save truth, they who know the greatest truth of all.

And Artois saw Maurice Delarey, the gay, the full-blooded youth, grown
stern in the halls of death, unable to be at peace until she who had
most loved him knew him at last as he had been in life.

As no one else would tell Hermione the truth, the dead man himself,
speaking through his son, the fruit of his sin, had told her the truth
that day. He, too, had been perhaps a spirit in prison, through all
these years since his death.

Artois saw him in freedom.

And at that moment Artois felt that in the world there was only one
thing that was perfectly beautiful, and that thing was absolute truth.
Its knowledge must make Hermione greater.

But now she was hanging on her cross.

If he could only comfort her!

As she had come to him in Africa, he longed now to go to her. She had
saved him from the death of the body. If only he could save her from
another and more terrible death--the death of the spirit that believes
and trusts in life!

He had been absorbed in thought and unconscious of time. Now he looked
up, he was aware of things. He listened. Surely Gaspare had been away a
long while. And Vere--where was she?

He had a strange desire to see Ruffo now. Something new and mystic had
been born, or had for the first time made itself apparent, within him
to-night. And he knew that to-night he would look at Ruffo as he had
never looked at him before.

He got up and, leaving the death-charm lying on the table, went to
the door. There he hesitated. Should he go to the terrace, to Vere? Or
should he go up-stairs to that dark room and try to speak to his friend?
Or should he go out to the cliff, to seek Gaspare and Ruffo?

Ruffo drew him. He had to go to the cliff.

He went out by the front door. At first he thought of descending at once
by the steps to the Pool of San Francesco. But he changed his mind and
went instead to the bridge.

He looked over into the Pool.

It was a very clear night. San Francesco's light was burning brightly.
Very sincerely it was burning beneath the blessing hands of the Saint.
A ray of gold that came from it lay upon the darkness of the Pool,
stealing through the night a little way, as if in an effort to touch the
Casa del Mare.

In the Pool there was one boat. Artois saw no one by the sea's edge,
heard no voices there, and he turned towards the crest of the island, to
the seat where Vere so often went at night, and where Hermione,