den plaint, the groan of repressed affliction.
Camille had varied, modified, and lengthened the introduction to the
cavatina: "Mercy for thee, mercy for me!" which is nearly the whole of
the fourth act of "Robert le Diable." She now suddenly sang the words
in a heart-rending manner, and then as suddenly interrupted herself.
Calyste entered, and saw the reason. Poor Camille Maupin! poor Felicite!
She turned to him a face bathed with tears, took out her handkerchief
and dried them, and said, simply, without affectation, "Good-morning."
She was beautiful as she sat there in her morning gown. On her head was
one of those red chenille nets, much worn in those days, through which
the coils of her black hair shone, escaping here and there. A short
upper garment made like a Greek peplum gave to view a pair of cambric
trousers with embroidered frills, and the prettiest of Turkish slippers,
red and gold.

"What is the matter?" cried Calyste.

"He has not returned," she replied, going to a window and looking out
upon the sands, the sea and the marshes.

This answer explained all. Camille was awaiting Claude Vignon.

"You are anxious about him?" asked Calyste.

"Yes," she answered, with a sadness the lad was too ignorant to analyze.

He started to leave the room.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To find him," he replied.

"Dear child!" she said, taking his hand and drawing him toward her with
one of those moist glances which are to a youthful soul the best of
recompenses. "You are distracted! Where could you find him on that wide
shore?"

"I will find him."

"Your mother would be in mortal terror. Stay. Besides, I choose it," she
said, making him sit down upon the sofa. "Don't pity me. The tears you
see are the tears a woman likes to shed. We have a faculty that is not
in man,--that of abandoning ourselves to our nervous nature and
driving our feelings to an extreme. By imagining certain situations and
encouraging the imagination we end in tears, and sometimes in serious
states of illness or disorder. The fancies of women are not the action
of the mind; they are of the heart. You have come just in time; solitude
is bad for me. I am not the dupe of his professed desire to go to
Croisic and see the rocks and the dunes and the salt-marshes without
me. He meant to leave us alone together; he is jealous, or, rather, he
pretends jealousy, and you are young, you are handsome."

"Why not have told me this before? What mu