“Don’t think I am blaming Vere. If she has fascination, she cannot help it.”
“What shall we do?”
“Will you let me put you into a cab? Will you wait in my room at the hotel until I come back with Vere? I can search for her better alone. I will find her—if she is here.”
Their eyes met steadily as he finished speaking, and he saw, or thought he saw, in hers a creeping menace, as if she had the intention to attack or to defy him.
“I am Vere’s mother,” she said.
“Let me take you to a cab, Hermione.”
He spoke coldly, inexorably. This moment of enforced inactivity was a very difficult one for him. And the violence that was blazing within him made him fear that if Hermione did not yield to his wish he might lose his self-control.
“You can do nothing,” he added.
Her eyes left his, her lips quivered. Then she said:
“Take me, then.”