With all the force and fixity of purpose he fastened his mind upon Hermione, letting Gaspare go.
If what the Marchesino had asserted were true—not that—but if Hermione had believed it to be true, much in her conduct that had puzzled Artois was made plain. Could she have thought that? Had she thought it? And if she had—? Always he was looking out to the stars, and to the ineffable calm of the sea. But now their piercing brightness, and its large repose, only threw into a sort of blatant relief in his mind its consciousness of the tumult of humanity. He saw Hermione involved in that tumult, and he saw himself. And Vere?
Was it possible that in certain circumstances Vere might hate him? It was strange that to-night Artois found himself for the first time considering the Marchesino seriously, not as a boy, but as a man who perhaps knew something of the world and of character better than he did. The Marchesino had said:
“If she understood you—how she would hate you.”
But surely Vere and he understood each other very well.
He looked out over the sea steadily, as he wished, as he meant, to look now at himself, into his own heart and nature, into his own life. Upon the sea, to the right and far off, a light was moving near the blackness of the breakwater. It was the torch of a fisherman—one of those eyes of the South of which Artois had thought. His eyes became fascinated by it, and he watched it with intensity. Sometimes it was still. Then it travelled gently onward, coming towards him. Then it stopped again. Fire—the fire of youth. He thought of the torch as that; as youth with its hot strength, its beautiful eagerness, its intense desires, its spark-like hopes, moving without fear amid the dark mysteries of the world and of life; seeking treasure in the blackness, the treasure of an answering soul, of a completing nature, of the desired and desirous heart, seeking its complement of love—the other fire.
He looked far over the sea. But there was no other fire upon it.
And still the light came on.
And now he thought of it as Vere.
She was almost a child, but already her fire was being sought, longed for. And she knew it, and must be searching, too, perhaps without definite consciousness of what she was doing, instinctively. She was searching there in the blackness, and in her quest she was approaching him. But where he stood it was all dark. There was no flame lifting itself up that could draw her flame to it. The fire that was approaching would pass before him, would go on, exploring the night, would vanish away from his eyes. Elsewhere it would seek the fire it needed, the fire it would surely find at last.