Maurice longed to get away from the touch of her arm. He remembered the
fragment of paper he had seen among the stones on the mountain-side. He
must go up there alone directly he had a moment of freedom. But
now--Artois! He stared at the distant donkeys. His brain felt dry and
shrivelled, his body both feverish and tired. How could he support this
long day's necessities? It seemed to him that he had not the strength and
resolution to endure them. And Artois was so brilliant! Maurice thought
of him at that moment as a sort of monster of intellectuality, terrifying
and repellent.
"Don't you think so?" Hermione said.
"I dare say," he answered. "But I dare say, I suppose--very few of us can
do that. We can't expect to be perfect, and other people oughtn't to
expect it of us."
His voice had changed. Before, it had been almost an accusing voice and
insincere. Now it was surely a voice that pleaded, and it was absolutely
sincere. Hermione remembered how in London long ago the humility of
Maurice had touched her. He had stood out from the mass of conceited men
because of his beauty and his simple readiness to sit at the feet of
others. And surely the simplicity, the humility, still persisted
beautifully in him.
"I don't think I should ever expect anything of you that you wouldn't
give me," she said to him. "Anything of loyalty, of straightness, or of
manhood. Often you seem to me a boy, and yet, I know, if a danger came to
me, or a trouble, I could lean on you and you would never fail me. That's
what a woman loves to feel when she has given herself to a man, that he
knows how to take care of her, and that he cares to take care of her."
Her body was touching his. He felt himself stiffen. The mental pain he
suffered under the lash of her words affected his body, and his knowledge
of the necessity to hide all that was in his mind caused his body to long
for isolation, to shrink from any contact with another.
"I hope," he said, trying to make his voice natural and simple----"I hope
you'll never be in trouble or in danger, Hermione."
"I don't think I could mind very much if you were there, if I could just
touch your hand."
"Here they come!" he said. "I hope Artois isn't very tired with the ride.
We ought to have had Sebastiano here to play the 'Pastorale' for him."