"These people can't talk when they see how ill he looks. And if they do—oh, Maurice, what does it matter? Surely there's only one thing in the world that matters, and that is whether one can look one's own conscience in the face and say, 'I've nothing to be ashamed of!'"
Maurice longed to get away from the touch of her arm. He remembered the fragment of paper he had seen among the stones on the mountain-side. He must go up there alone directly he had a moment of freedom. But now—Artois! He stared at the distant donkeys. His brain felt dry and shrivelled, his body both feverish and tired. How could he support this long day's necessities? It seemed to him that he had not the strength and resolution to endure them. And Artois was so brilliant! Maurice thought of him at that moment as a sort of monster of intellectuality, terrifying and repellent.
"Don't you think so?" Hermione said.
"I dare say," he answered. "But I dare say, I suppose—very few of us can do that. We can't expect to be perfect, and other people oughtn't to expect it of us."
His voice had changed. Before, it had been almost an accusing voice and insincere. Now it was surely a voice that pleaded, and it was absolutely sincere. Hermione remembered how in London long ago the humility of Maurice had touched her. He had stood out from the mass of conceited men because of his beauty and his simple readiness to sit at the feet of others. And surely the simplicity, the humility, still persisted beautifully in him.
"I don't think I should ever expect anything of you that you wouldn't give me," she said to him. "Anything of loyalty, of straightness, or of manhood. Often you seem to me a boy, and yet, I know, if a danger came to me, or a trouble, I could lean on you and you would never fail me. That's what a woman loves to feel when she has given herself to a man, that he knows how to take care of her, and that he cares to take care of her."
Her body was touching his. He felt himself stiffen. The mental pain he suffered under the lash of her words affected his body, and his knowledge of the necessity to hide all that was in his mind caused his body to long for isolation, to shrink from any contact with another.
"I hope," he said, trying to make his voice natural and simple——"I hope you'll never be in trouble or in danger, Hermione."
"I don't think I could mind very much if you were there, if I could just touch your hand."
"Here they come!" he said. "I hope Artois isn't very tired with the ride. We ought to have had Sebastiano here to play the 'Pastorale' for him."