Only when Hermione was gone, when the train from which she waved her hand
had vanished along the line that skirted the sea, and he saw Gaspare
winking away two tears that were about to fall on his brown cheeks, did
Maurice begin to realize the largeness of the change that fate had
wrought in his Sicilian life. He realized it more sharply when he had
climbed the mountain and stood once more upon the terrace before the
house of the priest. Hermione's personality was so strong, so aboundingly
vital, that its withdrawal made an impression such as that made by an
intense silence suddenly succeeding a powerful burst of music. Just at
first Maurice felt startled, almost puzzled like a child, inclined to
knit his brows and stare with wide eyes and wonder what could be going to
happen to him in a world that was altered. Now he was conscious of being
far away from the land where he had been born and brought up, conscious
of it as he had not been before, even on his first day in Sicily. He did
not feel an alien. He had no sensation of exile. But he felt, as he had
not felt when with Hermione, the glory of this world of sea and
mountains, of olive-trees and vineyards, the strangeness of its great
welcome to him, the magic of his readiness to give himself to it.

He had been like a dancing faun in the sunshine and the moonlight of
Sicily. Now, for a moment, he stood still, very still, and watched and
listened, and was grave, and was aware of himself, the figure in the
foreground of a picture that was marvellous.