But another feeling succeeded this sense of pity, a sensation of outrage that grew within her and became almost ungovernable. She had her independence too, her pride, her self-respect. And now she saw them in dust that Emile had surely heaped about them. A storm of almost hard anger shook her. She tasted an acrid bitterness that seemed to impregnate her, to turn the mainspring of her life to gall. She heard the violent voice of the young Neapolitan saying: “He is master, he is master, he has always been master here!” And she tried to look back over her life, and to see how things had been. And, shaken still by this storm of anger, she felt as if it were true, as if she had allowed Artois to take her life in his hands and to shape it according to his will, as if he had been governing her although she had not known it. He had been the dominant personality in their mutual friendship. His had been the calling voice, hers the obedient voice that answered. Only once had she risen to a strong act, an act that brought great change with it, and that he had been hostile to. That was when she had married Maurice.
And she had left Maurice for Artois. From Africa had come the calling, dominant voice. And even in her Garden of Paradise she had heard it. And even from her Garden of Paradise she had obeyed it. For the first time she saw that act of renunciation as the average man or woman would probably see it; as an extraordinary, quixotic act, to be wondered at blankly, or, perhaps, to be almost angrily condemned. She stood away from her own impulsive, enthusiastic nature, and stared at it critically—as even her friends had often stared—and realized that it was unusual, perhaps extravagant, perhaps sometimes preposterous. This readiness to sacrifice—was it not rather slavish than regally loyal? This forgetfulness of personal joy, this burnt-offering of personality—was it not contemptible? Could such actions bring into being the respect of others, the respect of any man? Had Emile respected her for rushing to Africa? Or had he, perhaps, then and through all these years, simply wondered how she could have done such a thing?
And Maurice—Maurice? Oh, what had he thought? How had he looked upon that action?
Often and often in lonely hours she had longed to go down into the grave, or to go up into the blue, to drag the body, the soul, the heart she loved back to her. She had been rent by a desire that had made her limbs shudder, or that had flushed her whole body with red, and set her temples beating. The longing of heart and flesh had been so vehement that it had seemed to her as if they must compel, or cease to be. Now, again, she desired to compel Maurice to come to her from his far, distant place, but in order that she might make him understand what he had perhaps died misunderstanding; why she had left him to go to Artois, exactly how she had felt, how desperately sad to abandon the Garden of Paradise, how torn by fear lest the perfect days were forever at an end, how intensely desirous to take him with her. Perhaps he had felt cruelly jealous! Perhaps that was why he had not offered to go with her at once. Yes, she believed that now. She saw her action, she saw her preceding decision as others had seen it, as no doubt Maurice had seen it, as perhaps even Artois had seen it. Why had she instinctively felt that because her nature was as it was, and because she was bravely following it, every one must understand her? Oh, to be completely understood! If she could call Maurice back for one moment, and just make him see her as she had been then; loyal to her friend, and through and through passionately loyal to him! If she could! If she could!
She had left Maurice, the one being who had utterly belonged to her, to go to Artois. She had lost the few remaining days in which she could have been supremely happy. She had come back to have a few short hours devoid of calm, chilled sometimes by the strangeness that had intruded itself between her and Maurice, to have one kiss in which surely at last misunderstanding was lost and perfect love was found. And then—that “something” in the water! And then—the gulf.
In that gulf she had not been quite alone. The friend whom she had carried away from Africa and death had been with her. He had been closely in her life ever since. And now—
She heard the Marchesino’s voice: “I see what he is, what he wants, I see it all—all that is in his mind and heart. I see, I have always seen, that he loves the Signorina, that he loves her madly.”
Vere!
Hermione sickened. Emile and Vere in that relation!
The storm of anger was not spent yet. Would it ever be spent? Something within her, the something, perhaps, that felt rejected, strove to reject in its turn, did surely reject. Pride burned in her like a fire that cruelly illumines night, shining upon the destruction it is compassing.