Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/211

 what she needed was sometimes one thing and sometimes another. Edward was her present source of discontent. He had lived under the same roof with her now for many weeks and she hadn't succeeded in making him fall in love with her.

Why did she want Edward to fall in love with her? Chiefly because he wouldn't. She did not want a serious love affair, an episode which, becoming known, would involve her in scandal and cause a breach with Beaulieu. Her bread was too well buttered for that and she knew it. She wanted Edward to be hopelessly unhappy, while she pretended to be. She wanted his love of her to tinge with melancholy the whole of his remaining life. She wished to play the leading rôle in a drama of passion and renunciation.

Over the portrait painting she had touched Edward's cheek with hers. If her cheek had been a cobweb the contact would have affected him as much and no more. She tried other wiles. And she really charmed the boy very much without touching his heart or his desires.

One day Beaulieu had to go to Paris on business and he suggested for the two who were to remain behind a sketching expedition to the ruins of a St. Bernard monastery—a beautiful tracery of stone arches in the midst of a dark forest.

From Madame Beaulieu's point of view the ex-