the absolute truth of me you would still look upon me with the same
kind, understanding eyes as now. Perhaps no one else would. Would you,
do you think?"

"I hope and believe I could," he said. "You do not live in Vere. Is
that it?"

"I know it is considered the right, the perfectly natural thing that a
mother, stricken as I have been, should find in time perfect peace and
contentment in her child. Even you--you spoke of 'living again.' It's
the consecrated phrase, Emile, isn't it? I ought to be living again in
Vere. Well, I'm not doing that. With my nature I could never do that.
Is that horrible?"

"Ma pauvre amie!" he said.

He bent down and touched her hand.

"I don't know," she said, more calmly, as if relieved, but still with
an undercurrent of passion, "whether I could ever live again in the
life of another. But if I did it would be in the life of a man. I am
not made to live in a woman's life, really to live, giving out the
force that is in me. I know I'm a middle-aged woman--to these Italians
here more than that, an old woman. But I'm not a finished woman, and I
never shall be till I die. Vere is my child. I love her tenderly; more
than that--passionately. She has always been close to me, as you know.
But no, Emile, my relation to Vere, hers to me, does not satisfy all
my need of love, my power to love. No, no, it doesn't. There's
something in me that wants more, much more than that. There's
something in me that--I think only a son of his could have satisfied