at a permanent disadvantage, which time can only increase. And just then
Artois felt that there was nothing, that there could never be anything,
to compensate any human being for the loss of youth.

He began to wonder about the people of the island. The Marchesino had
spoken with a strange assurance. He had dared to say:

"You love the Signorina. I know it; the Signora knows it; Gaspare--he
knows it. And now you--you know it."

Was it possible that his deep interest in Vere, his paternal delight in
her talent, in her growing charm, in her grace and sweetness, could have
been mistaken for something else, for the desire of man for woman? Vere
had certainly never for a moment misunderstood him. That he knew as
surely as he knew that he was alive. But Gaspare and Hermione? He fell
into deep thought, and presently he was shaken by an emotion that was
partly disgust and partly anxiety. He got up from his chair and
looked out into the night. The weather was exquisitely still, the sky
absolutely clear. The sea was like the calm that dwells surely in the
breast of God. Naples was sleeping in the silence. But he was terribly
awake, and it began to seem to him as if he had, perhaps, slept lately,
slept too long. He was a lover of truth, and believed himself to be a
discerner of it. The Marchesino was but a thoughtless, passionate boy,
headstrong, Pagan, careless of intellect, and immensely physical. Yet
it was possible that he had been enabled to see a truth which Artois had
neither seen nor suspected. Artois began to believe it possible, as he
remembered many details of the conduct of Hermione and of Gaspare
in these last summer days. There had been something of condemnation
sometimes in the Sicilian's eyes as they looked into his. He had
wondered what it meant. Had it meant--that? And that night in the garden
with Hermione--

With all the force and fixity of purpose he fastened his mind upon
Hermione, letting Gaspare go.

If what the Marchesino had asserted were true--not that--but if Hermione
had believed it to be true, much in her conduct that had puzzled Artois
was made plain. Could she have thought that? Had she thought it? And if
she had--? Always he was looking out to the stars, and to the ineffable
calm of the sea. But now their piercing brightness, and its large
repose, only threw into a sort of blatant relief in his mind its
consciousness of the tumult of humanity. He saw Hermione involved in
that tumult, and he sa