"I only meant----"
"The signora wished to go to Africa. She decided for herself. There is no
reason to call her the poor signora."
"No, signore."
The boy's voice recalled Maurice to prudence.
"It was very good of her to go," he said, more quietly. "Perhaps she has
saved the life of the sick signore by going."
"Si, signore."
Gaspare said no more, but as they rode up, drawing ever nearer to the
bare mountain-side and the house of the priest, Maurice's heart
reiterated the thought of the boy. Why had Hermione ever gone? What a
madness it had all been, her going, his staying! He knew it now for a
madness, a madness of the summer, of the hot, the burning south. In this
terrible quiet of the mountains, without the sun, without the laughter
and the voices and the movement of men, he understood that he had been
mad, that there had been something in him, not all himself, which had run
wild, despising restraint. And he had known that it was running wild, and
he had thought to let it go just so far and no farther. He had set a
limit of time to his wildness and its deeds. And he had set another
limit. Surely he had. He had not ever meant to go too far. And then, just
when he had said to himself "E' finito!" the irrevocable was at hand, the
moment of delirium in which all things that should have been remembered
were forgotten. What had led him? What spirit of evil? Or had he been
led at all? Had not he rather deliberately forced his way to the tragic
goal whither, through all these sunlit days, these starry nights, his
feet had been tending?
He looked upon himself as a man looks upon a stranger whom he has seen
commit a crime which he could never have committed. Mentally he took
himself into custody, he tried, he condemned himself. In this hour of
acute reaction the cool justice of the Englishman judged the passionate
impulse of the Sicilian, even marvelled at it, and the heart of the
dancing Faun cried: "What am I--what am I really?" and did not find the
answer.
"Signorino?"
"Yes, Gaspare."
"When we get to that rock we shall see the house."
"I know."
How eagerly he had looked upward to the little white house on the
mountain on that first day in Sicily, with what joy of anticipation, with
what an exquisite sense of liberty and of peace! The drowsy wail of the
"Pastorale" had come floating down to him over the olive-trees almost
like a melody that stole from paradise. But now he dreaded the turn of
the path. He dreaded to see the terrace wall, the snowy building it
protected. And he felt as if he were drawing near to a terror, and as if
he could not face it, did not know how to face it.