They sat some time together on the jetty, and Calyste, while waiting
for the boat to come over, told her of his juvenile act on the day of
her arrival.

"I knew of your little escapade," she said, "and it was the cause of
my sternness to you that first night."

During their walk Madame de Rochefide had the lightly jesting tone of
a woman who loves, together with a certain tenderness and abandonment
of manner. Calyste had reason to think himself beloved. But when,
wandering along the shore beneath the rocks, they came upon one of
those charming creeks where the waves deposit the most extraordinary
mosaic of brilliant pebbles, and they played there like children
gathering the prettiest, when Calyste at the summit of happiness asked
her plainly to fly with him to Ireland, she resumed her dignified and
distant air, asked for his arm, and continued their walk in silence to
what she called her Tarpeian rock.

"My friend," she said, mounting with slow steps the magnificent block
of granite of which she was making for herself a pedestal, "I have not
the courage to conceal what you are to me. For ten years I have had no
happiness comparable to that which we have just enjoyed together,
searching for shells among those rocks, exchanging pebbles of which I
shall make a necklace more precious far to me than if it were made of
the finest diamonds. I have been once more a little girl, a child,
such as I was at fourteen or sixteen--when I was worthy of you. The
love I have had the happiness to inspire in your heart has raised me
in my own eyes. Understand these words to their magical extent. You
have made me the proudest and happiest of my sex, and you will live
longer in my remembrance, perhaps, than I in yours."