“Say rather, madame, that you feel no love for me. I, who love you, I know that love cannot argue; it is itself; it sees nothing else. There is no sacrifice I will not make to you; command it, and I will do the impossible. He who despised his mistress for flinging her glove among the lions, and ordering him to bring it back to her, did not love! He denied your right to test our hearts, and to yield yourselves only to our utmost devotion. I will sacrifice to you my family, my name, my future.”
“But what an insult in that word ‘sacrifice’!” she said, in reproachful tones, which made poor Calyste feel the folly of his speech.
None but women who truly love, or inborn coquettes, know how to use a word as a point from which to make a spring.
“You are right,” said Calyste, letting fall a tear; “that word can only be said of the cruel struggles which you ask of me.”
“Hush!” said Beatrix, struck by an answer in which, for the first time, Calyste had really made her feel his love. “I have done wrong enough; tempt me no more.”
At this moment they had reached the base of the rock on which grew the plant of box. Calyste felt a thrill of delight as he helped the marquise to climb the steep ascent to the summit, which she wished to reach. To the poor lad it was a precious privilege to hold her up, to make her lean upon him, to feel her tremble; she had need of him. This unlooked-for pleasure turned his head; he saw nought else but Beatrix, and he clasped her round the waist.
“What!” she said, with an imposing air.
“Will you never be mine?” he demanded, in a voice that was choked by the tumult of his blood.
“Never, my friend,” she replied. “I can only be to you a Beatrix,—a dream. But is not that a sweet and tender thing? We shall have no bitterness, no grief, no repentance.”
“Will you return to Conti?”