Hermione--"

"Take care, Emile, take care--or I shall hate you for keeping me in the
dark."

Her passionate words applied only to the later events in which Vere was
concerned. But his mind rushed back to Sicily, and suddenly there came
to his memory some words he had once read, he did not know when, or
where:

"The spirit that resteth upon a lie is a spirit in prison."

As he remembered them he felt guilty, guilty before Hermione. He saw
her as a spirit confined for years in a prison to which his action had
condemned her. Yes, she was in the dark. She was in an airless place.
She was deprived of the true liberty, that great freedom which is the
accurate knowledge of the essential truths of our own individual lives.
From his mind in that moment the cause of Hermione's outburst, Vere and
her childish secrets, were driven out by a greater thing that came upon
it like a strong and mighty wind--the memory of that lie, in which he
had enclosed his friend's life for years, that lie on which her spirit
had rested, on which it was resting still. And his sense of truth did
not permit him to try to refute her accusation. Indeed, he was filled
with a desire that nearly conquered him--there and then, brutally,
clearly, nakedly, to pour forth to his friend all the truth, to say to
her:

"You have a strong, a fiery spirit, a spirit that hates the dark, that
hates imprisonment, a spirit that can surely endure, like the eagle, to
gaze steadfastly into the terrible glory of the sun. Then come out of
the darkness, come out of your prison. I put you there--let me bring
you forth. This is the truth--listen! hear it!--it is this--it is
this--and--this!"

This desire nearly conquered him. Perhaps it would have conquered him
but for an occurrence that, simple though it was, changed the atmosphere
in which their souls were immersed, brought in upon them another world
with the feeling of other lives than their own.

The boat to which Ruffo belonged, going out of the Pool to the fishing,
passed at this moment slowly upon the sea beneath the terrace, and
from the misty darkness his happy voice came up to them in the song of
Mergellina which he loved:

"Oh, dolce luna bianca de l' Estate
Mi fugge il sonno accanto a la marina:
Mi destan le dolcissime serate
Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina."

Dark was the night, moonless, shrouded in the mist. But his boy's heart
defied it, laughed at the sorrowful truths of life, s