"I think you are doubting that it would have been so?" she said, at
last.

"Yes, that is true. I am doubting."

"I wonder why?"

"I cannot help feeling that there is passion in you, such passion as
could not be satisfied in any strict, maternal relationship."

"But I am old, dear Emile," she said, very simply.

"When I was standing by that window, looking at the mountains of
Ischia, I was saying to myself, 'This is an old, tired world, suitable
for me--and for you. We are in our right environment to-day.' I was
saying that, Hermione, but was I believing it, really? I don't think I
was. And I am ten years older than you, and I have been given a nature
that was, I think, always older than yours could ever be."

"I wonder if that is so."

She looked at him very directly, even searchingly, not with eager
curiosity, but with deep inquiry.

"You know, Emile," she added, "I tell you very much, but you tell me
very little. Not that I wish to ask anything--no. I respect all your
reserve. And about your work: you tell me all that. It is a great
thing in my life, your work. Perhaps you don't realize how sometimes I
live in the book that you are doing, almost as if I were writing it
myself. But your inner life--"