When the sun came up over the rim of the sea Maurice ceased from his
pretence of sleep, raised himself on his elbow, then sat upright and
looked over the ravine to the rocks of the Sirens' Isle. The name seemed
to him now a fatal name, and everything connected with his sojourn in
Sicily fatal. Surely there had been a malign spirit at work. In this
early morning hour his brain, though unrefreshed by sleep, was almost
unnaturally clear, feverishly busy. Something had met him when he first
set foot in Sicily--so he thought now--had met him with a fixed and evil
purpose. And that purpose had never been abandoned.
Old superstitions, inherited perhaps from a long chain of credulous
Sicilian ancestors, were stirring in him. He did not laugh at his idea,
as a pure-blooded Englishman would have laughed. He pondered it. He
cherished it.
On his very first evening in Sicily the spirit had led him to the wall,
had directed his gaze to the far-off light in the house of the sirens. He
remembered how strangely the little light had fascinated his eyes, and
his mind through his eyes, how he had asked what it was, how, when
Hermione had called him to come in to sleep, he had turned upon the steps
to gaze down on it once more. Then he had not known why he gazed. Now he
knew. The spirit that had met him by the sea in Sicily had whispered to
him to look, and he had obeyed because he could not do otherwise.
He dwelt upon that thought, that he had obeyed because he had been
obliged to obey. It was a palliative to his mental misery and his hatred
of himself. The fatalism that is linked with superstition got hold upon
him and comforted him a little. He had not been a free agent. He had had
to do as he had done. Everything had been arranged so that he might sin.
The night of the fishing had prepared the way for the night of the fair.
If Hermione had stayed--but of course she had not stayed. The spirit that
had kept him in Sicily had sent her across the sea to Africa. In the full
flush of his hot-blooded youth, intoxicated by his first knowledge of the
sun and of love, he had been left quite alone. Newly married, he had been
abandoned by his wife for a good, even perhaps a noble, reason. Still, he
had been abandoned--to himself and the keeping of that spirit. Was it any
wonder that he had fallen? He strove to think that it was not. In the
night he had cowered before Hermione and had been cruel with himself.
Now, in the sunshine, he showed fight. He strove to find excuses for
himself. If he did not find excuses he felt that he could not face the
day, face Hermione in sunlight.