Calyste passed the night at Les Touches, sitting at the foot of
Beatrix's bed, in company with Camille. The doctor from Guerande had
assured them that on the following day a little stiffness would be all
that remained of the accident. Across the despair of Calyste's heart
there came a gleam of joy. He was there, at her feet; he could watch
her sleeping or waking; he might study her pallid face and all its
expressions. Camille smiled bitterly as her keen mind recognized in
Calyste the symptoms of a passion such as man can feel but once,--a
passion which dyes his soul and his faculties by mingling with the
fountain of his life at a period when neither thoughts nor cares
distract or oppose the inward working of this emotion. She saw that
Calyste would never, could never see the real woman that was in Beatrix.

And with what guileless innocence the young Breton allowed his thoughts
to be read! When he saw the beautiful green eyes of the sick woman
turned to him, expressing a mixture of love, confusion, and even
mischief, he colored, and turned away his head.

"Did I not say truly, Calyste, that you men promised happiness, and
ended by flinging us down a precipice?"

When he heard this little jest, said in sweet, caressing tones which
betrayed a change of heart in Beatrix, Calyste knelt down, took her
moist hand which she yielded to him, and kissed it humbly.

"You have the right to reject my love forever," he said, "and I, I have
no right to say one word to you."

"Ah!" cried Camille, seeing the expression on Beatrix's face and
comparing it with that obtained by her diplomacy, "love has a wit of its
own, wiser than that of all the world! Take your composing-draught, my
dear friend, and go to sleep."

That night, spent by Calyste beside Mademoiselle des Touches, who read
a book of theological mysticism while Calyste read "Indiana,"--the first
work of Camille's celebrated rival, in which is the captivating image
of a young man loving with idolatry and devotion, with mysterious
tranquillity and for all his life, a woman placed in the same false
position as Beatrix (a book which had a fatal influence upon him),--that
night left ineffaceable marks upon the heart of the poor young fellow,
whom Felicite soothed with the assurance that unless a woman were a
monster she must be flattered in all her vanities by being the object of
such a crime.

"You would never have flung _me_ into the water," said Camille, brushing
away a