she should penetrate.

There was only Ruffo left.

He had no secrets. He threw no darkness round him and those who loved
him. In his happy, innocent song was his happy, innocent soul.

She listened, she leaned down, almost she stretched out her arms towards
the sea. And in that moment she knew in her mind and she felt in her
heart that Ruffo was very near to her, that he meant very much to her,
even that she loved him.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Artois left the island that night without speaking to Hermione. He
waited a long time. But she did not move to come to him. And he did not
dare to go to her. He did not dare! In all their long friendship never
before had his spirit bent before, or retreated as if in fear from
Hermione's. To-night he was conscious that in her fierce anger, and
afterwards in her tears, she had emancipated herself from him. He was
conscious of her force as he had never been conscious of it before.
Something within him almost abdicated to her intensity. And at last he
turned and went softly away from the terrace. He descended to the sea.
He left the island.

Were they no longer friends?

As the boat gave itself to the mist he wondered. It had come to this,
then--that he did not know whether Hermione and he were any longer
friends. Almost imperceptibly, with movement so minute that it had
seemed like immobility, they had been drifting apart through these days
and nights of the summer. And now abruptly the gulf appeared between
them.

He felt just then that they could never more be friends, that their old
happy camaraderie could never be reestablished.

That they could ever be enemies was unthinkable. Even in Hermione's
bitterness and anger Artois felt her deep affection. In her cry, "Take
care, Emile, or I shall hate you for keeping me in the dark!" he heard
only the hatred that is the other side of love.

But could they ever be comrades again? And if they could not, what could
they be?

As the boat slipped on, under the Saint's light, which was burning
although the mist had hidden it from Hermione's searching eyes, and out
to the open sea, Artois heard again her fierce exclamation. It blended
with Vere's sob. He looked up and saw the faint lights of the Casa del
Mare fading from him in the night. And an immense sadness, mingled with
an immense, but chaotic, longing invaded him. He felt horribly lonely,
and he felt a strange, new desire for the nearness to him of life. He
yearned to feel life