“Enough of this!” cried she, imperiously.

“You are right.  Now that you have said you don’t want me any longer, I have no right to ask anything further.  Adieu!”

He turned quickly on his heel.  Reine was conscious of having been too hard with him, and not wishing him to go away with such a grief in his heart, she sought to retain him by placing her hand upon his arm.

“Come, Claudet,” said she, entreatingly, “do not let us part in anger.  It pains me to see you suffer, and I am sorry if I have said anything unkind to you.  Give me your hand in good fellowship, will you?”

But Claudet drew back with a fierce gesture, and glancing angrily at Reine, he replied, rudely: 

“Thanks for your regrets and your pity; I have no use for them.”  She understood that he was deeply hurt; gave up entreating, and turned away with eyes full of tears.

He remained motionless, his arms crossed, in the middle of the road.  After some minutes, he turned his head.  Reine was already nothing more than a dark speck against the gray of the increasing fog.  Then he went off, haphazard, across the pasture-lands.  The fog was rising slowly, and the sun, shorn of its beams, showed its pale face faintly through it.  To the right and the left, the woods were half hidden by moving white billows, and Claudet walked between fluid walls of vapor.  This hidden sky, these veiled surroundings, harmonized with his mental condition.  It was easier for him to hide his chagrin.  “Some one else!  Yes; that’s it.  She loves some other fellow! how was it I did not find that out the very first day?” Then he recalled how Reine shrank from him when he solicited a caress; how she insisted on their betrothal being kept secret, and how many times she had postponed the date of the wedding.  It was evident that she had received him only in self-defence, and on the pleading of Julien de Buxieres.  Julien! the name threw a gleam of light across his brain, hitherto as foggy as the country around him.  Might not Julien be the fortunate rival on whom Reine’s affections were so obstinately set?  Still, if she had always loved Monsieur de Buxieres, in what spirit of perversity or thoughtlessness had she suffered the advances of another suitor?

Reine was no coquette, and such a course of action would be repugnant to her frank, open nature.  It was a profound enigma, which Claudet, who had plenty of good common sense, but not much insight, was unable to solve.  But grief has, among its other advantages, the power of rendering our perceptions more acute; and by dint of revolving the question in his mind, Claudet at last became enlightened.  Had not Reine simply followed the impulse of her wounded feelings?  She was very proud, and when the man whom she secretly loved had come coolly forward to plead the cause of one who was indifferent to her, would not her self-respect be lowered, and would she not, in a spirit of bravado, accept the proposition, in order that he might never guess the sufferings of her spurned affections?  There was no doubt, that, later, recognizing that the task was beyond her strength, she had felt ashamed of deceiving Claudet any longer, and, acting on the advice of the Abbe Pernot, had made up her mind to break off a union that was repugnant to her.