of 'Adolphe,' that
dreadful finale of the loves of Madame de Stael and Benjamin Constant,
who, however, were nearer of an age than you and Calyste. Then you took
me, as soldiers use fascines to build entrenchments between the enemy
and themselves. You brought me to Les Touches to mask your real feelings
and leave you safe to follow your own secret adoration. The scheme
was grand and ignoble both; but to carry it out you should have chosen
either a common man or one so preoccupied by noble thoughts that you
could easily deceive him. You thought me simple and easy to mislead as
a man of genius. I am not a man of genius, I am a man of talent, and as
such I have divined you. When I made that eulogy yesterday on women of
your age, explaining to you why Calyste had loved you, do you suppose
I took to myself your ravished, fascinated, fazzling glance? Had I
not read into your soul? The eyes were turned on me, but the heart was
throbbing for Calyste. You have never been loved, my poor Maupin, and
you never will be after rejecting the beautiful fruit which chance has
offered to you at the portals of that hell of woman, the lock of which
is the numeral 50!"

"Why has love fled me?" she said in a low voice. "Tell me, you who know
all."

"Because you are not lovable," he answered. "You do not bend to love;
love must bend to you. You may perhaps have yielded to some follies
of youth, but there was no youth in your heart; your mind has too much
depth; you have never been naive and artless, and you cannot begin to be
so now. Your charm comes from mystery; it is abstract, not active. Your
strength repulses men of strength who fear a struggle. Your power may
please young souls, like that of Calyste, which like to be protected;
though, even them it wearies in the long run. You are grand, and you
are sublime; bear with the consequence of those two qualities--they
fatigue."

"What a sentence!" cried Camille. "Am I not a woman? Do you think me an
anomaly?"

"Possibly," said Claude.

"We will see!" said the woman, stung to the quick.

"Farewell, my dear Camille; I leave to-morrow. I am not angry with you,
my dear; I think you the greatest of women, but if I continued to
serve you as a screen, or a shield," said Claude, with two significant
inflections of his voice, "you would despise me. We can part now without
pain or remorse; we have neither happiness to regret nor hopes betrayed.
To you, as with some few but rare men of genius, l