“Oh no, Vere!”
Hermione spoke hastily, abruptly, strongly conscious of the impossibility of taking Vere with her. Directly she had said the words she realized that they must have fallen on Vere like a blow. She realized this still more when she looked quickly up and saw that Vere’s face was scarlet.
“I don’t mean that I shouldn’t like to have you with me, Vere,” she added, hurriedly. “But—”
“It’s all right, Madre. Well, I’ve finished. I think I shall go out a little in my boat.”
She went away, half humming, half singing the tune of the Mergellina song.
Hermione put down her cup. She had not finished her coffee, but she knew she could not finish it. Life seemed at that moment utterly intolerable to her. She felt desperate, as a nature does that is forced back upon itself by circumstances, that is forced to be, or to appear to be, traitor to itself. And in her desperation action presented itself to her as imperatively necessary—necessary as air is to one suffocating.
She got up. She would start at once for Mergellina. As she went up-stairs she remembered that she did not know where Ruffo’s mother lived, what she was like, even what her name was. The boy had always spoken of her as “Mia Mamma.” They dwelt at Mergellina. That was all she knew.
She did not choose to ask Gaspare anything. She would go alone, and find out somehow for herself where Ruffo lived. She would ask the fishermen. Or perhaps she would come across Ruffo. Probably he had gone home by this time from the fishing.
Quickly, energetically she got ready.
Just before she left her room she saw Vere pass slowly by upon the sea, rowing a little way out alone, as she often did in the calm summer weather. Vere had a book, and almost directly she laid the oars in their places side by side, went into the stern, sat down under the awning, and began—apparently—to read. Hermione watched her for two or three minutes. She looked very lonely; and moved by an impulse to try to erase the impression made on her by the abrupt exclamation at the breakfast-table, the mother leaned out and hailed the child.