Calyste listened entranced to the witty speeches of his idol, whose great object was to amuse him, until she grew angry and wept when he rose to leave her.  He thought he had been there only half an hour, but it was past three before he reached home.  His handsome English horse, a present from the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, was so bathed in sweat that it looked as though it had been driven through the sea.  By one of those chances which all jealous women prepare for themselves, Sabine was at a window which looked on the court-yard, impatient at Calyste’s non-return, uneasy without knowing why.  The condition of the horse with its foaming mouth surprised her.

“Where can he have come from?”

The question was whispered in her ear by that power which is not exactly consciousness, nor devil, nor angel; which sees, forebodes, shows us the unseen, and creates belief in mental beings, creatures born of our brains, going and coming and living in the world invisible of ideas.

“Where do you come from, dear angel?” Sabine said to Calyste, meeting him on the first landing of the staircase.  “Abd-el-Kader is nearly foundered.  You told me you would be gone but a moment, and I have been waiting for you these three hours.”

“Well, well,” thought Calyste, who was making progress in dissimulation, “I must get out of it by a present—­Dear little mother,” he said aloud, taking her round the waist with more cajolery than he would have used if he had not been conscious of guilt, “I see that it is quite impossible to keep a secret, however innocent, from the woman who loves us—­”

“Well, don’t tell secrets on the staircase,” she said, laughing.  “Come in.”

In the middle of a salon which adjoined their bedroom, she caught sight in a mirror of Calyste’s face, on which, not aware that it could be seen, he allowed his real feelings and his weariness to appear.

“Now for your secret?” she said, turning round.

“You have shown such heroism as a nurse,” he said, “that the heir presumptive of the Guenics is dearer to me than ever, and I wanted to give you a surprise, precisely like any bourgeois of the rue Saint Denis.  They are finishing for you at this moment a dressing-table at which true artists have worked, and my mother and aunt Zephirine have contributed.”

Sabine clasped him in her arms, and held him tightly to her breast with her head on his neck, faint with the weight of happiness, not for the piece of furniture, but for the dispersion of her first dark doubt.  It was one of those magnificent transports which can be counted, and which no love, however excessive, can prodigally spend, or life would be too soon burned out.  Then, indeed, men should fall at the feet of women to adore them, for such moments are sublime, moments when the forces of the heart and intellect gush forth like the waters of sculptured nymphs from their inclining urns.  Sabine burst into tears.