d drew very much from her mother, responded to
her enthusiasm, yet preserved instinctively, and quite without
self-consciousness, her own individuality.

Artois had noticed this, and this had led him to say that Vere also was
a force.

But when she was sixteen Vere woke up to something. Until now no one but
herself knew to what. Sometimes she shut herself up alone in her room
for long periods. When she came out she looked lazy, her mother thought,
and she liked to go then to some nook of the rocks and sit alone, or to
push a boat out into the centre of the Saint's Pool, and lie in it with
her hands clasped behind her head looking up at the passing clouds or at
the radiance of the blue.

Hermione knew how fond Vere was of reading, and supposed that this love
was increasing as the child grew older. She sometimes felt a little
lonely, but she was unselfish. Vere's freedom was quite innocent. She,
the mother, would not seek to interfere with it. Soon after dinner on
the evening of the Marchesino's expedition with Artois, Vere had got up
from the sofa, on which she had been sitting with a book of Rossetti's
poems in her hand, had gone over to one of the windows, and had stood
for two or three minutes looking out over the sea. Then she had turned
round, come up to her mother and kissed her tenderly--more tenderly,
Hermione thought, even than usual.

"Good-night, Madre mia," she had said.

And then, without another word, she had gone swiftly out of the room.

After Vere had gone the room seemed very silent. In the evening, if they
stayed in the house, they usually sat in Hermione's room up-stairs.
They had been sitting there to-night. The shutters were not closed. The
window that faced the sea towards Capri was open. A little moonlight
began to mingle subtly with the light from the two lamps, to make it
whiter, cleaner, suggestive of outdoor things and large spaces. Hermione
had been reading when Vere was reading. She did not read now Vere was
gone. Laying down her book she sat listening to the silence, realizing
the world without. Almost at her feet was the sea, before her a
wide-stretching expanse, behind her, confronted by the desolate rocks,
the hollow and mysterious caverns. In the night, the Saint, unwearied,
watched his Pool. Not very far off, yet delightfully remote, lay Naples
with its furious activities, its gayeties, its intensities of sin, of
misery, of pleasure. In the Galleria, tourists from the hotels and