CHAPTER XXXIX
There was no one at the foot of the cliff. Artois got out of the boat and stood for a moment, hesitating whether to keep Giovanni or to dismiss him.
“I can stay, Signore,” said the man. “You will want some one to row you back.”
“No, Giovanni. I can get Gaspare to put me ashore. You had better be off.”
“Va bene, Signore,” he replied, looking disappointed.
The Signora of the Casa del Mare was always very hospitable to such fishermen as she knew. Giovanni wanted to seek out Gaspare, to have a cigarette. But he obediently jumped into the boat and rowed off into the darkness, while Artois went up the steps towards the house.
A cold feeling of dread encompassed him. He still saw, imaginatively, that stranger at the window, that falling movement, that frantic gesture, the descending blind that brought to Hermione’s bedroom a great obscurity. And he remembered Hermione’s face in the garden, half seen by him once in shadows, with surely a strange and terrible smile upon it—a smile that had made him wonder if he had ever really known her.
He came out on the plateau before the front door. The door was shut, but as he went to open it it was opened from within, and Gaspare stood before him in the twilight, with the dark passage for background.
Gaspare looked at Artois in silence.