Hermione was beset by a strange sensation of impotence. She felt as if her child were drifting from her. Was it her fault, or was it no one’s, and inevitable? Had Vere been able to divine certain feelings in her, the mother, obscure pains of the soul that had travelled to mind and heart? She did not think it possible. Nor had it been possible for her to kill those pains, although she had made her effort—to conceal them. Long ago, before she was married to Maurice, Emile had spoken to them of jealousy. At the time she had not understood it. She remembered thinking, even saying, that she could not be jealous.
But then she had not had a child.
Lately she had realized that there were forces in her of which she had not been aware. She had realized her passion for her child. Was it strange that she had not always known how deep and strong it was? Her mutilated life was more vehemently centred upon Vere than she had understood. Of Vere she could be jealous. If Vere put any one before her, trusted any one more than her, confided anything to another rather than to her, she could be frightfully jealous.
Recently she had suspected—she had imagined—
Restlessly she moved on her bed. A mosquito-curtain protected it. She was glad of that, as if it kept out prying eyes. For sometimes she was ashamed of the vehemence within her.
She thought of her friend Emile, whom she had dragged back from death.
He, too, had he not drifted a little from her in these last days? It seemed to her that it was so. She knew that it was so. Women are so sure of certain things, more almost than men are ever sure of anything. And why should Vere have drifted, Emile have drifted, if there were not some link between them—some link between the child and the middle-aged man which they would not have her know of?
Vere had told to Emile something that she had kept, that she still kept from her mother. When Vere had been shut up in her room she had not been reading. Emile knew what it was that she did during those long hours when she was alone. Emile knew that, and perhaps other things of Vere that she, Hermione, did not know, was not allowed to know.
Hermione, in their long intimacy, had learned to read Artois more clearly, more certainly than he realized. Although often impulsive, and seemingly unconscious of the thoughts of others, she could be both sharply observant and subtle, especially with those she loved. She had noticed the difference between his manner when first they spoke of Vere’s hidden occupation and his manner when last they spoke of it. In the interval he had found out what it was, and that it was not reading. Of that she was positive. She was positive also that he did not wish her to suspect this. Vere must have told him what it was.
It was characteristic of Hermione that at this moment she was free from any common curiosity as to what it was that Vere did during those many hours when she was shut up in her room. The thing that hurt her, that seemed to humiliate her, was the Emile should know what it was and not she, that Vere should have told Emile and not told her.