In the garden she found Giulia smiling and putting down the silver coffee-pot in quite a bower of roses. Vere was not visible.
Hermione exchanged a good-morning with Giulia and sat down. The servant’s smiling face brought her a mingled feeling of relief and wonder. The pungent smell of coffee, conquering the soft scent of the many roses, pinned her mind abruptly down to the simple realities and animal pleasures and necessities of life. She made a strong effort to be quite normal, to think of the moment, to live for it. The morning was fresh and lively; the warmth of the sun, the tonic vivacity of the air from the sea, caressed and quickened her blood.
The minute garden was secluded. A world that seemed at peace, a world of rocks and waters far from the roar of traffic, the uneasy hum of men, lay around her.
Surely the moment was sweet, was peaceful. She would live in it.
Vere came slowly from the house, and at once Hermione’s newly made and not yet carried out resolution crumbled into dust. She forgot the sun, the sea, the peaceful situation and all material things. She was confronted by the painful drama of the island life! Vere with her secrets, Emile with his, Gaspare fighting to keep her, his Padrona, still in mystery. And she was confronted by her own passions, those hosts of armed men that have their dwelling in every powerful nature.
Vere came up listlessly.
“Good-morning, Madre,” she said.
She kissed her mother’s cheek with cold lips.
“What lovely roses!”
She smelled them and sat down in her place facing the sea-wall.