“You were strong, then, and you were strong, you were wonderfully strong, when—afterwards. On Monte Amato—that evening—you were strong.”
His mind went to that mountain summit. The eyes of his mind saw the evening calm on Etna, and then—something else, a small, fluttering fragment of white paper at his feet among the stones. And, as if her mind read his, she spoke again, still in that low, cold, and inexorable voice.
“That piece of paper you found—what was it?”
“Hermione—Hermione—it was part of a letter of yours written in Africa, telling him that we were coming to Sicily, the day we were coming.”
“It was that!”
The voice had suddenly changed. It struggled with a sob. It sank away in a sob. The sin—that she could speak of with a sound of calm. But all the woman in her was stricken by the thought of her happy letter treated like that, hated, denied, destroyed, and thrown to the winds.
“My letter! My letter!”
“Hermione!”
His heart spoke in his voice, and he made a step forward in the darkness.
“Don’t!”