"
Gaspare turned and looked again into the darkness.
"I cannot see the Signora any more."
"Follow the Signora, Gaspare. If she has gone to the Palazzo of the
Spirits row in there."
"Si, Signore."
He drew the oars again strongly through the water.
Artois remembered a blinding storm that had crashed over a mountain
village in Sicily long ago, a flash of lightning which had revealed to
him the gaunt portal of a palace that seemed abandoned, a strip of
black cloth, the words "/Lutto in famiglia/." They had seemed to him
prophetic words.
And now--?
In the darkness he saw another darkness, the strange and broken
outline of the ruined palace by the sea, once perhaps, the summer home
of some wealthy Roman, now a mere shell visited in the lonely hours by
the insatiate waves. Were Hermione and he to meet here? To-day he had
thought of his friend as a spirit that had been long in prison. Now he
came to the Palace of the Spirits to face her truth with his. The
Palace of the Spirits! The name suggested the very nakedness of truth.
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