ek to
retain you men. The dragons who guard treasures are always armed with
claws and wings."

"I shall make a sonnet on that thought," replied Canalis at the very
moment when Calyste entered the box.

With a single glance Beatrix divined the state of Calyste's heart; she
saw the marks of the collar she had put upon him at Les Touches, still
fresh and red. Calyste, however, wounded by the speech made to him about
his wife, hesitated between his dignity as a husband, Sabine's defence,
and a harsh word cast upon a heart which held such memories for him,
a heart which he believed to be bleeding. The marquise observed his
hesitation; she had made that speech expressly that she might know how
far her empire over Calyste still extended. Seeing his weakness, she
came at once to his succor to relieve his embarrassment.

"Well, dear friend, you find me alone," she said, as soon as the two
gentlemen had left the box,--"yes, alone in the world!"

"You forget me!" said Calyste.

"You!" she replied, "but you are married. That was one of my griefs,
among the many I have endured since I saw you last. Not only--I said to
myself--do I lose love, but I have lost a friendship which I thought was
Breton. Alas! we can make ourselves bear everything. Now I suffer less,
but I am broken, exhausted! This is the first outpouring of my heart for
a long, long time. Obliged to seem proud before indifferent persons, and
arrogant as if I had never fallen in presence of those who pay court
to me, and having lost my dear Felicite, there was no ear into which I
could cast the words, _I suffer!_ But to you I can tell the anguish I
endured on seeing you just now so near to me. Yes," she said, replying
to a gesture of Calyste's, "it is almost fidelity. That is how it is
with misery; a look, a visit, a mere nothing is everything to us. Ah!
you once loved me--you--as I deserved to be loved by him who has taken
pleasure in trampling under foot the treasures I poured out upon him.
And yet, to my sorrow, I cannot forget; I love, and I desire to be
faithful to a past that can never return."

Having uttered this tirade, improvised for the hundredth time, she
played the pupils of her eyes in a way to double the effect of her
words, which seemed to be dragged from the depths of her soul by the
violence of a torrent long restrained. Calyste, incapable of speech, let
fall the tears that gathered in his eyes. Beatrix caught his hand and
pressed it, making him t