"I am sure there is no more exact measure. Hermione, it is very difficult, I think, to realize what any human being is, to judge any one quite accurately. Some judge a nature by the distance it can sink, others by the distance it can rise. Which do you do? Do you judge Delarey by his act of faithlessness? And, if you do, how would you judge me?"
"You!"
There was a sound of wonder in her voice.
"Yes. You say I am an egoist. And this that I am saying will seem to you egoism. It is egoism, I suppose. But I want to know--I must know. How would you judge me? How do you judge me?"
She was silent.
"How are you judging me at this moment? Aren"t you judging me by the distance I fall, the distance, perhaps, you think I have fallen?"
He spoke slowly. He was delaying. For all the time he spoke he was secretly battling with his pride--and his pride was a strong fighter.
But to-night his pa.s.sion for sincerity, his instinct that for Hermione--and for him, too--salvation lay in their perfect, even in their cruel sincerity to themselves and to each other, was a strong fighter also. In it his pride met an antagonist that was worthy of it.
And he went on:
"Are you judging me by this summer?"
He paused.
"Go on," she said.
He could not tell by her voice what she was feeling, thinking.
Expression seemed to be withdrawn from it, perhaps deliberately.
"This summer something has come between us, a cloud has come between us.
I scarcely know when I first noticed it, when it came. But I have felt it, and you have felt it."
"Yes."
"It might, perhaps, have arisen from the fact of my suspicion who Ruffo was, a suspicion that lately became a certainty. My suspicion, and latterly my knowledge, no doubt changed my manner--made me anxious, perhaps, uneasy, made me watchful, made me often seem very strange to you. That alone might have caused a difference in our relations. But I think there was something else."
"Yes, there was something else."
"And I think, I feel sure now, that it was something to do with Vere.
I was, I became deeply interested in Vere--interested in a new way. She was growing up. She was pa.s.sing from childhood into girlhood. She was developing swiftly. That development fascinated me. Of course I had always been very fond of Vere. But this summer she meant more to me than she had meant. One day--it was the day I came back to the island after my visit to Paris--"
"Yes?"
He looked at her, trying to read what she was feeling in her face, but it was too dark for him to discern it.
"Vere made a confession to me. She told me she was working secretly, that she was writing poems. I asked her to show them to me. She did so.
I found some talent in them, enough for me to feel justified in telling her to continue. Once, Hermione, you consulted me. Then my advice was different."
"I know."
"The remembrance of this, and Vere"s knowledge that you had suffered in not succeeding with work, prompted us to keep the matter of her attempts to write a secret for the time. It seems a trifle--all this, but looking back now I feel that we were quite wrong in not telling you."
"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."