Then, as she had come back and was crouching on Armand's knees, and
pressing against his breast, a fresh expression, that, namely, of almost
intoxicated desire, was depicted on the young man's face. He felt close
to him the beauty of this yielding body, he held in his arms those
charming shoulders of which he had knowledge from having seen them in
the ball-room, he drank in that indefinable aroma which lingers about
every woman, and he pressed his lips upon those eyelids, which he could
feel quivering beneath his kiss.
"You will at least be happy?" she asked him in a sort of anguish between
two caresses.
"What a question! Why, you have never looked at yourself," he said, and
he began to extol to her all the exquisiteness of her face. "You have
never looked at your eyes"--and he again drew his lips across
them--"your pink cheek"--and he stroked it with his hand--"your soft
hair"--and he inhaled it like a flower--"your sweet mouth"--and he laid
his own upon it.
What answer could she have given to this worship of her beauty? She lent
herself to it with a half-frightened smile, surrendering to these
endearments and to these words as to music. They caused something so
deep and withal so vague to vibrate throughout her being that she came
forth half crushed from these embraces, like one dead. It was not for
the first time that she was thus abandoning herself to Armand's kisses.
But no matter how sweet, how intoxicating these kisses, which she found
it impossible to resist, she had on each occasion been strong enough to
escape from bolder caresses.
No, never, never would she have consented, even had there existed no
danger of a surprise, to yield thus in the little drawing-room, where
the portraits of her mother, her husband, and her son reminded her of
what she was nevertheless ready to sacrifice. Ah! not like that! And
again at this moment, when she saw on Armand's face a certain expression
of which she had so deep a dread, she found courage to escape, seated
herself once more in another easy chair, and opening and shutting a fan
which she had taken up in her quivering hands, replied:
"I will be yours to-morrow, if you wish."
Armand seemed to rouse himself from the sweep of passion in which he had
just been tossing. He looked at her, and she again experienced the
sensation which had already caused her so much pain, and which was that
of a veil drawn suddenly between herself and him. Yet, what could she
have said to displease him? She thought that he was wounded by the fact
of her shrinking from him, for was not the uttering of the words that
she had just uttered equivalent to giving herself to him beforehand, and
how could he be vexed with her for desiring that their happiness might
have another setting than that of her every-day life? But he had already
answered her by the following question:
"Where would you like me to meet you? At my own house? I can send away
my servant for the whole of the afternoon."
"Oh, no!" she replied hastily, "not at your own home."
The vision had just come to her that other women had visited Armand,
those other women whom a new mistress always finds between herself and
the man she loves, like the menace of a fatal comparison, like an
anticipated discrediting of her own caresses, since love is always
similar to itself; in its outward forms.
"At least," she thought to herself, "let it not be amid the same
furniture."
"Would you like me to request one of my friends to lend me his rooms?"
Armand asked.
She shook her head as she had done just before. She could hear by
anticipation the conversation of the two men. She was a woman, and
hitherto had been a virtuous one. She was only too well aware that the
manner in which she regarded her own love would have little resemblance
to that of the unknown friend to whom Armand would apply. In her own
eyes passion sanctified everything, even the worst errors; spiritualised
everything, even the most vehement voluptuousness. But he, this
stranger, what would he see in the affair but an intrigue to afford
matter for jesting. A shudder shook her, and she looked again at Armand.
Ah! how her lover's thoughts would have horrified her had she been able
to read them. It was very far from being De Querne's first affair of the
sort, nor did he believe that it was a first act of weakness on her
part. She had, indeed, told him that he was her first lover, and it was
true.
But what proof could be given of the truth of such vows? The young man
had himself deceived and been deceived too often for distrust not to be
the most natural of his feelings. He had provoked this odious discussion
concerning their place of meeting only for the purpose of studying in
Helen's replies the traces left by the amorous experiences through which
she had passed, and mere curiosity led him to dwell upon a subject which
at that moment was stifling the young woman with shame. The scruples
that she displayed about not yielding to him in her own house seemed to
him a calculation due to voluptuousness; those about not yielding to him
at his house, a calculation due to prudence. When she refused to go to
the rooms of a friend: "She is afraid of my confiding in some one," he
said to himself, "but what does she want?"
"Suppose I furnished a little suite of rooms?" he said.
She shook her head, though this had been her secret dream, but she was
afraid that he would see in her acceptance nothing but a desire to gain
time, and then--the necessity, if their meetings occurred always in the
same place, of enduring the notice of the people of the house, the
thought of being the veiled lady whose arrival is watched! Nevertheless,
although such a contrivance also involved a question of outlay which