The next thing was, Josephine had received no letter from him this month; the first month he had missed.  In vain did Rose represent that he was only a few days over his time.  The baroness became anxious, communicated her anxieties to Camille among the rest; and, by a torturing interrogatory, compelled him to explain to her before Josephine and them all, that ships do not always sail to a day, and are sometimes delayed.  But oh! he winced at the man’s name; and Rose observed that he never mentioned it, nor acknowledged the existence of such a person as Josephine’s husband, except when others compelled him.  Yet they were acquainted; and Rose sometimes wondered that he did not detract or sneer.

“I should,” said she; “I feel I should.”

“He is too noble,” said Josephine, “and too wise.  For, if he did, I should respect him less, and my husband more than I do—­if possible.”

Certainly Camille was not the sort of nature that detracts, but the reason he avoided Raynal’s name was simply that his whole internal battle was to forget such a man existed.  From this dream he was rudely awakened every hour since he joined the family, and the wound his self-deceiving heart would fain have skinned over, was torn open.  But worse than this was the torture of being tantalized.  He was in company with Josephine, but never alone.  Even if she left the room for an instant, Rose accompanied her and returned with her.  Camille at last began to comprehend that Josephine had decided there should be no private interviews between her and him.  Thus, not only the shadow of the absent Raynal stood between them, but her mother and sister in person, and worst of all, her own will.  He called her a cold-blooded fiend in his rage.  Then the thought of all her tenderness and goodness came to rebuke him.  But even in rebuking it maddened him.  “Yes, it is her very nature to love; but since she can make her heart turn whichever way her honor bids, she will love her husband; she does not now; but sooner or later she will.  Then she will have children—­(he writhed with anguish and fury at this thought)—­loving ties between him and her.  He has everything on his side.  I, nothing but memories she will efface from her heart.  Will efface?  She must have effaced them, or she could not have married him.”  I know no more pitiable state of mind than to love and hate the same creature.  But when the two feelings are both intense, and meet in an ardent bosom, such a man would do well to spend a day or two upon his knees, praying for grace divine.  For he who with all his soul loves and hates one woman is next door to a maniac, and is scarcely safe an hour together from suicide or even from homicide; this truth the newspapers tell us, by examples, every month; but are wonderfully little heeded, because newspapers do not, nor is it their business to, analyze and dwell upon the internal feelings of the despairing lover, whose mad and bloody act they record.  With such a tempest in his heart did Camille one day wander into the park.  And soon an irresistible attraction drew him to the side of the stream that flowed along one side of it.  He eyed it gloomily, and wherever the stagnant water indicated a deeper pool than usual he stopped, and looked, and thought, “How calm and peaceful you are!”