He did not combat this intention then, for he was too thankful to have
gained her assent to the departure for which he longed. The further
future must take care of itself.
"I will take you to Italy, to Switzerland, wherever you wish to go."
"I have no wish for any other place. But I will go somewhere in Italy.
Wherever it is cool and silent will do. But I must be far away from
people; and when you have taken me there, dear Emile, you must leave me
there."
"Quite alone?"
"Gaspare will be with me. I shall always keep Gaspare. Maurice and he
were like two brothers in their happiness. I know they loved each other,
and I know Gaspare loves me."
Artois only said: "I trust the boy."
The word "trust" seemed to wake Hermione into a stronger life.
"Ah, Emile," she said, "once you distrusted the south. I remember your
very words. You said, 'I love the south, but I distrust what I love, and
I see the south in him.' I want to tell you, I want you to know, how
perfect he was always to me. He loved joy, but his joy was always
innocent. There was always something of the child in him. He was
unconscious of himself. He never understood his own beauty. He never
realized that he was worthy of worship. His thought was to reverence and
to worship others. He loved life and the sun--oh, how he loved them! I
don't think any one can ever have loved life and the sun as he did, ever
will love them as he did. But he was never selfish. He was just quite
natural. He was the deathless boy. Emile, have you noticed anything about
me--since?"
"What, Hermione?"
"How much older I look now. He was like my youth, and my youth has gone
with him."
"Will it not revive--when--?"
"No, never. I don't wish it to. Gaspare gathered roses, all the best
roses from his father's little bit of land, to throw into the grave. And
I want my youth to lie there with my Sicilian under Gaspare's roses. I
feel as if that would be a tender companionship. I gave everything to him
when he was alive, and I don't want to keep anything back now. I would
like the sun to be with him under Gaspare's roses. And yet I know he's
elsewhere. I can't explain. But two days ago at dawn I heard a child
playing the tarantella, and it seemed to me as if my Sicilian had been
taken away by the blue, by the blue of Sicily. I shall often come back to
the blue. I shall often sit here again. For it was here that I heard the
beating of the heart of youth. And there's no other music like that. Is
there, Emile?"