"No, signora."
"We shall be able to rest presently," she said.
She was thinking of the time when they would take Maurice from her. She left Gaspare sitting near the bed, and went out onto the terrace. Lucrezia and Gaspare, both thoroughly tired out, were sleeping soundly. She was thankful for that. Soon, she knew, she would have to be with people, to talk, to make arrangements. But now she had a short spell of solitude.
She went slowly up the mountain-side till she was near the top. Then she sat down on a rock and looked out towards the sea.
The world was not awake yet, although the sun was coming. Etna was like a great phantom, the waters at its foot were pale in their tranquillity. The air was fresh, but there was no wind to rustle the leaves of the oak-trees, upon whose crested heads Hermione gazed down with quiet, tearless eyes.
She had a strange feeling of being out of the world, as if she had left it, but still had the power to see it. She wondered if Maurice felt like that.
He had said it would be good to lie beneath those oak-trees in sight of Etna and the sea. How she wished that she could lay his body there, alone, away from all other dead. But that was impossible, she supposed. She remembered the doctor's words. What were they going to do? She did not know anything about Italian procedure in such an event. Would they take him away? She had no intention of trying to resist anything, of offering any opposition. It would be useless, and besides he had gone away. Already he was far off. She did not feel, as many women do, that so long as they are with the body of their dead they are also with the soul. She would like to keep the dear body, to have it always near to her, to live close to the spot where it was committed to the earth. But Maurice was gone. Her Mercury had winged his way from her, obedient to a summons that she had not heard. Always she had thought of him as swift, and swiftly, without warning, he had left her. He had died young. Was that wonderful? She thought not. No; age could have nothing to say to him, could hold no commerce with him. He had been born to be young and never to be anything else. It seemed to her now strange that she had not felt this, foreseen that it must be so. And yet, only yesterday, she had imagined a far future, and their child laying them in the ground of Sicily, side by side, and murmuring "Buon riposo" above their mutual sleep.
Their child! A life had been taken from her. Soon a life would be given to her. Was that what is called compensation? Perhaps so. Many strange thoughts, come she could not tell why, were passing through her mind as she sat upon this height in the dawn. The thought of compensation recalled to her the Book of Job. Everything was taken from Job; not only his flocks and his herds, but his sons and his daughters. And then at the last he was compensated. He was given new flocks and herds and new sons and daughters. And it was supposed to be well with Job. If it was well with Job, then Job had been a man without a heart.
Never could she be compensated for this loss, which she was trying to realize, but which she would not be able to realize until the days went by, and the nights, the days and the nights of the ordinary life, when tragedy was supposed to be over and done with, and people would say, and no doubt sincerely believe, that she was "getting accustomed" to her loss.
Thinking of Job led her on to think of God's dealings with His creatures.