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
lo