Yet she did not form in her
mind any definite conception of what such a mutual secret might be. She
simply began to feel frightened, almost like a child.

She said to herself that this brooding night, with its dumbness, its
heat, its vaporous mystery, was affecting her spirit. And she got up
from the bench, and began to walk very slowly towards the house.

When she did this she suddenly felt sure that while she had been on the
crest of the cliff Artois had arrived at the island, that he was now
with Vere in the house. She knew that it was so.

And again there rushed upon her that sensation of outrage, of being
defaced, and of approaching a dwelling in which things monstrous had
taken up their abode.

She came to the bridge and paused by the rail. She felt a sort of horror
of the Casa del Mare in which Artois was surely sitting--alone or with
Vere? With Vere. For otherwise he would have come up to the cliff.

She leaned over the rail. She looked into the Pool. One boat was there
just below her, the boat to which Ruffo belonged. Was there another? She
glanced to the right. Yes; there lay by the rock a pleasure-boat from
Naples.

Artois had come in that.

She looked again at the other boat, searching the shadowy blackness for
the form of Ruffo. She longed that he might be awake. She longed that he
might sing, in his happy voice, of the happy summer nights, of the sweet
white moons that light the Southern summer nights, of the bright eyes of
Rosa, of the sea of Mergellina. But from the boat there rose no voice,
and the mist hung heavily over the silent Pool.

Then Hermione lifted her eyes and looked across the Pool, seeking the
little light of San Francesco. Only the darkness and the mist confronted
her. She saw no light--and she trembled like one to whom the omens are
hostile.

She trembled and hid her face for a moment. Then she turned and went up
into the house.

CHAPTER XXXIII

When Hermione reached the door of the Casa del Mare she did not go in
immediately, but waited on the step. The door was open. There was a dim
lamp burning in the little hall, which was scarcely more than a
passage. She looked up and saw a light shining from the window of her
sitting-room. She listened; there was no sound of voices.

They were not in there.

She was trying to crush down her sense of outrage, to feel calm before
she entered the house.

Perhaps they had gone into the garden. The night was terribly hot. They
wo