"Perhaps they will not come so soon!" he said to him self. "Perhaps they
will not be here."
And then he began to think of Artois, to realize the fact that he was
coming with Hermione, that he would be part of the final remnant of these
Sicilian days.
His feeling towards Artois in London had been sympathetic, even almost
reverential. He had looked at him as if through Hermione's eyes, had
regarded him with a sort of boyish reverence. Hermione had said that
Artois was a great man, and Maurice had felt that he was a great man, had
mentally sat at his feet. Perhaps in London he would be ready to sit at
his feet again. But was he ready to sit at his feet here in Sicily? As he
thought of Artois's penetrating eyes and cool, intellectual face, of his
air of authority, of his close intimacy with Hermione, he felt almost
afraid of him. He did not want Artois to come here to Sicily. He hated
his coming. He almost dreaded it as the coming of a spy. The presence of
Artois would surely take away all the savor of this wild, free life,
would import into it an element of the library, of the shut room, of that
intellectual existence which Maurice was learning to think of as almost
hateful.
And Hermione called upon him to rejoice with her over the fact that
Artois would be able to accompany her. How she misunderstood him! Good
God! how she misunderstood him! It seemed really as if she believed that
his mind was cast in precisely the same mould as her own, as if she
thought that because she and he were married they must think and feel
always alike. How absurd that was, and how impossible!
A sense of being near a prison door came upon him. He threw Hermione's
letter onto the writing-table, and went out into the sun.
When Gaspare returned that evening Maurice told him the news from Africa.
The boy's face lit up.
"Oh, then shall we go to London?" he said.
"Why not?" Maurice exclaimed, almost violently. "It will all be
different! Yes, we had better go to London!"
"Signorino."
"Well, what is it, Gaspare?"
"You do not like that signore to come here."
"I--why not? Yes, I--"
"No, signorino. I can see in your face that you do not like it. Your face
got quite black just now. But if you do not like it why do you let him
come? You are the padrone here."