He realized that; but, subtle though he was, he did not understand the
inmost and root-cause of Vere's loss of self-control.
Vere was feeling bitterly ashamed, had been bending under this sense
of undeserved shame, ever since the Marchesino's stratagem on the
preceding night. Although she was gay and fearless, she was
exquisitely sensitive. Peppina's confession had roused her maidenhood
to a theoretical knowledge of certain things in life, of certain cruel
phases of man's selfishness and lust which, till then, she had never
envisaged. The Marchesino's madness had carried her one step further.
She had not actually looked into the abyss. But she had felt herself
near to something that she hated even more than she feared it. And she
had returned to the hotel full of a shrinking delicacy, not to be
explained, intense as snow, which had made the meeting with her mother
and Artois a torture to her, which had sealed her lips to silence that
night, which had made her half apology to Gaspare in the morning a
secret agony, which had even set a flush on her face when she looked
at San Francesco.
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