“Say at once, madame, that you do not love me! I who love you, know by myself that love does not argue, it sees nothing but itself, there is no sacrifice I could not make for it. Command me, and I will attempt the impossible. The man who, of old, scorned his mistress for having thrown her glove to the lions and commanding him to rescue it, did not love! He misprized your right to test us, to make sure of our love, and never to lay down your arms but to superhuman magnanimity. To you I would sacrifice my family, my name, my future life.”
“What an insult lies in that word sacrifice!” replied she in a reproachful tone, which made Calyste feel all the folly of his expression.
Only women who love wholly, or utter coquettes, can take a word as a fulcrum, and spring to prodigious heights; wit and feeling act on the same lines; but the woman who loves is grieved, the coquette is contemptuous.
“You are right,” said Calyste, dropping two tears, “the word can only be applied to the achievement you demand of me.”
“Be silent,” said Béatrix, startled by a reply in which for the first time Calyste really expressed his love. “I have done wrong enough.—Do not tempt me.”
They had just reached the base of the box-cliff. Calyste felt intoxicating joys in helping the Marquise to climb the rock; she was bent on mounting to the very top. The poor boy thought it the height of rapture to support her by the waist, to feel her slightly tremulous: she needed him! The unhoped-for joy turned his brain, he saw nothing, he put his arm round her body.
“Well!” said she with an imperious look.
“You will never be mine?” he asked in a voice choked by a storm in his blood.
“Never, my dear,” said she. “To you I can only be Béatrix—a dream. And is not a dream sweet? We shall know no bitterness, no regrets, no repentance.”
“And you will return to Conti?”
“There is no help for it.”
“Then you shall never more be any man’s,” cried Calyste, flinging her from him with mad violence.
He listened for her fall before throwing himself after her, but he only heard a dull noise, the harsh rending of stuff, and the heavy sound of a body falling on earth. Instead of tumbling head-foremost, Béatrix had turned over; she had fallen into the box-tree; but she would have rolled to the bottom of the sea nevertheless if her gown had not caught on a corner, and, by tearing, checked the force of her fall on the bush.
Mademoiselle des Touches, who had witnessed the scene, could not call out, for she was aghast, and could only signal to Gasselin to hasten up. Calyste leaned over, prompted by a fierce sort of curiosity; he saw Béatrix as she lay, and shuddered. She seemed to be praying; she thought she must die, she felt the box-tree giving away. With the sudden presence of mind inspired by love, and the supernatural agility of youth in the face of danger, he let himself down the nine feet of rock by his hands, clinging to the rough edges, to the little shelf, where he was in time to rescue the Marquise by taking her in his arms, at the risk of their both falling into the sea. When he caught Béatrix she became unconscious; but he could dream that she was his, wholly his, in this aerial bed where they might have to remain a long time, and his first feeling was an impulse of gladness.
“Open your eyes, forgive me!” said Calyste. “Or we die together.”
“Die?” said she, opening her eyes, and unsealing her pale lips.
Calyste received the word with a kiss, and then was aware of a spasmodic thrill in the Marquise, which was ecstasy to him. At that instant Gasselin’s nailed shoes were audible above them. Camille followed the Breton, and they were anxiously considering the means of saving the lovers.
“There is but one way, mademoiselle,” said Gasselin. “I will let myself down; they will climb up on my shoulders, and you will give them your hand.”
“And you?” said Camille.
The man seemed astonished at being held of any account when his young master was in danger.
“It will be better to fetch a ladder from le Croisic,” said Camille.
“She is a knowing one, she is!” said Gasselin to himself, as he went off. Béatrix, in a feeble voice, begged to be laid on the ground; she felt faint. Calyste laid her down on the cool earth between the rock and the box-tree.
“I saw you, Calyste,” said Camille. “Whether Béatrix dies or is saved, this must never be anything but an accident.”
“She will hate me!” he cried, his eyes full of tears.
“She will worship you,” replied Camille. “This is an end to our excursion; she must be carried to les Touches.—What would have become of you if she had been killed?” she said.
“I should have followed her.”
“And your mother?—and,” she softly added after a pause, “and me?”
Calyste stood pale, motionless, and silent, his back against the granite. Gasselin very soon returned from one of the little farms that lie scattered among the fields, running with a ladder he had borrowed. Béatrix had somewhat recovered her strength. When Gasselin had fixed the ladder, the Marquise, helped by Gasselin, who begged Calyste to put Camille’s red shawl round Béatrix under her arms, and to give him up the ends, climbed up to the little plateau, where Gasselin took her in his arms like a child, and carried her down to the shore.
“Death I would not say nay to—but pain!” said she in a weak voice to Mademoiselle des Touches.
The faintness and shock from which Béatrix was suffering made it necessary that she should be carried as far as the farm whence Gasselin had borrowed the ladder. Calyste, Gasselin, and
