be alone, to go on with her secret occupation. She came back slowly
to her mother, who was sitting on a chair by the bedside. Hermione took
her hand, and Vere pushed up the edge of the mosquito-curtain and sat
down on the bed.

"About those books of Emile's--" Hermione began.

"Oh, Madre, you're not going to--But you've promised!"

"Yes."

"Then I may?"

"Why should you wish to read such books? They will probably make you
sad, and--and they may even make you afraid of Emile."

"Afraid! Why?"

"I remember long ago, before I knew him, I had a very wrong conception
of him, gained from his books."

"Oh, but I know him beforehand. That makes all the difference."

"A man like Emile has many sides."

"I think we all have, Madre. Don't you?"

Vere looked straight at her mother. Hermione felt that a moment had
come in which, perhaps, she could force the telling of that truth which
already she knew.

"I suppose so, Vere; but we need not surely keep any side hidden from
those we love, those who are nearest to us."

Vere looked a little doubtful--even, for a moment, slightly confused.

"N--o?" she said.

She seemed to consider something. Then she added:

"But I think it depends. If something in us might give pain to any one
we love, I think we ought to try to hide that. I am sure we ought."

Hermione felt that each of them was thinking of the same thing, even
speaking of it without mentioning it. But whereas she knew that Vere
was doing so, Vere could not know that she was. So Vere was at a
disadvantage. Vere's last words had opened the mother's eyes. What she
had guessed was true. This secret of the poems was kept from her because
of her own attempt to create and its failure. Abruptly she wondered if
Vere and Emile had ever talked that failure over. At the mere thought of
such a conversation her whole body tingled. She got up from her chair.

"Well, good-night, Vere," she said.

And she left the room, leaving her child amazed.

Vere did not understand why her mother had come, nor why, having come,
she abruptly went away. There was something the matter with her mother.
She had felt that for some time. She was more conscious than ever of it
now. Around her mother there was an atmosphere of uneasiness in which
she felt herself involved. And she was vaguely conscious of the new
distance between them, a distance daily growing wider. Now and then,
lately, she had felt almost uncomfortable with her mother, in the