It is getting dark so quickly."
"Si, Signore, it is getting dark."
CHAPTER XXXIX
There was no one at the foot of the cliff. Artois got out of the boat
and stood for a moment, hesitating whether to keep Giovanni or to
dismiss him.
"I can stay, Signore," said the man. "You will want some one to row
you back."
"No, Giovanni. I can get Gaspare to put me ashore. You had better be
off."
"Va bene, Signore," he replied, looking disappointed.
The Signora of the Casa del Mare was always very hospitable to such
fishermen as she knew. Giovanni wanted to seek out Gaspare, to have a
cigarette. But he obediently jumped into the boat and rowed off into
the darkness, while Artois went up the steps towards the house.
A cold feeling of dread encompassed him. He still saw, imaginatively,
that stranger at the window, that falling movement, that frantic
gesture, the descending blind that brought to Hermione's bedroom a
great obscurity. And he remembered Hermione's face in the garden, half
seen by him once in shadows, with surely a strange and terrible smile
upon it--a smile that had made him wonder if he had ever really known
her.
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