Hermione? How can we be certain of our own
natures, our own conduct?--perhaps, if Panacci's coarse brutality had
not waked up my whole being, I might have drifted on towards an
affection for Vere that, in a man of my age, would have been absurd,
have made me ridiculous in the eyes of others. I scarcely think so.
But I want to be sincere. I would rather exaggerate than minimize my
own shortcomings to you to-night. I scarcely believe it ever could
have been so. But Panacci said it was so. And you--I don't know what
you have thought--"
"What I have thought doesn't matter now."
She spoke very quietly, but not with bitterness. She knew Artois. And
even in that moment of emotion, and of a sort of strange exhaustion
following upon emotion, she knew, as no other living person could have
known, the effort it must have cost him to speak as he had just
spoken.
"That, at any rate, is the exact truth."
"I know it is."
"I have thought myself clear-sighted, Hermione. I have studied others.
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