“While Claude was speaking,” she said, “I conceived the beauty and the grandeur of love without hope; it is the sentiment that brings us nearest God. Do not love me, Calyste; but I will love you as no woman will!”
It was the cry of a wounded eagle seeking its eyrie. Claude himself knelt down, took Camille’s hand, and kissed it.
“Leave us now, Calyste,” she said, “it is late, and your mother will be uneasy.”
Calyste returned to Guerande with lagging steps, turning again and again, to see the light from the windows of the room in which was Beatrix. He was surprised himself to find how little pity he felt for Camille. But presently he felt once more the agitations of that scene, the tears she had left upon his hair; he suffered with her suffering; he fancied he heard the moans of that noble woman, so beloved, so desired but a few short days before.
When he opened the door of his paternal home, where total silence reigned, he saw his mother through the window, as she sat sewing by the light of the curiously constructed lamp while she awaited him. Tears moistened the lad’s eyes as he looked at her.
“What has happened?” cried Fanny, seeing his emotion, which filled her with horrible anxiety.
For all answer, Calyste took his mother in his arms, and kissed her on her cheeks, her forehead and hair, with one of those passionate effusions of feeling that comfort mothers, and fill them with the subtle flames of the life they have given.
“It is you I love, you!” cried Calyste,—“you, who live for me; you, whom I long to render happy!”
“But you are not yourself, my child,” said the baroness, looking at him attentively. “What has happened to you?”
“Camille loves me, but I love her no longer,” he answered.