"Madre di Dio, che splendore!"

Artois got up, turned the boat, and began to row gently away, keeping
near the base of the cliffs. He meant to take Vere back at once to the
island, leaving the impression made upon her by the men of the fire
vivid, and undisturbed by speech. But when they came to the huge mouth
of the Grotto of Virgil, Vere said:

"Go in for a moment, please, Monsieur Emile."

He obeyed, thinking that the mother's love for this dark place was
echoed by the child. Since his conversation with Hermione on the day
of scirocco he had not been here, and as the boat glided under the
hollow blackness of the vault, and there lay still, he remembered
their conversation, the unloosing of her passion, the strength and
tenacity of the nature she had shown to him, gripping the past with
hands almost as unyielding as the tragic hands of death.

And he waited in silence, and with a deep expectation, for the
revelation of the child. It seemed to him that Vere had her purpose in
coming here, as Hermione had had hers. And once more the words of the
old man in "Pelleas and Melisande" haunted him. Once more he heard
them in his heart.

"Now it's the child's turn."

Vere dropped her right hand over the gunwale till it touched the sea,
making a tiny splash.