And it was on that night, surely,
that his conscience--his innate knowledge--began to betray him. Or--no
--it was on that night that he began to defy it, to deny it, to
endeavor to cast it out.
For surely he must have known, he had known, what Vere and Gaspare
innately knew. Surely his conscience had not slept while theirs had
been awake.
He did not know. It seemed to him as if he had not time to decide this
now. Very rapidly his mind had worked, rushing surely through
corridors of knowledge to gain an inner room. He had only stood at the
foot of the crumbling staircase two or three minutes before he moved
again decisively, called again, decisively:
"Hermione! Hermione! I know you are here. I have come for you!"
He went to the right. On the left was the chamber which had been taken
possession of by the sea. She could not have gone that way, unless--he
thought of the /fattura della morte/, and for a moment the
superstitious horror returned upon him. But he banished it. That could
not be.
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