Vere must be complete. He had
desired to make her gift for song complete. He could never desire to
mutilate her life. Had he not said to himself one day, as his boat
glided past the sloping gardens of Posilipo, "Vere must be happy."

Yet that evening he had made her unhappy.

He had come to the island from his self-examination strong in the
determination to be really himself, no longer half self-deceived and so
deceiving. He had gone out upon the terrace, and waited there. But when
Vere had come to join him, he had not been able to be natural. In his
desire to rehabilitate himself thoroughly and swiftly in his own opinion
he must have been almost harsh to the child. She had approached him a
little doubtfully. She had needed specially just then to be met with
even more than the usual friendship. Artois had seen in her face, in her
expressive eyes, a plea not for forgiveness--there was no need for that,
but for compassion, an appeal to him to ignore and yet to sympathise,
that was exquisitely young and winning. But, because of his
self-examination, and because he was feeling acutely, he had been
abrupt, cold, changed in his manner. They had sat down together in the
dark, and after some uneasy conversation, Vere, perhaps eager to make
things easier between herself and "Monsieur Emile," had brought up the
subject of her poems with a sort of anxious simplicity, and a touch of
timidity that yet was confidential. And Artois, still recoiling secretly
from that which might possibly have become a folly but could never have
been anything more, had told Vere plainly and almost sternly that she
must go to her literary path unaided, unadvised by him.

"I was glad to advise you at the beginning, Vere," he had said, finally;
"but now I must leave you to yourself to work out your own salvation.
You have talent. Trust it. Trust yourself. Do no lean on any one, least
of all on me."

"No, Monsieur Emile," she had answered.

Those were the last words exchanged between them before Hermione came
and questioned Vere. And only when Vere slipped into the house, leaving
that sound of pain behind her, did Artois realize how cruel he must have
seemed in his desire quickly to set things right.

He realized that; but, subtle though he was, he did not understand the
inmost and root-cause of Vere's loss of self-control.

Vere was feeling bitterly ashamed, had been bending under this sense of
undeserved shame, ever since the Marchesino's stratage