he middle and edged with pale blue.

She pushed away the sheets of paper, got up and went again to the
window. She must look at Vere once more, look at her with this new
knowledge, look at her critically, with a piercing scrutiny. And she
bent down as before, and moved a section of the blind, pushing it up.

There was no boat beneath her on the sea.

She dropped the blind sharply, and all the blood in her body seemed to
make a simultaneous movement away from the region of the heart.

Vere was perhaps already in the house, running lightly up to the room.
She would come in and find her mother there. She would guess what her
mother had been doing.

Hermione did not hesitate. She crossed the room swiftly, opened the
door, and went out. She reached her own room without meeting Vere. But
she had not been in it for more than a minute and a half when she heard
Vere come up-stairs, the sound of her door open and shut.

Hermione cleared her throat. She felt the need of doing something
physical. Then she pulled up her blinds and let the hot sun stream in
upon her.

She felt dark just then--black.

In a moment she found that she was perspiring. The sun was fierce--that,
of course, must be the reason. But she would not shut the sun out. She
must have light around her, although there was none within her.

She was thankful she had escaped in time. If she had not, if Vere had
run into the room and found her there, she was sure she would have
frightened her child by some strange outburst. She would have said or
done something--she did not at all know what--that would perhaps have
altered their relations irrevocably. For, in that moment, the sense of
self-control, of being herself--so she put it--had been withdrawn from
her.

She would regain it, no doubt. She was even now regaining it. Already
she was able to say to herself that she was not seeing things in their
true proportions, that some sudden crisis of the nerves, due perhaps to
some purely physical cause, had plunged her into a folly of feeling from
which she would soon escape entirely. She was by nature emotional and
unguarded: therefore specially likely to be the victim in mind of any
bodily ill.

And then she was not accustomed to be unwell. Her strength of body was
remarkable. Very seldom had she felt weak.

She remembered one night, long ago in Sicily, when an awful bodily
weakness had overtaken her. But that had been caused by dread. The mind
had reacted upon