e height at which you have
placed her. I now have a horror of any love which disregards the world
and religion. I shall remain in my present bonds; I shall be that sandy
plain we see before us, without fruit or flowers or verdure."

"But if you are abandoned?" said Calyste.

"Then I should beg my pardon of the man I have offended. I will never
run the risk of taking a happiness I know would quickly end."

"End!" cried Calyste.

The marquise stopped the passionate speech into which her lover was
about to launch, by repeating the word "End!" in a tone that silenced
him.

This opposition roused in the young man one of those mute inward furies
known only to those who love without hope. They walked on several
hundred steps in total silence, looking neither at the sea, nor the
rocks, nor the plain of Croisic.

"I would make you happy," said Calyste.

"All men begin by promising that," she answered, "and they end by
abandonment and disgust. I have no reproach to cast on him to whom I
shall be faithful. He made me no promises; I went to him; but my only
means of lessening my fault is to make it eternal."

"Say rather, madame, that you feel no love for me. I, who love you, I
know that love cannot argue; it is itself; it sees nothing else. There
is no sacrifice I will not make to you; command it, and I will do the
impossible. He who despised his mistress for flinging her glove among
the lions, and ordering him to bring it back to her, did not _love!_ He
denied your right to test our hearts, and to yield yourselves only to
our utmost devotion. I will sacrifice to you my family, my name, my
future."

"But what an insult in that word 'sacrifice'!" she said, in reproachful
tones, which made poor Calyste feel the folly of his speech.

None but women who truly love, or inborn coquettes, know how to use a
word as a point from which to make a spring.

"You are right," said Calyste, letting fall a tear; "that word can only
be said of the cruel struggles which you ask of me."

"Hush!" said Beatrix, struck by an answer in which, for the first time,
Calyste had really made her feel his love. "I have done wrong enough;
tempt me no more."

At this moment they had reached the base of the rock on which grew the
plant of box. Calyste felt a thrill of delight as he helped the marquise
to climb the steep ascent to the summit, which she wished to reach. To
the poor lad it was a precious privilege to hold her up, to make
her lean upo