“Follow the Signora, Gaspare. If she has gone to the Palazzo of the Spirits row in there.”
“Si, Signore.”
He drew the oars again strongly through the water.
Artois remembered a blinding storm that had crashed over a mountain village in Sicily long ago, a flash of lightning which had revealed to him the gaunt portal of a palace that seemed abandoned, a strip of black cloth, the words “Lutto in famiglia.” They had seemed to him prophetic words.
And now—?
In the darkness he saw another darkness, the strange and broken outline of the ruined palace by the sea, once perhaps, the summer home of some wealthy Roman, now a mere shell visited in the lonely hours by the insatiate waves. Were Hermione and he to meet here? To-day he had thought of his friend as a spirit that had been long in prison. Now he came to the Palace of the Spirits to face her truth with his. The Palace of the Spirits! The name suggested the very nakedness of truth. Well, let it be so, let the truth stand there naked. Again, mingling with a certain awe, there rose up in him a strong ardor, a courage that was vehement, that longed at last to act. And it seemed to him suddenly that for many years, through all the years that divided Hermione and him from the Sicilian life, they had been held in leash, waiting for the moment of this encounter. Now the leash slackened. They were being freed. And for what?
Gaspare plunged his right oar into the sea alone. The boat swung round obediently, heading for the shore.
One of the faint lights that gleamed in the village was extinguished.
“Signore, the Signora has left the boat!”
“Si?”