Why had
she never noticed these things before? Had she been quite blind? Or
was she now imaginative? Was she deceiving herself?
"Good-night, Ruffo," she said, at last.
He took off his cap and stood bareheaded.
"Good-night, Signora."
He put the cap on his dark hair with a free and graceful gesture.
Was not that, too, Maurice?
"A rivederci, Signora."
He was gone.
Hermione stood alone in the fatal night. She had forgotten Vere. She
had forgotten Artois. The words of Ruffo had led her on another step
in the journey it was ordained that she should make. She felt the
under-things. It seemed to her that she heard in the night the dull
murmuring of the undercurrents that carry through wayward, or
terrible, channels the wind-driven bark of life. What could it mean,
this encounter just described to her: this pain, this emotion of a
woman, her strange question to her son? And Gaspare's agitation, his
pallor, his "mysterious" face, the colloquy that Ruffo was not allowed
to hear!
What did it mean? That woman's question--that question!
"What is it? What am I near?" Ruffo's mother knew Gaspare, must have
known him intimately in the past.
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