The two women, apparently indolent, were lounging on the divan in that little drawing-room so full of harmony, in the midst of a world of flowers, with the window open, for the north winds had ceased to blow. A melting southerly breeze dimpled the saltwater lake that they could see in front of them, and the sun scorched the golden sands. Their spirits were as deeply tossed as Nature lay calm, and not less burning. Camille, broken on the wheel of the machinery she was working, was obliged to keep a guard over herself, the friendly foe she had admitted into her cage was so prodigiously keen; not to betray her secret she gave herself up to observing the secrets of nature; she cheated her pain by seeking a meaning in the motions of the spheres, and found God in the sublime solitude of the sky.
When once an infidel acknowledges God, he throws himself headlong into Catholicism, which, viewed as a system, is perfect.
That morning Camille had shown the Marquise a face still radiant with the light of her research, carried on during a night spent in lamentation. Calyste was always before her like a heavenly vision. She regarded this beautiful youth, to whom she devoted herself, as her guardian angel. Was it not he who was leading her to the supernal regions where sufferings have an end under the weight of incomprehensible immensity? Still, Camille was made uneasy by Béatrix’s triumphant looks. One woman does not gain such an advantage over another without allowing it to be guessed, while justifying herself for having taken it. Nothing could be stranger than this covert moral struggle between the two friends, each hiding a secret from the other, and each believing herself to be the creditor for unspoken sacrifices.
Calyste arrived holding his letter under his glove, ready to slip it into Béatrix’s hand. Camille, who had not failed to mark the change in her guest’s manner, affected not to look at her, but studied her in a mirror just when Calyste made his entrance. That is the sunken rock for every woman. The cleverest and the most stupid, the most frank and the most astute, are not then mistress of their secret; at that moment it blazes out to another woman’s eyes. Too much reserve or too much freedom, an open and a beaming glance, or a mysterious droop of the eyelids—everything then reveals the feeling above all others difficult to conceal, for indifference is so absolutely cold that it can never be well acted. Women have the genius of shades of manner—they use them too often not to know them all—and on these occasions they take in a rival from head to foot at a glance; they see the slightest twitch of a foot under a petticoat, the most imperceptible start in the figure, and know the meaning of what to a man seems to have none. Two women watching one another play one of the finest comedies to be seen.
“Calyste has committed some folly,” thought Camille, observing in both of them the indefinable look of persons who understand each other.
There was no formality or affected indifference in the Marquise now; she looked at Calyste as if he belonged to her. Calyste explained matters; he reddened like a guilty creature, like a happy lover. He had just settled everything for their excursion on the morrow.
“Then you are really going, my dear?” said Camille.
“Yes,” said Béatrix.
“How did you know that?” said Mademoiselle des Touches to Calyste.
“I have come to ask,” he replied, at a glance shot at him by Madame de Rochefide, who did not wish her friend to have any suspicion of their correspondence.
“They have already come to an understanding,” said Camille to herself, catching this look by a side-glance from the corner of her eye. “It is all over; there is nothing left to me but to disappear.”
And under the pressure of this thought, a deathlike change passed over her face that gave Béatrix a chill.
“What is the matter, dear?” said she.
“Nothing.—Then, Calyste, will you send on my horses and yours, so that we may find them ready on the other side of le Croisic and ride back through le Bourg de Batz? We will breakfast at le Croisic and dine here. You will undertake to find boatmen. We will start at half-past eight in the morning.—Such fine scenery!” she added to Béatrix. “You will see Cambremer, a man who is doing penance on a rock for having murdered his son. Oh! you are in a primitive land where men do not feel like the common herd. Calyste will tell you the story.”
She went into her room; she was stifling. Calyste delivered his letter and followed Camille.
“Calyste, she loves you, I believe; but you are hiding something; you have certainly disobeyed my injunctions.”
“She loves me!” said he, dropping into a chair.
Camille looked out at the door. Béatrix had vanished. This was strange. A woman does not fly from a room where the man is whom she loves and whom she is certain to see again, unless she has something better to do. Mademoiselle des Touches asked herself, “Can she have a letter from Calyste?” But she thought the innocent lad incapable of such audacity.
“If you have disobeyed me, all is lost by your own fault,” said she gravely. “Go and prepare for the joys of tomorrow.”
She dismissed him with a gesture which Calyste could not rebel against. There are silent sorrows that are despotically eloquent. As he went to le Croisic to find the boatmen, Calyste had some qualms of fear. Camille’s speech bore a stamp of doom that revealed the foresight of a mother. Four hours later, when he returned, very tired, counting on dinner at les Touches, he was met at the door by Camille’s maid, who told him that her mistress
