She could
never live fully in a girl child--she was not made to do that. Why had
he ever thought, hoped that perhaps it might be so, that perhaps Vere
might some day completely and happily fill her life? Long ago he had
encouraged her to work, to write. Misled by her keen intelligence, her
enthusiasm, her sincerity and vitality, by the passion that was in her,
the great heart, the power of feeling, the power of criticising
and inspiring another which she had freely shown to him, Artois had
believed--as he had once said to her in London--that she might be an
artist, but that she preferred to be simply a woman. But he found it
was not so. Hermione had not the peculiar gift of the writer. She could
feel, but she could not arrange. She could discern, but she could not
expose. A flood of words came to her, but not the inevitable word. She
could not take that exquisite leap from the known into the unknown
which genius can take with the certainty of alighting on firm ground.
In short, she was not formed and endowed to be an artist. About such
matters Artois knew only how to be sincere. He was sincere with his
friend, and she thanked him for being so.

One possible life was taken from Hermione, the life of the artist who
lives in the life of the work.

There remained the life in Vere.

To-day Artois knew from Hermione's own lips that she could not live
completely in her child, and he felt that he had been blind as men are
often blind about women, are blind because they are secretly selfish.
The man lives for himself, but he thinks it natural, even distinctively
womanly, that women should live for others--for him, for some other
man, for their children. What man finds his life in his child? But the
woman--she surely ought to, and without difficulty. Hermione had been
sincere to-day, and Artois knew his blindness, and knew his secret
selfishness.

The gray was lifting a little over Naples, the distant shadowy form of
Vesuvius was becoming clearer, more firm in outline. But the boatman
rowed slowly, influenced by the scirocco.

How, then, was Hermione to live? How was she to find happiness or peace?
It was a problem which he debated with an ardor that had in it something
of passion. And he began to wonder how it would have been if he had
acted differently, if he had allowed her to find out what he suspected
to be the exact truth of the dead man. Long ago he had saved her from
suffering. But by doing so had he not dedicated