“My God!” she said, “how he loves her! I shall die without being understood—or loved,” she added.
She sat for a few moments with her head leaning against the shoulder of her companion; her grief was genuine; she felt to the very core of her being the same terrible blow which the Baronne du Guenic had received in reading that letter.
“Do you love him?” she said, straightening herself up, and looking fixedly at Beatrix. “Have you that infinite worship for him which triumphs over all pains, survives contempt, betrayal, the certainty that he will never love you? Do you love him for himself, and for the very joy of loving him?”
“Dear friend,” said the marquise, tenderly, “be happy, be at peace; I will leave this place to-morrow.”
“No, do not go; he loves you, I see that. Well, I love him so much that I could not endure to see him wretched and unhappy. Still, I had formed plans for him, projects; but if he loves you, all is over.”
“And I love him, Camille,” said the marquise, with a sort of naivete, and coloring.
“You love him, and yet you cast him off!” cried Camille. “Ah! that is not loving; you do not love him.”
“I don’t know what fresh virtue he has roused in me, but certainly he has made me ashamed of my own self,” said Beatrix. “I would I were virtuous and free, that I might give him something better than the dregs of a heart and the weight of my chains. I do not want a hampered destiny either for him or for myself.”
“Cold brain!” exclaimed Camille, with a sort of horror. “To love and calculate!”
“Call it what you like,” said Beatrix, “but I will not spoil his life, or hang like a millstone round his neck, to become an eternal regret to him. If I cannot be his wife, I shall not be his mistress. He has—you will laugh at me? No? Well, then, he has purified me.”