Vere had gone out to the terrace, the garden, or the sea.

Hermione again moved forward, then stopped abruptly. Her face was suddenly flooded with red as she realized what she had been going to do, she who had exclaimed that every one has a right to their freedom.

For an instant she had meant to go to Vere’s room, to try to find out surreptitiously what Emile knew.

A moment later Vere, coming back swiftly for a pencil she had forgotten, heard the sharp grating of a key in the lock of her mother’s door.

She ran on lightly, wondering why her mother was locking herself in, and against whom.