“I am sure of it. Where does she get that from?”
“He was full of the passion of the South.”
“I think Vere has a touch of Northern passion in her, too, combined perhaps with the other. And that, I think, she derives from you. Then I discern in Vere intellectual force, immature, embryonic if you like, but unmistakable.”
“That does not come from me,” Hermione said, suddenly, almost with bitterness.
“Why—why will you be unnecessarily humiliated?” Artois exclaimed.
His voice was confusedly echoed by the cavern, which broke into faint, but deep mutterings. Hermione looked up quickly to the mysterious vault which brooded above them, and listened till the chaotic noises died away. Then she said:
“Do you know what they remind me of?”
“Of what?”
“My efforts. Those efforts I made long ago to live again in work.”
“When you wrote?”