me
exigent, I even became jealous of all outside interference. On the night
we dined at Frisio's I felt strongly irritated at Panacci's interest in
Vere. And there were other moments--"

He looked at her again. She stood perfectly still. Her head was slightly
bent and she seemed to be looking at the ground.

"And then came the night of the Carmine. Hermione, after you and Vere
had gone to bed Panacci and I had a quarrel. He attacked me violently.
He told me--he told me that I was in love with Vere, and that you, and
even--even that Gaspare knew it. At the moment I think I laughed at
him. I thought his accusation ridiculous. But when he was gone--and
afterwards--I examined myself. I tried to know myself. I spent hours
in self-examination, cruel self-examination. I did not spare myself.
Believe that, Hermione! Believe that!"

"I do believe it."

"And at the end I knew that it was not true. I was not, I had never been
in love with Vere. When I thought of Vere and myself in such a relation
my spirit recoiled. Such a thing seemed to me monstrous. But though I
knew that it was not true, I knew also that I had been jealous of
Vere, unjust to others because of Vere. I had been, perhaps, foolish,
undignified. Perhaps--perhaps--for how can we be quite sure of
ourselves. Hermione? How can we be certain of our own natures, our own
conduct?--perhaps, if Panacci's coarse brutality had not waked up my
whole being, I might have drifted on towards an affection for Vere that,
in a man of my age, would have been absurd, have made me ridiculous in
the eyes of others. I scarcely think so. But I want to be sincere.
I would rather exaggerate than minimize my own shortcomings to you
to-night. I scarcely believe it ever could have been so. But Panacci
said it was so. And you--I don't know what you have thought--"

"What I have thought doesn't matter now."

She spoke very quietly, but not with bitterness. She knew Artois. And
even in that moment of emotion, and of a sort of strange exhaustion
following upon emotion, she knew, as no other living person could have
known, the effort it must have cost him to speak as he had just spoken.

"That, at any rate, is the exact truth."

"I know it is."

"I have thought myself clear-sighted, Hermione. I have studied others.
Just lately I have been forced to study myself. It is as if--it seems to
me as if events had conspired against my own crass ignorance of myself,
as if a resolve had been come t