attempting to cover by a quarrel a secret injury, which
would compromise my very life. You know me; I shall never survive the
loss of Calyste, but I must lose him sooner or later. Still, Calyste
loves me now; of that I am sure."

"Here is what he answered to a letter of mine, urging him to be true to
you," said Beatrix, holding out Calyste's last letter.

Camille took it and read it; but as she read it, her eyes filled with
tears; and presently she wept as women weep in their bitterest sorrows.

"My God!" she said, "how he loves her! I shall die without being
understood--or loved," she added.

She sat for a few moments with her head leaning against the shoulder of
her companion; her grief was genuine; she felt to the very core of her
being the same terrible blow which the Baronne du Guenic had received in
reading that letter.

"Do you love him?" she said, straightening herself up, and looking
fixedly at Beatrix. "Have you that infinite worship for him which
triumphs over all pains, survives contempt, betrayal, the certainty that
he will never love you? Do you love him for himself, and for the very
joy of loving him?"

"Dear friend," said the marquise, tenderly, "be happy, be at peace; I
will leave this place to-morrow."

"No, do not go; he loves you, I see that. Well, I love him so much that
I could not endure to see him wretched and unhappy. Still, I had formed
plans for him, projects; but if he loves you, all is over."

"And I love him, Camille," said the marquise, with a sort of _naivete_,
and coloring.

"You love him, and yet you cast him off!" cried Camille. "Ah! that is
not loving; you do not love him."

"I don't know what fresh virtue he has roused in me, but certainly
he has made me ashamed of my own self," said Beatrix. "I would I were
virtuous and free, that I might give him something better than the dregs
of a heart and the weight of my chains. I do not want a hampered destiny
either for him or for myself."

"Cold brain!" exclaimed Camille, with a sort of horror. "To love and
calculate!"

"Call it what you like," said Beatrix, "but I will not spoil his life,
or hang like a millstone round his neck, to become an eternal regret to
him. If I cannot be his wife, I shall not be his mistress. He has--you
will laugh at me? No? Well, then, he has purified me."

Camille cast on Beatrix the most sullen, savage look that female
jealousy ever cast upon a rival.

"On that ground, I believed I stood alon