"I found it out."

"You knew?"

"I went to Vere's room. The poems were on the table with your corrections. I read them."

"We ought to have told you."

"I oughtn't to have read them, but I did."

"A mother has the right—"

"Not a mother who has resigned her right to question her child. I had said to Vere, 'Keep your secrets.' So I had no right, and I did wrong in reading them."

He felt that she was instinctively trying to match his sincerity with hers, and that fact helped him to continue.

"The knowledge of this budding talent of Vere's made me take a new interest in her, made me wish very much—at least I thought, I believed it was that, Hermione—that no disturbing influence should come into her life. Isidoro Panacci came—through me. Peppina came—through you. Hermione, on the night when Vere and I went out alone together in the boat Vere learned the truth about Peppina and the life behind the shutter."

"I knew that, too."

"You knew it?"

"Yes. I suspected something. You led me to suspect it."

"I remember—"

"I questioned Peppina. I made her tell me."

He said nothing for a moment. Then, with an effort, he said:

"You knew we had kept those two things from you, Vere and I?"

"Vere and you—yes."

Now he understood almost all, or quite all, that had been strange to him in her recent conduct.

"Sometimes—have you almost hated us for keeping those two secrets?"

"I don't think I have ever hated Vere."

"But me?"

"Do you know why I told Vere she might read your books?"

"Why?"

"Because I thought they might make her feel differently towards you."

"Less—less kindly?"

"Yes."

She spoke very quietly, but he felt—he did not know why—that it had cost her very much to say what she had said.

"You wanted Vere to think badly of me!"

He was honoring her for the moral courage which enabled her to tell him. Yet he felt as if she had struck him. And so absolutely was he accustomed to delicate tenderness, and the most thoughtful, anxious kindness from her, that he suffered acutely and from a double distress. The thing itself was cruel and hurt him. But that Hermione had done it hurt him far more. He could hardly believe it. That by any road she could travel to such an action seemed incredible to him. He stood, realizing it. And the bitter sharpness of his suffering made him understand something. In all its fulness he understood what Hermione's tenderness had been in his life for many, many years. And then—his mind seemed to take another step. "Why does a woman do such a thing as this?" he asked himself. "Why does such a woman as Hermione do such a thing?" And he knew what her suffering must have been, and how her heart must have been storm-tossed, before it was driven to succumb to such an impulse.

And he came quite close to her. And he felt a strange, sudden nearness to her that was no nearness of body.

"Hermione," he said, "I could never judge your character by that action. Don't—don't judge mine by any cruelty of which I have been guilty during this summer. You have told me something that it was very difficult for you to tell. I have something to tell you. And it is—it is not easy to tell."

"Tell it me."

He looked at her. He was now quite close to her, and could see the outline of her face but not the expression in her eyes.

"My interest in Vere increased. I believed it to be an interest aroused in me by the discovery of this talent in her. I believed the new fondness I felt for her to be a very natural fondness, caused by her charming confidence in me. Our little secret drew us together. And I understand now, Hermione, that it seemed to set you apart from us. I believe I understand all now, all the circumstances that have seemed strange to me this summer. I wanted Vere's talent to develop naturally, unhindered, unaffected—I thought it was merely that—and I became exigent, I even became jealous of all outside interference. On the night we dined at Frisio's I felt strongly irritated at Panacci's interest in Vere. And there were other moments—"

He looked at her again. She stood perfectly still. Her head was slightly bent and she seemed to be looking at the ground.

"And then came the night of the Carmine. Hermione, after you and Vere had gone to bed Panacci and I had a quarrel. He attacked me violently. He told me—he told me that I was in love with Vere, and that you, and even—even that Gaspare knew it. At the moment I think I laughed at him. I thought his accusation ridiculous. But when he was gone—and afterwards—I examined myself. I tried to know myself. I spent hours in self-examination, cruel self-examination. I did not spare myself. Believe that, Hermione! Believe that!"

"I do believe it."

"And at the end I knew that it was not true. I was not, I had never been in love with Vere. When I thought of Vere and myself in such a relation my spirit recoiled. Such a thing seemed to me monstrous. But though I knew that it was not true, I knew also that I had been jealous of Vere, unjust to others because of Vere. I had been, perhaps, foolish, undignified. Perhaps—perhaps—for how can we be quite sure of ourselves. Hermione? How can we be certain of our own natures, our own conduct?—perhaps, if Panacci's coarse brutality had not waked up my whole being, I might have drifted on towards an affection for Vere that, in a man of my age, would have been absurd, have made me ridiculous in the eyes of others. I scarcely think so. But I want to be sincere. I would rather exaggerate than minimize my own shortcomings to you to-night. I scarcely believe it ever could have been so. But Panacci said it was so. And you—I don't know what you have thought—"

"What I have thought doesn't matter now."

She spoke very quietly, but not with bitterness. She knew Artois. And even in that moment of emotion, and of a sort of strange exhaustion following upon emotion, she knew, as no other living person could have known, the effort it must have cost him to speak as he had just spoken.

"That, at any rate, is the exact truth."

"I know it is."

"I have thought myself clear-sighted, Hermione. I have studied others. Just lately I have been forced to study myself. It is as if—it seems to me as if events had conspired against my own crass ignorance of myself, as if a resolve had been come to by the power that directs our destinies that I should know myself. I wish I dared to tell you more. I wish to-night I dared to tell you all that I have come to know. But I dare not, I dare not. You would not believe me. I could not even expect you to believe me."

He stopped. Perhaps he hoped for a word that would deny his last observation. But it did not come to him. And he hesitated for what seemed to him a very long time, almost an eternity. He was beset by indecision, by an extraordinary deep modesty and consciousness of his own unworthiness that he had never before experienced, and also by a new and acute consciousness of the splendor of Hermione's nature, of the power of her heart, of the faithfulness and nobility of her temperament.

"All I can say, Hermione"—he at length went on speaking, and in his voice sounded that strange modesty, a modesty that made his voice seem to her almost like a voice of hesitating youth—"all that I dare to say to-night is this. I told you just now that we all have our different ways of loving. You have loved in your way. You have loved Delarey as your husband. And you have loved me as your friend. Delarey, as your husband, betrayed you. Only to-day you know it. I, as your friend—have I ever betrayed you? Do you believe—even now when you are ready to believe very much of evil—do you really believe that as a friend I could ever betray you?"

He moved, stood in front of her, lifted his hands and laid them on her shoulders.

"Do you believe that?"

"No."

"You have loved us in your way. He is dead. But I am here to love you always in my way. Perhaps my way seems to you such a poor way—it must, it must—that it is hardly worth anything at all. But perhaps, now that I know so much of myself—and of you"—there was a slight break in his voice—"and of you, I shall be able to find a different, a better way. I don't know. To-night I doubt myself. I feel as if I were so unworthy. But I may—I may be able to find a better way of loving you."

Quite unconsciously his two hands, which still rested upon her shoulders, began to lean heavily upon them, to press them, to grip them till she suffered a physical discomfort that almost amounted to pain.

"I shall seek a better way—I shall seek it. And the only thing I ask you to-night is—that you will not forbid me to seek it."

The pressure of his hands upon her shoulders was becoming almost unbearable. But she bore it. She bore it for she loved it. Perhaps that night no words could have quite convinced her of his desperate honesty of soul in that moment, perhaps no sound of his voice could have quite convinced her. But the unconsciously cruel pressure of his hands upon her convinced her absolutely. She felt as if it was his soul—the truth of his soul—which was grasping her—which was closing upon her. And she felt that only a thing that needed could grasp, could close like that.

And even in the midst of her chaos of misery and doubt she felt, she knew, that it was herself that was needed.

"I will not forbid you to seek it," she said.

He sighed deeply. His hands dropped down from her. They stood for a moment quite still. Then he said, in a low voice:

"You took the fattura della morte?"

"Yes," she answered. "It was in—in her room at Mergellina to-day."

"Have you got it still?"

"Yes."

She held out her right hand. He took the death-charm from her.

"She made it—the woman who wronged you made it to bring death into the Casa del Mare."

"Not to me?"

"No, to Peppina. Has it not brought another death? Or, at least, does it not typify another death to-night, the death of a great lie? I think it does. I look upon it as a symbol. But—but—?"

He looked at her. He was at the huge doorway of the palace. The sea murmured below him. Hermione understood and bent her head.

Then Artois threw the death-charm far away into the sea.

"Let me take you to the boat. Let me take you back to the island."

She did not answer him. But when he moved she followed him, till they came to the rocks and saw floating on the dim water the two white boats.

"Gaspare!"

"Vengo!"

That cry—what did it recall to Hermione? Gaspare's cry from the inlet beneath the Isle of the Sirens when he was bringing the body of Maurice from the sea. As she had trembled then, she began to tremble now. She felt exhausted, that she could bear no more, that she must rest, be guarded, cared for, protected, loved. The boat touched shore. Gaspare leaped out. He cast an eager, fiery look of scrutiny on his Padrona. She returned it. Then, suddenly, he seized her hand, bent down and kissed it.

She trembled more. He lifted his head, stared at her again. Then he took her up in his strong arms, as if she were a child, and carried her gently and carefully to the stern of the boat.

"Lei si riposi!" he whispered, as he set her down.

She shut her eyes, leaning back against the seat. She heard Artois get in, the boat pushed off, the splash of the oars. But she did not open her eyes, until presently an instinct told her there was something she must see. Then she looked.

The boat was passing under the blessing hand of San Francesco, under the light of the Saint, which was burning calmly and brightly.

Hermione moved. She bent down to the water, the acqua benedetta. She sprinkled it over the boat and made the sign of the cross. When they reached the island Artois got out. As she came on shore he said to her:

"Hermione, I left the—the two children together in the garden. Do you think—will you go to them for a moment? Or—"

"I will go," she answered.

She was no longer trembling. She followed him up the steps, walking slowly but firmly. They came to the house door. Gaspare had kept close behind them. At the door Artois stopped. He felt as if to-night he ought to go no farther.

Hermione looked at him and passed into the house. Gaspare, seeing that Artois did not follow her, hesitated, but Artois said to him:

"Go, Gaspare, go with your Padrona."

Then Gaspare went in, down the passage, and out to the terrace.

Hermione was standing there.

"Do you think they are in the garden, Gaspare?" she said.

"Si, Signora. Listen! I can hear them!"

He held up his hand. Not far away there was a sound of voices speaking together.

"Shall I go and tell them, Signora?"

After a moment Hermione said:

"Yes, Gaspare—go and tell them."

He went away, and she waited, leaning on the balustrade and looking down to the dim sea, from which only the night before Ruffo's voice had floated up to her, singing the song of Mergellina. Only the night before! And it seemed to her centuries ago.

"Madre!"

Vere spoke to her. Vere was beside her. But she gazed beyond her child to Ruffo, who stood with his cap in his hand and his eyes, full of gentleness, looking at her for recognition.

"Ruffo!" she said.

Vere moved to let Ruffo pass. He came up and stood before Hermione.

"Ruffo!" she said again.

It seemed that she was going to say more. They waited for her to say more. But she did not speak. She stood quite still for a moment looking at the boy. Then she put one hand on his shoulder, bent down and touched his forehead with her lips.

And in that kiss the dead man was forgiven.



EPILOGUE

On a radiant day of September in the following year, from the little harbor of Mergellina a white boat with a green line put off. It was rowed by Gaspare, who wore his festa suit, and it contained two people, a man and a women, who had that morning been quietly married.

Another boat preceded theirs, going towards the island, but it was so far ahead of them that they could only see it as a moving dot upon the shining sea, when they rounded the breakwater and set their course for the point of land where lies the Antico Giuseppone.

Gaspare rowed standing up, with his back towards Hermione and Artois and his great eyes staring steadily out to sea. He plied the oars mechanically. During the first few minutes of the voyage to the island his mind was far away. He was a boy in Sicily once more, waiting proudly upon his first, and indeed his only, Padrona in the Casa del Prete on Monte Amato. Then she was quite alone. He could see her sitting at evening upon the terrace with a book in her lap, gazing out across the ravine and the olive-covered mountain slopes to the waters that kissed the shore of the Sirens' Isle. He could see her, when night fell, going slowly up the steps into the lighted cottage, and turning on its threshold to wish him "Buon riposo."

Then there was an interval—and she came again. He was waiting at the station of Cattaro. Outside stood the little train of donkeys, decorated with flowers under his careful supervision. Upon Monte Amato, in the Casa del Prete, everything was in readiness for the arrival of the Padrona—and the Padrone. For this time his Padrona was not to be alone. And the train came in, thundering along by the sea, and he saw a brown eager face looking out of a window—a face which at once had seemed familiar to him almost as if he had always known it in Sicily.

And the new and wonderful period of his boy's life began.

But it passed, and in the early morning he stood in the corner of the Campo Santo where Protestants were buried, and threw flowers from his father's terreno into an open grave.

And once more his Padrona was alone.

Far away from Sicily, from his "Paese," among the great woods of the Abetone he received for the first time into his untutored arms his Padroncina. His Padrone was gone from him forever. But once more, as he would have expressed it to a Sicilian comrade, they were "in three." And still another period began.

And now that period was ended.

As Gaspare rowed slowly on towards the island, in his simple and yet shrewd way he was pondering on life, on its irresistible movement, on its changes, its alternations of grief and joy, loneliness and companionship. He was silently reviewing the combined fates of his Padrona and himself.

Behind him for a long while there was silence. But when the boat was abreast of the sloping gardens of Posilipo Artois spoke at last.

"Hermione!" he said.

"Yes," she answered.

"Do you remember that evening when I met you on the sea?"

"After I had been to Frisio's? Yes I remember it."

"You had been reading what I wrote in the wonderful book."

"And I was wondering why you had written it."

"I had no special reason. I thought of that saying. I had to write something, so I wrote that. I wonder—I wonder now why long ago my conscience did not tell me plainly something. I wonder it did not tell me plainly what you were in my life, all you were."

"Have I—have I really been much?"

"I never knew how much till I thought of you permanently changed towards me, till I thought of you living, but with your affection permanently withdrawn from me. That night—you know—?"

"Yes, I know."

"At first I was not sure—I was afraid for a moment about you. Vere and I were afraid, when your room was dark and we heard nothing. But even then I did not fully understand how much I need you. I only understood that in the Palace of the Spirits, when—when you hated me—"

"I don't think I ever hated you."

"Hatred, you know, is the other side of love."

"Then perhaps I did. Yes—I did."

"How long my conscience was inactive, was useless to me! It needed a lesson, a terrible lesson. It needed a cruel blow to rouse it."

"And mine!" she answered, in a low voice.

"We shall make many mistakes, both of us," he said. "But I think, after that night, we can never for very long misunderstand each other. For that night we were sincere."

"Let us always be sincere."

"Sincerity is the rock on which one should build the house of life."

"Let us—you and I—let us build upon it our palace of the spirits."

Then they were silent again. They were silent until the boat passed the point, until in the distance the island appeared, even until the prow of the boat grated against the rock beneath the window of the Casa del Mare.

As Hermione got out Gaspare bent to kiss her hand.

"Benedicite!" he murmured.

And, as she pressed his hand with both of hers, she answered:

"Benedicite!"



That night, not very late, but when darkness had fallen over the sea, Hermione said to Vere:

"I am going out for a little, Vere."

"Yes, Madre."

The child put her arms round her mother and kissed her. Hermione tenderly returned the kiss, looked at Artois, and went out.

She made her way to the brow of the island, and stood still for a while, drinking in the soft wind that blew to her from Ischia. Then she descended to the bridge and looked down into the Pool of San Francesco.

The Saint's light was burning steadily. She watched it for a moment, and while she watched it she presently heard beneath her a boy's voice singing softly the song of Mergellina:

"Oh, dolce luna bianca de l' estate Mi fugge il sonno accanto a la marina; Mi destan le dolcissime serate, Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina."

The voice died away. There was a moment of silence.

She clasped the rail with her hand; she leaned down over the Pool.

"Buona notte, Ruffino!" she said softly.

And the voice from the sea answered her:

"Buona notte, Signora. Buona notte e buon riposo."

THE END