He hated himself. He loved happiness, he longed for it, but he knew he had lost his right to it, if any man ever has such a right. He had created suffering. How dared he expect, how dared he even wish, to escape from suffering?
"Now, Emile," Hermione said, "you have really got to go in and lie down whether you feel sleepy or not. Don't protest. Maurice and I have hardly seen anything of each other yet. We want to get rid of you."
She spoke laughingly, and laughingly he obeyed her. When she had settled him comfortably in the sitting-room
she came out again to the terrace where her husband
was standing, looking towards the sea. She had a rug over her arm and was holding two cushions.
"I thought you and I might go down and take our siesta under the oak-trees, Maurice. Would you like that?"
He was longing to get away, to go up to the heap of stones on the mountain-top and set a match to the fragments of Hermione's letter, which the dangerous wind might disturb, might bring out into the light of day. But he acquiesced at once. He would go later—if not this afternoon, then at night when he came back from the sea. They went down and spread the rug under the shadow of the oaks.
"I used to read to Gaspare here," he said. "When you were away in Africa."
"What did you read?"
She stretched herself on the rug.
"To lie here and read the Arabian Nights! And you want to go away, Maurice?"