ays loved her, even in certain evil moments of
an irresistible jealousy. But she felt immensely far from Vere, distant
from her as one who does not love from one who loves; yet hideously
near, too, like one caught in the tangle of an enforced intimacy rooted
in a past which the present denies and rejects. Directly dinner was over
they parted, driven by the mutual desire to be alone.

And then Hermione waited for that against which she had prayed.

Artois would come to the island that night. Useless to pray! He was
coming. She felt that he was on the sea, environed by this strange mist
that hung to-night over the waters. She felt that he was coming to Vere.
She had gone to Africa to save him--in order that he might fall in love
with her then unborn child.

Monstrosities, the monstrosities that are in life, deny them, beat them
back, close our eyes to them as we will, rose up around her in the hot
stillness. She felt haunted, terrified. She was forcibly changed, and
now all the world was changing about her.

She must have relief. She could not sit there among spectres waiting
for the sound of oars that would tell her Vere's lover had come to the
island. How could she detach herself for a moment from this horror?

She thought of Ruffo.

As the thought came to her she got up and went out of the house.

Only when she was out-of-doors did she fully realize the strangeness of
the night. The heat of it was flaccid. The island seemed to swim in a
fatigued and breathless atmosphere. The mist that hung about it was like
the mist in a vapor-bath.

Below the vague sea lay a thing exhausted, motionless, perhaps fainting
in the dark. And in this heat and stillness there was no presage, no
thrill, however subtle, of a coming change, of storm. Rather there was
the deadness of eternity, as if this swoon would last forever, neither
developing into life, nor deepening into death.

Hermione had left the house feverishly, yearning to escape from her
company of spectres, yearning to escape from the sensation of ruthless
hands defacing her. As she passed the door-sill it was only with
difficulty that she suppressed a cry of "Ruffo!" a cry for help. But
when the night took her she no longer had any wish to disturb it by a
sound. She was penetrated at once by an atmosphere of fatality. Her pace
changed. She moved on slowly, almost furtively. She felt inclined to
creep.

Would Ruffo be at the island to-night? Would Artois really come?