“I believe I know,” she said, at last. “Yes, that was my thought, or almost.”
“When?”
She hesitated, looking at him, not altogether doubtfully, but with a shadow of reserve, which might easily, he fancied, grow deeper, or fade entirely away. He saw the resolve to speak come quietly into her mind.
“You know, Monsieur Emile, I love watching the sea,” she said, rather slowly and carefully. “Especially at dawn, and in the evening before it is dark. And it always seems to me as if at dawn it is more heavenly than it is after the day has happened, though it is so very lovely then. And sometimes that has made me feel that our dawn is our most beautiful time—as if we were nearest the truth then. And, of course, that is when we are most ignorant, isn’t it? So I suppose I have been thinking a little bit like you. Haven’t I?”
She asked it earnestly. Artois had never heard her speak quite like this before, with a curious deliberation that was nevertheless without self-consciousness. Before he could answer she added, abruptly, as if correcting, or even almost condemning herself:
“I can put it much better than that. I have.”
Artois leaned forward. Something, he did not quite know what, made him feel suddenly a deep interest in what Vere said—a strong curiosity even.
“You have put it much better?” he said.
Vere suddenly looked conscious. A faint wave of red went over her face and down to her small neck. Her hands moved and parted. She seemed half ashamed of something for a minute.
“Madre doesn’t know,” she murmured, as if she were giving him a reason for something. “It isn’t interesting,” she added. “Except, of course, to me.”