by other sentiments than those of ordinary mortals. Calyste
shall tell you the tale; it is a drama of the seashore."

She went into her bedroom, for she was stifling. Calyste gave his letter
to Beatrix and followed Camille.

"Calyste, you are loved, I think; but you are hiding something from me;
you have done some foolish thing."

"Loved!" he exclaimed, dropping into a chair.

Camille looked into the next room; Beatrix had disappeared. The fact
was odd. Women do not usually leave a room which contains the man they
admire, unless they have either the certainty of seeing him again, or
something better still. Mademoiselle des Touches said to herself:--

"Can he have given her a letter?"

But she thought the innocent Breton incapable of such boldness.

"If you have disobeyed me, all will be lost, through your own fault,"
she said to him very gravely. "Go, now, and make your preparations for
to-morrow."

She made a gesture which Calyste did not venture to resist.

As he walked toward Croisic, to engage the boatmen, fears came into
Calyste's mind. Camille's speech foreshadowed something fatal, and
he believed in the second sight of her maternal affection. When he
returned, four hours later, very tired, and expecting to dine at Les
Touches, he found Camille's maid keeping watch over the door, to tell
him that neither her mistress nor the marquise could receive him that
evening. Calyste, much surprised, wished to question her, but she bade
him hastily good-night and closed the door.

Six o'clock was striking on the steeple of Guerande as Calyste entered
his own house, where Mariotte gave him his belated dinner; after which,
he played _mouche_ in gloomy meditation. These alternations of joy and
gloom, happiness and unhappiness, the extinction of hopes succeeding the
apparent certainty of being loved, bruised and wounded the young
soul which had flown so high on outstretched wings that the fall was
dreadful.

"Does anything trouble you, my Calyste?" said his mother.

"Nothing," he replied, looking at her with eyes from which the light of
the soul and the fire of love were withdrawn.

It is not hope, but despair, which gives the measure of our ambitions.
The finest poems of hope are sung in secret, but grief appears without a
veil.

"Calyste, you are not nice," said Charlotte, after vainly attempting
on him those little provincial witcheries which degenerate usually into
teasing.

"I am tired," he said, rising,