you, and for every misconception, for every wrong, I will make you
feel my comprehension day by day."

She listened to such speeches with bowed head, allowing him to kiss
her hands, and admitting silently but gracefully that she was indeed
an angel misunderstood.

"I am too humiliated," she would say; "my past has robbed the future
of all security."

It was a glorious day for Calyste when, arriving at Les Touches at
seven in the morning, he saw from afar Beatrix at a window watching
for him, and wearing the same straw hat she had worn on the memorable
day of their first excursion. For a moment he was dazzled and giddy.
These little things of passion magnify the world itself. It may be
that only Frenchwomen possess the art of such scenic effects; they owe
it to the grace of their minds; they know how to put into sentiment as
much of the picturesque as the particular sentiment can bear without a
loss of vigor or of force.

Ah! how lightly she rested on Calyste's arm! Together they left Les
Touches by the garden-gate which opens on the dunes. Beatrix thought
the sands delightful; she spied the hardy little plants with
rose-colored flowers that grew there, and she gathered a quantity to
mix with the Chartreux pansies which also grow in that arid desert,
dividing them significantly with Calyste, to whom those flowers and
their foliage were to be henceforth an eternal and dreadful relic.

"We'll add a bit of box," she said smiling.