And now--was not that voice like Maurice's? Had it not his wonderful
thrill of youth in it, that sound of the love of life which wakes all
the pulses of the body and stirs all the depths of the heart?

"Oh, dolce luna bianca de l' estate----"

The voice upon the sea was singing always the song of Mergellina. But
to Hermione it began to seem that the song was changing to another song,
and that the voice that was dying away across the shrouded water was
sinking into the shadows of a ravine upon a mountainside.

"Ciao, Ciao, Ciao,
Morettina bella, ciao----"

Maurice was going to the fishing under the sweet white moon of Sicily.
And she--she was no longer leaning down from the terrace of the Casa del
Mare, but from the terrace of the House of the Priest.

"Prima di partire
Un bacio ti voglio da!"

That kiss, which he had given her before he had gone away from her
forever! She seemed to feel it on her lips again, and she shut her eyes,
giving herself up to a passion of the imagination.

When she opened them again she felt exhausted and terribly alone.
Maurice had gone down into the ravine. He was never coming back. Ruffo
was taken by the mists and by the night. She lifted herself up from
the balustrade and looked round, remembering suddenly that she had left
Artois upon the terrace. He had disappeared silently, without a word of
good-bye.

And now, seeing the deserted terrace, she recollected her fierce attack
upon Artois, she remembered how she had stood in the black room
watching the two darknesses outside, listening to their silence. And she
remembered her conversation with Ruffo.

Actualities rushed back upon her memory. She felt as if she heard them
coming like an army to the assault. Her brain was crowded with jostling
thoughts, her heart with jostling feelings and fears. She was like one
trying to find a safe path through a black troop of threatening secrets.
What had happened that night between Vere and Emile? Why had Vere fled?
Why had she wept? And the previous night with the Marchesino--Vere had
not spoken of it to her mother. Hermione had found it impossible to ask
her child for any details. There was a secret too. And there were the
two secrets, which now she knew, but which Vere and Artois thought
were unknown to her still. And then--that mystery of which Ruffo had
innocently spoken that night.

As Hermione, moving in imagination through the black and threatening
troop, came to that