w himself. And Vere?

Was it possible that in certain circumstances Vere might hate him?
It was strange that to-night Artois found himself for the first time
considering the Marchesino seriously, not as a boy, but as a man who
perhaps knew something of the world and of character better than he did.
The Marchesino had said:

"If she understood you--how she would hate you."

But surely Vere and he understood each other very well.

He looked out over the sea steadily, as he wished, as he meant, to look
now at himself, into his own heart and nature, into his own life. Upon
the sea, to the right and far off, a light was moving near the blackness
of the breakwater. It was the torch of a fisherman--one of those eyes of
the South of which Artois had thought. His eyes became fascinated by
it, and he watched it with intensity. Sometimes it was still. Then it
travelled gently onward, coming towards him. Then it stopped again.
Fire--the fire of youth. He thought of the torch as that; as youth with
its hot strength, its beautiful eagerness, its intense desires, its
spark-like hopes, moving without fear amid the dark mysteries of the
world and of life; seeking treasure in the blackness, the treasure of
an answering soul, of a completing nature, of the desired and desirous
heart, seeking its complement of love--the other fire.

He looked far over the sea. But there was no other fire upon it.

And still the light came on.

And now he thought of it as Vere.

She was almost a child, but already her fire was being sought, longed
for. And she knew it, and must be searching, too, perhaps without
definite consciousness of what she was doing, instinctively. She was
searching there in the blackness, and in her quest she was approaching
him. But where he stood it was all dark. There was no flame lifting
itself up that could draw her flame to it. The fire that was approaching
would pass before him, would go on, exploring the night, would vanish
away from his eyes. Elsewhere it would seek the fire it needed, the fire
it would surely find at last.

And so it was. The torch came on, passed softly by, slipped from his
sight beneath the bridge of Castel dell' Uovo.

When it had gone Artois felt strangely deserted and alone, strangely
unreconciled with life. And he remembered his conversation with Hermione
in Virgil's Grotto; how he had spoken like one who scarcely needed love,
having ambition and having work to do, and being no longer youn