CHAPTER XXVI
Artois stayed to dine. The falling of night deepened Hermione’s impression of the gulf which was now between them, and which she was sure he knew of. When darkness comes to intimacy it seems to make that intimacy more perfect. Now surely it caused reserve, restraint, to be more complete. The two secrets which Hermione now knew, but which were still cherished as secrets by Vere and Artois, stood up between the mother and her child and friend, inexorably dividing them.
Hermione was strung up to a sort of nervous strength that was full of determination. She had herself in hand, like a woman of the world who faces society with the resolution to deceive it. While Vere and Artois had been out in the boat she had schooled herself. She felt more competent to be the watcher of events. She even felt calmer, for knowledge increased almost always brings an undercurrent of increased tranquility, because of the sense of greater power that it produces in the mind. She looked better. She talked more easily.
When dinner was over they went as usual to the garden, and when they were there Hermione referred to the projected meeting with the Marchesino.
“I made a promise,” she said. “I must keep it.”
“Of course,” said Artois. “But it seems to me that I am always being entertained, and that I am inhospitable—I do nothing in return. I have a proposal to make. Monday will be the sixteenth of July, the festa of the Madonna del Carmine—Santa Maria del Carmine. It is one of the prettiest of the year, they tell me. Why should not you and Vere come to dine at the Hotel, or in the Galleria, with me? I will ask Panacci to join us, and we will all go on afterwards to see the illuminations, and the fireworks, and the sending up of the fire-balloons. What do you say?”
“Would you like it, Vere?”
“Immensely, Madre.”
She spoke quietly, but she looked pleased at the idea.
“Won’t the crowd be very bad, though?” asked Hermione.