The enthusiasm of Hermione for Sicily, the flood of understanding of it,
and feeling for it that she had poured out in the past days of spring,
instead of teaching Maurice to see and to feel, seemed to have kept him
back from the comprehension to which they had been meant to lead him.
With Hermione, the watcher, he had been but as a Sicilian, another
Gaspare in a different rank of life. Without Hermione he was Gaspare and
something more. It was as if he still danced in the tarantella, but had
now for the moment the power to stand and watch his performance and see
that it was wonderful.

This was just at first, in the silence that followed the music.

He gazed at Etna, and thought: "How extraordinary that I'm living up here
on a mountain and looking at the smoke from Etna, and that there's no
English-speaking person here but me!" He looked at Gaspare and at
Lucrezia, and thought: "What a queer trio of companions we are! How
strange and picturesque those two would look in England, how different
they are from the English, and yet how at home with them I feel! By Jove,
it's wonderful!" And then he was thrilled by a sense of romance, of
adventure, that had never been his when his English wife was there beside
him, calling his mind to walk with hers, his heart to beat with hers,
calling with the great sincerity of a very perfect love.