She did not know it.
She was, almost desperately, seeking a refuge in the past. The present
failed her. That was her feeling. Then she would cling to the past.
And in that song, prompted now by her always eager imagination, she
seemed to hear it. For she was almost fiercely, feverishly, beginning
to find resemblances in Ruffo to Maurice. At first she had noticed
none, although she had been strangely attracted by the boy. Then she
had seen that look, fleeting but vivid, that seemed for a moment to
bring Maurice before her. Then, on the cliff, she had discerned a
likeness of line, a definite similarity of features.
And now--was not that voice like Maurice's? Had it not his wonderful
thrill of youth in it, that sound of the love of life which wakes all
the pulses of the body and stirs all the depths of the heart?
"Oh, dolce luna bianca de l' estate----"
The voice upon the sea was singing always the song of Mergellina. But
to Hermione it began to seem that the song was changing to another
song, and that the voice that was dying away across the shrouded water
was sinking into the shadows of a ravine upon a mountainside.
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