When Hermione reached the door of the Casa del Mare she did not go in immediately, but waited on the step. The door was open. There was a dim lamp burning in the little hall, which was scarcely more than a passage. She looked up and saw a light shining from the window of her sitting-room. She listened; there was no sound of voices.

They were not in there.

She was trying to crush down her sense of outrage, to feel calm before she entered the house.

Perhaps they had gone into the garden. The night was terribly hot. They would prefer to be out-of-doors. Vere loved the garden. Or they might be on the terrace.

She stepped into the hall and went to the servants’ staircase. Now she herd voices, a laugh.

“Giulia!” she called.

The voices stopped talking, but it was Gaspare who came in answer to her call. She looked down to him.

“Don’t come up, Gaspare. Where is the Signorina?”

“The Signorina is on the terrace, Signora—with Don Emilio.”

He looked up at her very seriously in the gloom. She thought of the meeting at the Festa, and longed to wring from Gaspare his secret.

“Don Emilio is here?”

“Si, Signora.”

“How long ago did he come?”

“About half an hour, I think, Signora.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Don Emilio told me not to bother you, Signora—that he would just sit and wait.”

“I see. And the Signorina?”

“I did not tell her, either. She was in the garden alone, but I have heard her talking on the terrace with the Signore. Are you ill, Signora?”

“No. All right, Gaspare!”

She moved away. His large, staring eyes followed her till she disappeared in the passage. The passage was not long, but it seemed to Hermione as if a multitude of impressions, of thoughts, of fears, of determinations rushed through her heart and brain while she walked down it and into the room that opened to the terrace. This room was dark.

As she entered it she expected to hear the voices from outside. But she heard nothing.

They were not on the terrace, then!

She again stood still. Her heart was beating violently, and she felt violent all over, thrilling with violence like one on the edge of some outburst.

She looked towards the French window. Through its high space she saw the wan night outside, a sort of thin paleness resting against the blackness in which she was hidden. And as her eyes became accustomed to their environment she perceived that the pallor without was impinged upon by two shadowy darknesses. Very faint they were, scarcely relieved against the night, very still and dumb—two shadowy darknesses, Emile and Vere sitting together in silence.

When Hermione understood this she remained where she was, trying to subdue even her breathing. Why were they not talking? What did this mutual silence, this mutual immobility mean? She was only a few feet from them. Yet she could not hear a human sound, even the slightest. There was something unnatural, but also tremendously impressive to her in their silence. She felt as if it signified something unusual, something of high vitality. She felt as if it had succeeded some speech that was exceptional, and that had laid its spell, of joy or sorrow, upon both their spirits.

And she felt much more afraid, and also much more alone, than she would have felt had she found them talking.

Presently, as the silence continued, she moved softly back into the passage. She went down it a little way, then returned, walking briskly and loudly. In this action her secret violence was at play. When she came to the room she grasped the door-handle with a force that hurt her hand. She went in, shut the door sharply behind her, and without any pause came out upon the terrace.

“Emile!”

“Yes,” he said, getting up from his garden-chair quickly.

“Gaspare told me you were here.”

“I have been here about half an hour.”

She had not given him her hand. She did not give it.

“I didn’t hear you talking to Vere, so I wondered—I almost thought—”

“That I had gone without seeing you? Oh no. It isn’t very late. You don’t want to get rid of me at once?”

“Of course not.”

His manner—or so it seemed to her—was strangely uneasy and formal, and she thought his face looked drawn, almost tortured. But the light was very dim. She could not be sure of that.

Vere had said nothing, had not moved from her seat.

There was a third chair. As Hermione took it and drew it slightly forward, she looked towards Vere, and thought that she was sitting in a very strange position. In the darkness it seemed to the mother as if her child’s body were almost crouching in its chair, as if the head were drooping, as if—

“Vere! Is anything the matter with you?”

Suddenly, as if struck sharply, Vere sprang up and passed into the darkness of the house, leaving a sound that was like a mingled exclamation and a sob behind her.

“Emile!”

“Emile!”

“Hermione?”

“What is the matter with Vere? What have you been doing to Vere?”

“I!”

“Yes, you! No one else is here.”

Hermione’s violent, almost furious agitation was audible in her voice.

“I should never wish to hurt Vere—you know that.”

His voice sounded as if he were deeply moved.

“I must—Vere! Vere!”

She moved towards the house. But Artois stepped forward swiftly, laid a hand on her arm, and stopped her.

“No, leave Vere alone to-night.”

“Why?”

“She wishes to be alone to-night.”

“But I find her here with you.”

There was a harsh bitterness of suspicion, of doubt, in her tone that he ought surely to have resented. But he did not resent it.

“I was sitting on the terrace,” he said, gently. “Vere came in from the garden. Naturally she stayed to entertain me till you were here.”

“And directly I come she rushes away into the house!”

“Perhaps there was—something may have occurred to upset her.”

“What was it?”

Her voice was imperious.

“You must tell me what it was!” she said, as he was silent.

“Hermione, my friend, let us sit down. Let us at any rate be with each other as we always have been—till now.”

He was almost pleading with her, but she did not feel her hardness melting. Nevertheless she sat down.

“Now tell me what it was.”

“I don’t think I can do that, Hermione.”

“I am her mother. I have a right to know. I have a right to know everything about my child’s life.”

In those words, and in the way they were spoken, Hermione’s bitter jealousy about the two secrets kept from her, but shared by Artois, rushed out into the light.

“I am sure there is nothing in Vere’s life that might not be told to the whole world without shame; and yet there may be many things that an innocent girl would not care to tell to any one.”

“But if things are told they should be told to the mother. The mother comes first.”

He said nothing.

“The mother comes first!” she repeated, almost fiercely. “And you ought to know it. You do know it!”

“You do come first with Vere.”

“If I did, Vere would confide in me rather than in any one else.”

As Hermione said this, all the long-contained bitterness caused by Vere’s exclusion of her from the knowledge that had been freely given to Artois brimmed up suddenly in her heart, overflowed boundaries, seemed to inundate her whole being.

“I do not come first,” she said.

Her voice trembled, almost broke.

“You know that I do not come first. You have just told me a lie.”

“Hermione!”

His voice was startled.

“You know it perfectly well. You have known it for a long time.”

Hot tears were in her eyes, were about to fall. With a crude gesture, almost like that of a man, she put up her hands to brush them away.

“You have known it, you have known it, but you try to keep me in the dark.”

Suddenly she was horribly conscious of the darkness of the night in which they were together, of the darkness of the world.

“You love to keep me in the dark, in prison. It is cruel, it is wicked of you.”

“But Hermione—”

“Take care, Emile, take care—or I shall hate you for keeping me in the dark.”

Her passionate words applied only to the later events in which Vere was concerned. But his mind rushed back to Sicily, and suddenly there came to his memory some words he had once read, he did not know when, or where:

“The spirit that resteth upon a lie is a spirit in prison.”

As he remembered them he felt guilty, guilty before Hermione. He saw her as a spirit confined for years in a prison to which his action had condemned her. Yes, she was in the dark. She was in an airless place. She was deprived of the true liberty, that great freedom which is the accurate knowledge of the essential truths of our own individual lives. From his mind in that moment the cause of Hermione’s outburst, Vere and her childish secrets, were driven out by a greater thing that came upon it like a strong and mighty wind—the memory of that lie, in which he had enclosed his friend’s life for years, that lie on which her spirit had rested, on which it was resting still. And his sense of truth did not permit him to try to refute her accusation. Indeed, he was filled with a desire that nearly conquered him—there and then, brutally, clearly, nakedly, to pour forth to his friend all the truth, to say to her:

“You have a strong, a fiery spirit, a spirit that hates the dark, that hates imprisonment, a spirit that can surely endure, like the eagle, to gaze steadfastly into the terrible glory of the sun. Then come out of the darkness, come out of your prison. I put you there—let me bring you forth. This is the truth—listen! hear it!—it is this—it is this—and—this!”

This desire nearly conquered him. Perhaps it would have conquered him but for an occurrence that, simple though it was, changed the atmosphere in which their souls were immersed, brought in upon them another world with the feeling of other lives than their own.

The boat to which Ruffo belonged, going out of the Pool to the fishing, passed at this moment slowly upon the sea beneath the terrace, and from the misty darkness his happy voice came up to them in the song of Mergellina which he loved:

Dark was the night, moonless, shrouded in the mist. But his boy’s heart defied it, laughed at the sorrowful truths of life, set the sweet white moon in the sky, covered the sea with her silver. Artois turned towards the song and stood still. But Hermione, as if physically compelled towards it, moved away down the terrace, following in the direction in which the boat was going.

As she passed Artois saw tears running down her cheeks. And he said to himself:

“No, I cannot tell her; I can never tell her. If she is to be told, let Ruffo tell her. Let Ruffo make her understand. Let Ruffo lift her up from the lie on which I have made her rest, and lead her out of prison.”

As this thought came to him a deep tenderness towards Hermione flooded his heart. He stood where he was. Far off he still heard Ruffo’s voice drifting away in the mist out to the great sea. And he saw the vague form of Hermione leaning down over the terrace wall, towards the sea, the song, and Ruffo.

How intensely strange, how mysterious, how subtle was the influence housed within the body of that singing boy, that fisher-boy, which, like an issuing fluid, or escaping vapor, or perfume, had stirred and attracted the childish heart of Vere, had summoned and now held fast the deep heart of Hermione.

Just then Artois felt as if in the night he was walking with the Eternities, as if that song, now fading away across the sea, came even from them. We do not die. For in that song to which Hermione bent down—the dead man lived when that boy’s voice sang it. In that boat, now vanishing upon the sea, the dead man held an oar. In that warm young heart of Ruffo the dead man moved, and spoke—spoke to his child, Vere, whom he had never seen, spoke to his wife, Hermione, whom he had deceived, yet whom he had loved.

Then let him—let the dead man himself—speak out of that temple which he had created in a moment of lawless passion, out of that son whom he had made to live by the action which had brought upon him death.

Ruffo—all was in the hands of Ruffo, to whom Hermione, weeping, bent for consolation.

The song died away. Yet Hermione did not move, but still leaned over the sea. She scarcely knew where she was. The soul of her, the suffering soul, was voyaging through the mist with Ruffo, was voyaging through the mist and through the night with—her Sicilian and all the perfect past. It seemed to her at that moment that she had lost Vere in the dark, that she had lost Emile in the dark, that even Gaspare was drifting from her in a mist of secrecy which he did not intend that she should penetrate.

There was only Ruffo left.

He had no secrets. He threw no darkness round him and those who loved him. In his happy, innocent song was his happy, innocent soul.

She listened, she leaned down, almost she stretched out her arms towards the sea. And in that moment she knew in her mind and she felt in her heart that Ruffo was very near to her, that he meant very much to her, even that she loved him.