In all extreme illness there is a moment when the patient is willing to accept the cruellest remedy and submits to the most horrible operation.  Calyste had reached that point.  He listened to Camille’s advice and stayed at home two whole days; but on the third he was scratching at Beatrix’s door to let her know that he and Camille were waiting breakfast for her.

“Another chance lost!” Camille said to him when she saw him re-appear so weakly.

During his two days’ absence, Beatrix had frequently looked through the window which opens on the road to Guerande.  When Camille found her doing so, she talked of the effect produced by the gorse along the roadway, the golden blooms of which were dazzling in the September sunshine.

The marquise kept Camille and Calyste waiting long for breakfast; and the delay would have been significant to any eyes but those of Calyste, for when she did appear, her dress showed an evident intention to fascinate him and prevent another absence.  After breakfast she went to walk with him in the garden and filled his simple heart with joy by expressing a wish to go again to that rock where she had so nearly perished.

“Will you go with me alone?” asked Calyste, in a troubled voice.

“If I refused to do so,” she replied, “I should give you reason to suppose I thought you dangerous.  Alas! as I have told you again and again I belong to another, and I must be his only; I chose him knowing nothing of love.  The fault was great, and bitter is my punishment.”

When she talked thus, her eyes moist with the scanty tears shed by that class of woman, Calyste was filled with a compassion that reduced his fiery ardor; he adored her then as he did a Madonna.  We have no more right to require different characters to be alike in the expression of feelings than we have to expect the same fruits from different trees.  Beatrix was at this moment undergoing an inward struggle; she hesitated between herself and Calyste,—­between the world she still hoped to re-enter, and the young happiness offered to her; between a second and an unpardonable love, and social rehabilitation.  She began, therefore, to listen, without even acted displeasure, to the talk of the youth’s blind passion; she allowed his soft pity to soothe her.  Several times she had been moved to tears as she listened to Calyste’s promises; and she suffered him to commiserate her for being bound to an evil genius, a man as false as Conti.  More than once she related to him the misery and anguish she had gone through in Italy, when she first became aware that she was not alone in Conti’s heart.  On this subject Camille had fully informed Calyste and given him several lectures on it, by which he profited.

“I,” he said, “will love you only, you absolutely.  I have no triumphs of art, no applause of crowds stirred by my genius to offer you; my only talent is to love you; my honor, my pride are in your perfections.  No other woman can have merit in my eyes; you have no odious rivalry to fear.  You are misconceived and wronged, but I know you, and for every misconception, for every wrong, I will make you feel my comprehension day by day.”