combination they made! He imagined the clear flame of them burning in
the night of the world of men. Vere must be happy.

When he said this to himself he knew that, perhaps for the first time,
he was despairing of something that he ardently desired. He was
transferring a wish, that was something like a prayer in the heart of
one who had seldom prayed. He was giving up hope for Hermione and
fastening hope on Vere. For a moment that seemed like treachery, like
an abandoning of Hermione. Since their interview on the sea Artois had
felt that, for Hermione, all possibility of real happiness was over.
She could not detach her love. It had been fastened irrevocably on
Maurice. It was now fastened irrevocably on Maurice's memory. Long
ago, had she, while he was alive, found out what he had done, her
passion for him might have died, and in the course of years she might
have been able to love again. But now it was surely too late. She had
lived with her memory too long. It was her blessing--to remember, to
recall, how love had blessed her life for a time. And if that memory
were desecrated now she would be as one wrecked in the storm of life.
Yet with that memory how she suffered!

What could he do for her? His chivalry must exercise itself. He must
remain in the lists, if only to fight for Hermione in Vere. And the
Marchesino? Artois seemed to divine that he might be an enemy in
certain circumstances.

A warmth of sentiment, not very common in Artois, generated within him
by such thoughts as these, thoughts that detained him from work, still
glowed in his heart when evening fell and the Marchesino came gayly in
to take him out upon the sea.