“Oh! the adorable heart!” cried Camille.  “Conti, you will never obtain applause of one-half the value of that child’s homage.  Let us sing this trio.  Beatrix, my dear, come.”

When the marquise, Camille, and Conti had arranged themselves at the piano, Calyste rose softly, without attracting their attention, and flung himself on one of the sofas in the bedroom, the door of which stood open, where he sat with his head in his hands, plunged in meditation.

X

DRAMA

“What is it, my child?” said Claude Vignon, who had slipped silently into the bedroom after Calyste, and now took him by the hand.  “You love; you think you are disdained; but it is not so.  The field will be free to you in a few days and you will reign—­beloved by more than one.”

“Loved!” cried Calyste, springing up, and beckoning Claude into the library, “Who loves me here?”

“Camille,” replied Claude.

“Camille loves me?  And you!—­what of you?”

“I?” answered Claude, “I—­” He stopped; sat down on a sofa and rested his head with weary sadness on a cushion.  “I am tired of life, but I have not the courage to quit it,” he went on, after a short silence.  “I wish I were mistaken in what I have just told you; but for the last few days more than one vivid light has come into my mind.  I did not wander about the marshes for my pleasure; no, upon my soul I did not!  The bitterness of my words when I returned and found you with Camille were the result of wounded feeling.  I intend to have an explanation with her soon.  Two minds as clear-sighted as hers and mine cannot deceive each other.  Between two such professional duellists the combat cannot last long.  Therefore I may as well tell you now that I shall leave Les Touches; yes, to-morrow perhaps, with Conti.  After we are gone strange things will happen here.  I shall regret not witnessing conflicts of passion of a kind so rare in France, and so dramatic.  You are very young to enter such dangerous lists; you interest me; were it not for the profound disgust I feel for women, I would stay and help you play this game.  It is difficult; you may lose it; you have to do with two extraordinary women, and you feel too much for one to use the other judiciously.  Beatrix is dogged by nature; Camille has grandeur.  Probably you will be wrecked between those reefs, drawn upon them by the waves of passion.  Beware!”

Calyste’s stupefaction on hearing these words enabled Claude to say them without interruption and leave the young Breton, who remained like a traveller among the Alps to whom a guide has shown the depth of some abyss by flinging a stone into it.  To hear from the lips of Claude himself that Camille loved him, at the very moment when he felt that he loved Beatrix for life, was a weight too heavy for his untried soul to bear.  Goaded by an immense regret which now filled all the past, overwhelmed with a sight of his position between Beatrix whom he