striven through
years of toil to realize but one of those accidents of Nature? Come,
call up your sense of the truth of things and answer me; is it not the
Idea of Beauty which our souls associate with moral grandeur? Well,
Calyste is one of those dreams, those visions, realized. He has the
regal power of a lion, tranquilly unsuspicious of its royalty. When he
feels at his ease, he is witty; and I love his girlish timidity. My soul
rests in his heart away from all corruptions, all ideas of knowledge,
literature, the world, society, politics,--those useless accessories
under which we stifle happiness. I am what I have never been,--a child!
I am sure of him, but I like to play at jealousy; he likes it too.
Besides, that is part of my secret."

Beatrix walked on pensively, in silence. Camille endured unspeakable
martyrdom, and she cast a sidelong look at her companion which looked
like flame.

"Ah, my dear; but _you_ are happy," said Beatrix presently, laying
her hand on Camille's arm like a woman wearied out with some inward
struggle.

"Yes, happy indeed!" replied Felicite, with savage bitterness.

The two women dropped upon a bench from a sense of exhaustion. No
creature of her sex was ever played upon like an instrument with more
Machiavellian penetration than the marquise throughout this week.

"Yes, you are happy, but I!" she said,--"to know of Conti's
infidelities, and have to bear them!"

"Why not leave him?" said Camille, seeing the hour had come to strike a
decisive blow.

"Can I?"

"Oh! poor boy!"

Both were gazing into a clump of trees with a stupefied air.

Camille rose.

"I will go and hasten breakfast; my walk has given me an appetite," she
said.

"Our conversation has taken away mine," remarked Beatrix.

The marquise in her morning dress was outlined in white against the dark
greens of the foliage. Calyste, who had slipped through the salon into
the garden, took a path, along which he sauntered as though he were
meeting her by accident. Beatrix could not restrain a quiver as he
approached her.

"Madame, in what way did I displease you yesterday?" he said, after the
first commonplace sentences had been exchanged.

"But you have neither pleased me nor displeased me," she said, in a
gentle voice.

The tone, air, and manner in which the marquise said these words
encouraged Calyste.

"Am I so indifferent to you?" he said in a troubled voice, as the tears
came into his eyes.

"Ought we