“Why should it be?”
“I have tried—I have tried for years, Emile, to make Vere enough. I have even been false with myself. I have said to myself that she was enough. I did that after I knew that I could never produce work of any value. When Vere was a baby I lived only for her. Again, when she was beginning to grow up, I tried to live, I did live only for her. And I remember I used to say, I kept on saying to myself, ‘This is enough for me. I do not need any more than this. I have had my life. I am now a middle-aged woman. I must live in my child. This will be my satisfaction. This is my satisfaction. This is using rightly and naturally all that force I feel within me.’ I kept on saying this. But there is something within one which rises up and defies a lie—however beautiful the lie is, however noble it is. And I think even a lie can sometimes be both. Don’t you, Emile?”
It almost seemed to him for a moment that she knew his lie and Gaspare’s.
“Yes,” he said. “I do think so.”
“Well, that lie of mine—it was defied. And it had no more courage.”
“I want you to tell me something,” he said, quietly. “I want you to tell me what has happened to-day.”
“To-day?”
“Yes. Something has happened either to-day or very recently—I am sure of it—that has stirred up within you this feeling of acute dissatisfaction. It was always there. But something has called it into the open. What has done that?”
Hermione hesitated.
“Perhaps you don’t know,” he said.