listlessly, her eyes gazing fixedly at
some object which she did not seem to see. Her whole attitude spoke of
hopeless pain. There was a vague something like hope in her bearing,
but it was impossible to say whither Claire de Bourgogne was
looking--forwards to the tomb or backwards into the past. Perhaps M.
de Nueil's tears glittered in the deep shadows; perhaps his breathing
sounded faintly; perhaps unconsciously he trembled, or again it may have
been impossible that he should stand there, his presence unfelt by that
quick sense which grows to be an instinct, the glory, the delight, the
proof of perfect love. However it was, Mme. de Beauseant slowly turned
her face towards the doorway, and beheld her lover of bygone days. Then
Gaston de Nueil came forward a few paces.

"If you come any further, sir," exclaimed the Marquise, growing paler,
"I shall fling myself out of the window!"

She sprang to the window, flung it open, and stood with one foot on
the ledge, her hand upon the iron balustrade, her face turned towards
Gaston.

"Go out! go out!" she cried, "or I will throw myself over."

At that dreadful cry the servants began to stir, and M. de Nueil fled
like a criminal.

When he reached his home again he wrote a few lines and gave them to his
own man, telling him to give the letter himself into Mme. de Beauseant's
hands, and to say that it was a matter of life and death for his master.
The messenger went. M. de Nueil went back to the drawing-room where his
wife was still murdering the _Caprice_, and sat down to wait till the
answer came. An hour later, when the _Caprice_ had come to an end, and
the husband and wife sat in silence on opposite sides of the hearth,
the man came back from Valleroy and gave his master his own letter,
unopened.

M. de Nueil went into a small room beyond the drawing-room, where he had
left his rifle, and shot himself.

The swift and fatal ending of the drama, contrary as it is to all the
habits of young France, is only what might have been expected. Those who
have closely observed, or known for themselves by delicious experience,
all that is meant by the perfect union of two beings, will understand
Gaston de Nueil's suicide perfectly well. A woman does not bend and form
herself in a day to the caprices of passion. The pleasure of loving,
like some rare flower, needs the most careful ingenuity of culture.
Time alone, and two souls attuned each to each, can discover all its
resources,