“This summer something has come between us, a cloud has come between us. I scarcely know when I first noticed it, when it came. But I have felt it, and you have felt it.”
“Yes.”
“It might, perhaps, have arisen from the fact of my suspicion who Ruffo was, a suspicion that lately became a certainty. My suspicion, and latterly my knowledge, no doubt changed my manner—made me anxious, perhaps, uneasy, made me watchful, made me often seem very strange to you. That alone might have caused a difference in our relations. But I think there was something else.”
“Yes, there was something else.”
“And I think, I feel sure now, that it was something to do with Vere. I was, I became deeply interested in Vere—interested in a new way. She was growing up. She was passing from childhood into girlhood. She was developing swiftly. That development fascinated me. Of course I had always been very fond of Vere. But this summer she meant more to me than she had meant. One day—it was the day I came back to the island after my visit to Paris—”
“Yes?”
He looked at her, trying to read what she was feeling in her face, but it was too dark for him to discern it.
“Vere made a confession to me. She told me she was working secretly, that she was writing poems. I asked her to show them to me. She did so. I found some talent in them, enough for me to feel justified in telling her to continue. Once, Hermione, you consulted me. Then my advice was different.”
“I know.”
“The remembrance of this, and Vere’s knowledge that you had suffered in not succeeding with work, prompted us to keep the matter of her attempts to write a secret for the time. It seems a trifle—all this, but looking back now I feel that we were quite wrong in not telling you.”