of my heart for a long, long time. Obliged to seem proud before
indifferent persons, and arrogant as if I had never fallen in presence
of those who pay court to me, and having lost my dear Felicite, there
was no ear into which I could cast the words, /I suffer!/ But to you I
can tell the anguish I endured on seeing you just now so near to me.
Yes," she said, replying to a gesture of Calyste's, "it is almost
fidelity. That is how it is with misery; a look, a visit, a mere
nothing is everything to us. Ah! you once loved me--you--as I deserved
to be loved by him who has taken pleasure in trampling under foot the
treasures I poured out upon him. And yet, to my sorrow, I cannot
forget; I love, and I desire to be faithful to a past that can never
return."

Having uttered this tirade, improvised for the hundredth time, she
played the pupils of her eyes in a way to double the effect of her
words, which seemed to be dragged from the depths of her soul by the
violence of a torrent long restrained. Calyste, incapable of speech,
let fall the tears that gathered in his eyes. Beatrix caught his hand
and pressed it, making him turn pale.

"Thank you, Calyste, thank you, my poor child; that is how a true
friend responds to the grief of his friend. We understand each other.
No, don't add another word; leave me now; people are looking at us; it
might cause trouble to your wife if some one chanced to tell her that
we were seen together,--innocently enough, before a thousand people!
There, you see I am strong; adieu--"

She wiped her eyes, making what might be called, in woman's rhetoric,
an antithesis of action.