He saw the dark figure near him lift its head. And he felt that Hermione had come out of the darkness with the intention of speaking the truth of what she felt. If she could not have spoken she would have stayed in the inner chamber, or she would have escaped altogether from the palace when he moved from the doorway. He was sure that only if she spoke would she change. In her silence there was damnation for them both. But she meant to speak.
“I have been a fool. I see that now. But I think I have been suspecting it for some time—nearly all this summer.”
He could hear by the sound of her voice that while she was speaking she was thinking deeply. Like him, she was in search of absolute truth.
“It is only this summer that I have begun to see why people—you—have often smiled at my enthusiasms. No wonder you smiled! No wonder you laughed at me secretly!”
Her voice was hard and bitter.
“I never laughed at you, never—either secretly or openly!” he said, with a heat almost of anger.
“Oh yes, you did, as a person who can see clearly might laugh at a short-sighted person tumbling over all the little obstacles on a road. I was always tumbling over things—always—and you must always have been laughing. I have been a fool. Instead of growing up, my heart has remained a child—till now. That’s what it is. Children who have been kindly treated think the world is all kindness. Because my friends were good to me, the world was good to me, I got into the habit of believing that I was lovable, and of loving in return. And I trusted people. I always thought they were giving me what I was giving them. That has been my great folly, the folly I’m punished for. I have been a credulous fool. I have thought that because I gave a thing with all my heart it was—it must be—given back to me. And yet I was surprised—I could scarcely believe it—when—when—”
He knew she was thinking of her beautiful wonder when Maurice had said he loved her.
“I could scarcely believe it! But, because I was a fool, I got to believe it, and I have believed it till to-day—you have stood by, and watched me believing it, and laughed at me for believing it till to-day.”
“Hermione!”