A bitterness of shame gripped him. He felt like a criminal. He said to himself that the selfish man is a criminal.
"She will hate me," he said to himself. "She must. She can't help it."
Again the egoist was awake and speaking within him. He realized that immediately and felt almost a fear of this persistence of character. What is the use of cleverness, of clear sight into others, even of genius, when the self of a man declines to change, declines to be what is not despicable?
"Mon Dieu!" he thought, passionately. "And even now I must be thinking of my cursed self!"
He was beset by an intensity of desire to do something for Hermione. For once in his life his heart, the heart she believed in and he was inclined to doubt or to despise, drove him as it might have driven a boy, even such a one as Maurice. It seemed to him that unless he could do something to make atonement he could never be with Hermione again, could never bear to be with her again. But what could he do?
"At least," he thought, "I may be able to spare her something to-day. I may be able to arrange with these people about the funeral, about all the practical things that are so frightful a burden to the living who have loved the dead, in the last moments before the dead are given to the custody of the earth."
And then he thought of the inquiry, of the autopsy. Could he not help her, spare her perhaps, in connection with them?
Despite his weakness of body he felt feverishly active, feverishly desirous to be of practical use. If he could do something he would think less, too; and there were thoughts which seemed furtively trying to press themselves forward in the chambers of his mind, but which, as yet, he was, also furtively, pushing back, striving to keep in the dark place from which they desired to emerge.
Artois knew Sicily well, and he knew that such a death as this would demand an inquiry, might raise suspicions in the minds of the authorities of Marechiaro. And in his own mind?
He was a mentally courageous man, but he longed now to leave Marechiaro, to leave Sicily at once, carrying Hermione with him. A great dread was not actually with him, but was very near to him.