“Ah, you noticed! I, too, thought I had never seen her so full of the inner spirit of youth—almost as he was in Sicily.”
“Yes,” Artois said, gravely. “In some things she is very much his daughter.”
“In some things only?” asked Hermione.
“Don’t you think so? Don’t you think she has much of you in her also? I do.”
“Has she? I don’t know that I see it. I don’t know that I want to see it. I always look for him in Vere. You see, I dreamed of having a boy. Vere is instead of the boy I dreamed of, the boy—who never came, who will never come.”
“My friend,” said Artois, very seriously and gently, “are you still allowing your mind to dwell upon that old imagination? And with Vere before you, can you regard her merely as a substitute, an understudy?”
An energy that was not free from passion suddenly flamed up in Hermione.
“I love Vere,” she said. “She is very close to me. She knows it. She does not doubt me or my love.”
“But,” he quietly persisted, “you still allow your mind to rove ungoverned among those dangerous ways of the past?”
“Emile,” she said, still speaking with vehemence, “it may be very easy to a strong man like you to direct his thoughts, to keep them out of one path and guide them along another. It may be—I don’t know whether it is; but I don’t pretend to such strength. I don’t believe it is ever given to women. Perhaps even strength has its sex—I sometimes think so. I have my strength, believe me. But don’t require of me the peculiar strength that is male.”