The trembling that shook her body was reflected in her voice, which became tremulous. She heard the tram-bell ringing. She saw the green parrot listening on its board. And yet she was in Sicily, and saw the line of the coast between Messina and Cattaro, the Isle of the Sirens, the lakelike sea of the inlet between it and the shore.
“I see that you remember it. You saw them there. They—they didn’t tell me!”
As she said the last words she felt that she was entering the great darkness. Maurice and Gaspare—she had trusted them with all her nature. And they—had they failed her? Was that possible?
“They didn’t tell me,” she repeated, piteously, speaking now only for herself and to her own soul. “They didn’t tell me!”
Maddalena shook her head like one in sympathy or agreement. But Hermione did not see the movement. She no longer saw Maddalena. She saw only herself, and those two, whom she had trusted so completely, and—who had not told her.
What had they not told her?
And then she was in Africa, beside the bed of Artois, ministering to him in the torrid heat, driving away the flies from his white face.
What had been done in the Garden of Paradise while she had been in exile?
She turned suddenly sick. Her body felt ashamed, defiled. A shutter seemed to be sharply drawn across her eyes, blotting out life. Her head was full of sealike noises.
Presently, from among these noises, one detached itself, pushed itself, as it were, forward to attract forcibly her attention—the sound of a boy’s voice.