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 ad