n his intellect. In Sicily she did not
cease from realizing this, but she felt about it differently. In Sicily
she actually loved and rejoiced in Delarey's mental shortcomings because
they seemed to make for freshness, for boyishness, to link him more
closely with the spring in their Eden. She adored in him something that
was pagan, some spirit that seemed to shine on her from a dancing,
playful, light-hearted world. And here in Sicily she presently grew to
know that she would be a little saddened were her husband to change, to
grow more thoughtful, more like herself. She had spoken to Artois of
possible development in Maurice, of what she might do for him, and at
first, just at first, she had instinctively exerted her influence over
him to bring him nearer to her subtle ways of thought. And he had eagerly
striven to respond, stirred by his love for her, and his reverence--not a
very clever, but certainly a very affectionate reverence--for her
brilliant qualities of brain. In those very first days together, isolated
in their eyrie of the mountains, Hermione had let herself go--as she
herself would have said. In her perfect happiness she felt that her mind
was on fire because her heart was at peace. Wakeful, but not anxious,
love woke imagination. The stirring of spring in this delicious land
stirred all her eager faculties, and almost as naturally as a bird pours
forth its treasure of music she poured forth her treasure, not only of
love but of thought. For in such a nature as hers love prompts thought,
not stifles it. In their long mountain walks, in their rides on muleback
to distant villages, hidden in the recesses, or perched upon the crests
of the rocks, in their quiet hours under the oak-trees when the noon
wrapped all things in its cloak of gold, or on the terrace when the stars
came out, and the shepherds led their flocks down to the valleys with
little happy tunes, Hermione gave out all the sensitive thoughts,
desires, aspirations, all the wonder, all the rest that beauty and
solitude and nearness to nature in this isle of the south woke in her.
She did not fear to be subtle, she did not fear to be trivial. Everything
she noticed she spoke of, everything that the things she noticed
suggested to her, she related. The sound of the morning breeze in the
olive-trees seemed to her different from the sound of the breeze of
evening. She tried to make Maurice hear, with her, the changing of the
music, to make him listen,