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 naive, 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 i