law of contrasts, by a frantic desire to play with artifice.  It is false, though enticing; a pretence, but agreeable; and certain men adore women who play at seduction as others do at cards.  And this is why:  The desire of the man is a syllogism which draws conclusions from this external science as to the secret promises of pleasure.  The inner consciousness says, without words:  “A woman who can, as it were, create herself beautiful must have many other resources for love.”  And that is true.  Deserted women are usually those who merely love; those who retain love know the art of loving.  Now, though her Italian lesson had very cruelly maltreated the self-love and vanity of Madame de Rochefide, her nature was too instinctively artificial not to profit by it.

“It is not a question of loving a man,” she was saying a few moments before Calyste had entered her box; “we must tease and harass him if we want to keep him.  That’s the secret of all those women who seek 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.”