He was speaking at random to keep Hermione there. And yet his words seemed chosen by some one for him to say.
“Surely good must come to the island over that waterway.”
“You think so?”
Her stress upon the pronoun made him reply:
“Hermione, you do not think me the typical Frenchman of this century, who furiously denies over a glass of absinthe the existence of the Creator of the world?”
“No. But I scarcely thought you believed in the efficacy of a plaster Saint.”
“Not of the plaster—no. But don’t you think it possible that truth, emanating from certain regions and affecting the souls of men, might move them unconsciously to embody it in symbol? What if this Pool were blessed, and men, feeling that it was blessed, put San Francesco here with his visible benediction?”
He said to himself that he was playing with his imagination, as sometimes he played with words, half-sensuously and half-aesthetically; yet he felt to-night as if within him there was something that might believe far more than he had ever suspected it would be possible for him to believe.
And that, too, seemed to have come to him from the hidden children who were so near.
“I don’t feel at all as if the Pool were blessed,” said Hermione. She sighed.