uvre amie!" he said.

He bent down and touched her hand.

"I don't know," she said, more calmly, as if relieved, but still with an
undercurrent of passion, "whether I could ever live again in the life of
another. But if I did it would be in the life of a man. I am not made to
live in a woman's life, really to live, giving out the force that is
in me. I know I'm a middle-aged woman--to these Italians here more than
that, an old woman. But I'm not a finished woman, and I never shall
be till I die. Vere is my child. I love her tenderly; more than
that--passionately. She has always been close to me, as you know. But
no, Emile, my relation to Vere, hers to me, does not satisfy all my need
of love, my power to love. No, no, it doesn't. There's something in me
that wants more, much more than that. There's something in me that--I
think only a son of his could have satisfied my yearning. A son might
have been Maurice come back to me, come back in a different, beautiful,
wonderfully pure relation. I prayed for a son. I needed a son. Don't
misunderstand me, Emile; in a way a son could never have been so close
to me as Vere is,--but I could have lived in him as I can never live in
Vere. I could have lived in him almost as once I lived in Maurice. And
to-day I--"

She got up suddenly from her chair, put her arms on the window-frame,
and leaned out to the strange, white day.

"Emile," she said, in a moment, turning round to him, "I want to get
away, on to the sea. Will you row me out, into the Grotto of Virgil?[*]
It's so dreadfully white here, white and ghastly. I can't talk naturally
here. And I should like to go on a little farther, now I've begun. It
would do me good to make a clean breast of it, dear brother confessor.
Shall we take the little boat and go?"

[*] The grotto described in this book is not really the
Grotto of Virgil, but it is often called so by the fishermen
along the coast.

"Of course," he said.

"I'll get a hat."

She was away for two or three minutes. During that time Artois stood
by the window that looked towards Ischia. The stillness of the day was
intense, and gave to his mind a sensation of dream. Far off across the
gray-and-white waters, partially muffled in clouds that almost resembled
mist, the mountains of Ischia were rather suggested, mysteriously
indicated, than clearly seen. The gray cliffs towards Bagnoli went
down into motionless water gray as they were, but of a different